The Iliad
Stripp’d of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his face.”
Dryden’s Virgil, bk. ii
[249] _Some brawny bull_.
“Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring
Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow
Hath struck him, but unable to proceed
Plunges on either side.”
—Carey’s Dante: Hell, c. xii.
[250] This is connected with the earlier part of last book, the
regular narrative being interrupted by the message of Antilochus and
the lamentations of Achilles.
[251] _Far in the deep_. So Oceanus hears the lamentations of
Prometheus, in the play of Æschylus, and comes from the depths of the
sea to comfort him.
[252] Opuntia, a city of Locris.
[253] Quintus Calaber, lib. v., has attempted to rival Homer in his
description of the shield of the same hero. A few extracts from Mr.
Dyce’s version (Select Translations, p. 104, seq.) may here be
introduced.
“In the wide circle of the shield were seen
Refulgent images of various forms,
The work of Vulcan; who had there described
The heaven, the ether, and the earth and sea,
The winds, the clouds, the moon, the sun, apart
In different stations; and you there might view
The stars that gem the still-revolving heaven,
And, under them, the vast expanse of air,
In which, with outstretch’d wings, the long-beak’d bird
Winnow’d the gale, as if instinct with life.
Around the shield the waves of ocean flow’d,
The realms of Tethys, which unnumber’d streams,
In azure mazes rolling o’er the earth,
Seem’d to augment.”
[254] _On seats of stone_. “Several of the old northern Sagas
represent the old men assembled for the purpose of judging as sitting
on great stones, in a circle called the Urtheilsring or gerichtsring”—
Grote, ii. p. 100, note. On the independence of the judicial office in
The heroic times, see Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. p. 166.
[255] _Another part_, &c.
“And here
Were horrid wars depicted; grimly pale
Were heroes lying with their slaughter’d steeds
Upon the ground incarnadin’d with blood.
Stern stalked Bellona, smear’d with reeking gore,
Through charging ranks; beside her Rout was seen,
And Terror, Discord to the fatal strife
Inciting men, and Furies breathing flames:
Nor absent were the Fates, and the tall shape
Of ghastly Death, round whom did Battles throng,
Their limbs distilling plenteous blood and sweat;
And Gorgons, whose long locks were twisting snakes.
That shot their forky tongues incessant forth.
Such were the horrors of dire war.”
—Dyce’s Calaber.
[256] _A field deep furrowed_.
“Here was a corn field; reapers in a row,
Each with a sharp-tooth’d sickle in his hand,
Work’d busily, and, as the harvest fell,
Others were ready still to bind the sheaves:
Yoked to a wain that bore the corn away
The steers were moving; sturdy bullocks here
The plough were drawing, and the furrow’d glebe
Was black behind them, while with goading wand
The active youths impell’d them. Here a feast
Was graved: to the shrill pipe and ringing lyre
A band of blooming virgins led the dance.
As if endued with life.”
—Dyce’s Calaber.
[257] Coleridge (Greek Classic Poets, p. 182, seq.) has diligently
compared this with the description of the shield of Hercules by
Hesiod. He remarks that, “with two or three exceptions, the imagery
differs in little more than the names and arrangements; and the
difference of arrangement in the Shield of Hercules is altogether for
the worse. The natural consecution of the Homeric images needs no
exposition: it constitutes in itself one of the beauties of the work.
The Hesiodic images are huddled together without connection or
congruity: Mars and Pallas are awkwardly introduced among the Centaurs
and Lapithae;— but the gap is wide indeed between them and Apollo with
the Muses, waking the echoes of Olympus to celestial harmonies; whence
however, we are hurried back to Perseus, the Gorgons, and other images
of war, over an arm of the sea, in which the sporting dolphins, the
fugitive fishes, and the fisherman on the shore with his casting net,
are minutely represented. As to the Hesiodic images themselves, the
leading remark is, that they catch at beauty by ornament, and at
sublimity by exaggeration; and upon the untenable supposition of the
genuineness of this poem, there is this curious peculiarity, that, in
the description of scenes of rustic peace, the superiority of Homer is
decisive—while in those of war and tumult it may be thought, perhaps,
that the Hesiodic poet has more than once the advantage.”
[258] “This legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in
the Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas
familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and
the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned
subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the
Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by
Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the
commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is
reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are
brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives
in marriage Hebe.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 128.
[259] _Ambrosia_.
“The blue-eyed maid,
In ev’ry breast new vigour to infuse.
Brings nectar temper’d with ambrosial dews.”
Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 249.
[260] “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. He
stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth
upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the
cloud is not rent under them.” Job xxvi. 6-8.
[261]
“Swift from his throne the infernal monarch ran,
All pale and trembling, lest the race of man,v Slain by Jove’s wrath,
and led by Hermes’ rod,
Should fill (a countless throng!) his dark abode.”
Merrick’s Tryphiodorus, vi. 769, sqq.
[262] These words seem to imply the old belief, that the Fates might
be delayed, but never wholly set aside.
[263] It was anciently believed that it was dangerous, if not fatal,
to behold a deity. See Exod. xxxiii. 20; Judg. xiii. 22.
[264]
“Ere Ilium and the Trojan tow’rs arose,
In humble vales they built their soft abodes.”
Dryden’s Virgil, iii. 150.
[265] _Along the level seas_. Compare Virgil’s description of Camilla,
who
“Outstripp’d the winds in speed upon the plain,
Flew o’er the field, nor hurt the bearded grain:
She swept the seas, and, as she skimm’d along,
Her flying feet unbathed on billows hung.”
Dryden, vii. 1100.
[266] _The future father_. “Æneas and Antenor stand distinguished from
the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam, and a sympathy with
the Greeks, which is by Sophocles and others construed as treacherous
collusion,—a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically
repelled, in the Æneas of Virgil.”—Grote, i. p. 427.
[267] Neptune thus recounts his services to Æneas:
“When your Æneas fought, but fought with odds
Of force unequal, and unequal gods:
I spread a cloud before the victor’s sight,
Sustain’d the vanquish’d, and secured his flight—
Even then secured him, when I sought with joy
The vow’d destruction of ungrateful Troy.”
Dryden’s Virgil, v. 1058.
[268] _On Polydore_. Euripides, Virgil, and others, relate that
Polydore was sent into Thrace, to the house of Polymestor, for
protection, being the youngest of Priam’s sons, and that he was
treacherously murdered by his host for the sake of the treasure sent
with him.
[269] “Perhaps the boldest excursion of Homer into this region of
poetical fancy is the collision into which, in the twenty-first of the
Iliad, he has brought the river god Scamander, first with Achilles,
and afterwards with Vulcan, when summoned by Juno to the hero’s aid.
The overwhelming fury of the stream finds the natural interpretation
in the character of the mountain torrents of Greece and Asia Minor.
Their wide, shingly beds are in summer comparatively dry, so as to be
easily forded by the foot passenger. But a thunder-shower in the
mountains, unobserved perhaps by the traveller on the plain, may
suddenly immerse him in the flood of a mighty river. The rescue of
Achilles by the fiery arms of Vulcan scarcely admits of the same ready
explanation from physical causes. Yet the subsiding of the flood at
the critical moment when the hero’s destruction appeared imminent,
might, by a slight extension of the figurative parallel, be ascribed
to a god symbolic of the influences opposed to all atmospheric
moisture.”—Mure, vol. i. p. 480, sq.
[270] Wood has observed, that “the circumstance of a falling tree,
which is described as reaching from one of its banks to the other,
affords a very just idea of the breadth of the Scamander.”
[271] _Ignominious_. Drowning, as compared with a death in the field
of battle, was considered utterly disgraceful.
[272] _Beneath a caldron_.
“So, when with crackling flames a caldron fries,
The bubbling waters from the bottom rise.
Above the brims they force their fiery way;
Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day.”
Dryden’s Virgil, vii. 644.
[273] “This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by
order of Jove, as a punishment for misbehaviour, recurs not
unfrequently among the incidents of the Mythical world.”—Grote, vol.
i. p. 156.
[274] _Not half so dreadful_.
“On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn’d,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.”
—“Paradise Lost,” xi. 708.
[275] “And thus his own undaunted mind explores.”—“Paradise Lost,” vi.
113.
[276] The example of Nausicaa, in the Odyssey, proves that the duties
of the laundry were not thought derogatory, even from the dignity of a
princess, in the heroic times.
[277] _Hesper shines with keener light_.
“Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn.”
“Paradise Lost,” v. 166.
[278] Such was his fate. After chasing the Trojans into the town, he
was slain by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the
unerring auspices of Apollo. The greatest efforts were made by the
Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was however rescued
and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valour of Ajax and Ulysses.
Thetis stole away the body, just as the Greeks were about to burn it
with funeral honours, and conveyed it away to a renewed life of
immortality in the isle of Leuke in the Euxine.
[279] _Astyanax_, i.e. the _city-king_ or guardian. It is amusing that
Plato, who often finds fault with Homer without reason, should have
copied this twaddling etymology into his Cratylus.
[280] This book has been closely imitated by Virgil in his fifth book,
but it is almost useless to attempt a selection of passages for
comparison.
[281] _Thrice in order led_. This was a frequent rite at funerals. The
Romans had the same custom, which they called _decursio_. Plutarch
states that Alexander, in after times, renewed these same honours to
the memory of Achilles himself.
[282] _And swore_. Literally, and called Orcus, the god of oaths, to
witness. See Buttmann, Lexilog, p. 436.
[283]
“O, long expected by thy friends! from whence
Art thou so late return’d for our defence?
Do we behold thee, wearied as we are
With length of labours, and with, toils of war?
After so many funerals of thy own,
Art thou restored to thy declining town?
But say, what wounds are these? what new disgrace
Deforms the manly features of thy face?”
Dryden, xi. 369.
[284] _Like a thin smoke_. Virgil, Georg. iv. 72.