Unskill'd and uninspired he seems to stand,
Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:
Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,
Pours the full tide of eloquence along;
While from his lips the melting torrent flows,
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.
Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:
Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,
Pours the full tide of eloquence along;
While from his lips the melting torrent flows,
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.
Iliad - Pope
iii. 7.
114 The early epic was largely occupied with the exploits and sufferings
of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the Grecian
heroes. A nation of courageous, hardy, indefatigable women, dwelling
apart from men, permitting only a short temporary intercourse, for
the purpose of renovating their numbers, burning out their right
breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow freely;
this was at once a general type, stimulating to the fancy of the
poet, and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. We find these
warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and
universally accepted as past realities in the Iliad. When Priam
wishes to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he
ever found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in
Phrygia, on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting
the formidable Amazons. When Bellerophon is to be employed in a
deadly and perilous undertaking, by those who prudently wished to
procure his death, he is despatched against the Amazons. --Grote, vol.
i p. 289.
115 --_Antenor,_ like ? neas, had always been favourable to the
restoration of Helen. Liv 1. 2.
116 "His lab'ring heart with sudden rapture seized
He paus'd, and on the ground in silence gazed.
Unskill'd and uninspired he seems to stand,
Nor lifts the eye, nor graceful moves the hand:
Then, while the chiefs in still attention hung,
Pours the full tide of eloquence along;
While from his lips the melting torrent flows,
Soft as the fleeces of descending snows.
Now stronger notes engage the listening crowd,
Louder the accents rise, and yet more loud,
Like thunders rolling from a distant cloud. "
Merrick's "Tryphiodorus," 148, 99.
117 Duport, "Gnomol. Homer," p. 20, well observes that this comparison
may also be sarcastically applied to the _frigid_ style of oratory.
It, of course, here merely denotes the ready fluency of Ulysses.
118 --_Her brothers' doom. _ They perished in combat with Lynceus and
Idas, whilst besieging Sparta. See Hygin. Poet Astr. 32, 22. Virgil
and others, however, make them share immortality by turns.
119 Idreus was the arm-bearer and charioteer of king Priam, slain during
this war. Cf. ?
