FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]"Dire," in the Latin sense of ill-omened.[2]When Jupiter had carried off Europa, her father, Agenor, sent her brother Cadmus to seek her, and commanded him not to return without his sister. Unable to find her he settled at Thebes, and built the city. He slew the dragon, which guarded a neighbouring well, and a portion of the armed men, who sprung up from its teeth, were reputed to be the ancestors of the Thebans.[3]A second legend ascribed the building of the city to the wonder-working music of Amphion, which caused the stones to pile themselves together. Both legends were subsequently blended, and Cadmus had the credit of the upper part of the city, and Amphion of the lower.[4]Juno visited Athamas, king of Thebes, with madness, and in his frenzy he shot his own son, Learchus, whom he took for a young lion. Upon this his wife, Ino, who was a daughter of Cadmus, fled with her second son, Melicertes, and threw herself and her boy into the sea.[5]Domitian. The panegyric on this timid and cruel tyrant was disgraceful flattery. The boasted victories over the Dacian's were in reality defeats. They compelled the emperor to sue for an inglorious peace which was only purchased by the promise of an immediate ransom and an annual tribute. Most of his pretended triumphs were of a similar character, and led Pliny the younger to remark, that they were always the token of some advantage obtained by the enemies of Rome.[6]During the contest between Vespasian and Vitellius for the empire, Domitian, at the age of eighteen, took refuge in the temple of the Capitol to escape from the fury of the soldiers opposed to his father. It was self-preservation and not daring which impelled him, and when the temple of Jupiter was set on fire he again fled, and hid himself until the party of Vespasian prevailed.[7]This line is very obscure. There is nothing corresponding to it in the Latin.[8]From the translation of Stephens:The time may come when a divinor rage.[9]Pope is closer to Stephens than to the original:funeral flamesDivided, like the souls they carry.The rival brothers ultimately engaged in single combat, and both fell. The body of Polynices was placed by mistake upon the funeral pile of Eteocles, and the flames rose upwards in diverging currents.[10]Stephens's translation:When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.[11]The dirce ran on one side of Thebes, the Ismenus on the other, and they afterwards united in a common stream. Both were mere watercourses, which were only filled by the rains of winter.[12]The Thebans are subsequently represented by Statius as driven into the Ismenus by the Greeks, and the hosts which were killed or drowned were carried by the river into the sea.[13]What hero, that is, of the famous seven who went up against Thebes to dispossess Eteocles for violating the compact to reign alternately with Polynices. The five persons whom Statius enumerates as joining with Polynices and Adrastus, king of Argos, are Tydeus, Amphiaraus, Hippomedon, Parthenopæus, and Capaneus.[14]When Tydeus had received his death-wound from a javelin hurled by Menalippus, he gathered up his failing strength, and flung a dart by which he mortally wounded Menalippus in turn. Full of revengeful spite Tydeus begged that the head of Menalippus might be brought to him. He grasped it with his dying hand, gazed at it with malignant joy, gnawed it in his frenzy, and refused to relinquish his hold. This was "the rage of Tydeus," which Statius says the Greeks themselves condemned as exceeding the recognised latitude of hate.[15]The prophet was Amphiaraus, who predicted that all who took part in the expedition, except Adrastus, would be destroyed. The earth opened while Amphiaraus was fighting, and swallowed up him and his chariot. Statius paints him sinking calmly into the yawning gulf, without dropping his weapons or the reins, and with his eyes fixed on the heavens.[16]Hippomedon is made by Statius the hero of the conflict in the river Ismenus, where he at last succumbs to the god of the river. The piles of dead formed a dike, which turned back the waters.[17]Parthenopæus.—Pope.[18]He declared that Jupiter himself should not keep him from ascending the walls of Thebes. Jupiter punished his defiance by setting him on fire with lightning on the scaling ladder, and he was burnt to death.[19]Œdipus did not strike his wounds. He struck the ground, which was the usage in invoking the infernal deities, since their kingdom was in the bowels of the earth.[20]One of the three principal furies or avengers of crime, who inhabited the world of condemned spirits.[21]The great difference between raising horror and terror is perceived and felt from the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks of the dreadful incest of Œdipus, and from the manner in which Statius has enlarged and dwelt upon it, in which he has been very unnaturally and injudiciously imitated by Dryden and Lee, who introduce this most unfortunate prince not only describing but arguing on the dreadful crime he had committed.—Warton.[22]Laius, king of Thebes, warned by the oracle that he would be killed by his own offspring, exposed his son Œdipus on Mount Cithæron. The infant was found by a shepherd, and carried to Polybus, king of Corinth, who adopted him. Arrived at man's estate, he too was informed by the oracle that he would take the life of his father, and commit incest with his mother. Believing that the king and queen who brought him up were his parents, he determined not to go back to Corinth, and in attempting to avert his destiny, he fulfilled it. As he journeyed towards Thebes he met his real father, Laius, and slew him in a conflict which grew out of a dispute with his charioteer.[23]Or the temple at Delphi, where Œdipus went to consult the oracle.[24]The Sphinx sat upon a rock near Thebes propounding a riddle to every one who passed by, and destroying all who were unable to explain it. The Thebans proclaimed that whoever would rid the kingdom of this scourge should marry the widow of Laius, and succeed to the vacant throne. Œdipus, by solving the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commit suicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified the remainder of the oracle.[25]Œdipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully, instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are so suited to his condition.—Warton.[26]In the first edition he had writtenWhich shall o'er long posterity prevail.The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 132:And children's children shall the crown sustain.[27]This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:Put on that diadem besmeared with goreWhich from my father's head these fingers tore.[28]Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 78:Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth[29]Pope uses "preventing" in the then common but now obsolete sense of "anticipating."[30]A river in the lower world.[31]Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.—Warton.[32]The entrance to the infernal regions was said to be through a cave in the Tænarian promontory, which formed the southern extremity of Greece.[33]Pope has judiciously tamed the bombast image "caligantes animarum examine campos," "the plains darkened with a swarm of ghosts." "Lucentes equos," he translates, "fair glories," omitting the image entirely. To mount Atlas he has added an idea which makes the passage more ridiculous than sublime. It is poorly expressed in the original; in the translation it is ludicrous; "and shook the heavensand gods he bore." There are many images which if indistinctly seen are sublime; if particularised they become quite the contrary. However, the translation is certainly wonderful, when the age of the author is considered. It shows his powers of metrical language, at so early a period of his poetical studies, though it is very unfaithful in particular passages.—Bowles.[34]Pope's acquaintance with Latin prosody, from his confined education, was probably very small, or he would not have used Malēa, instead of Malěa, with the line of Statius before him.—Bowles.[35]"Well-known," because the Fury had before visited the Theban palace to instigate the crimes and passions of which it had been the scene. The haste with which she goes, and her preference for the terrestrial journey, even over the haunts of her own Tartarus, indicate the signal malevolence of the mission. Hence the delight she takes in it.[36]The original is more forcible and less extravagant. The sunken eyes of the Fury glared with a light like that of red-hot iron—ferrea lux.[37]This expression, which is not in Statius, is common with Dryden, as in his Virg. Æn. x. 582:And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.[38]Statius depicts the frenzied virulence of the Fury, by saying that she lashed the air with the serpent. Pope has marred the description by representing the lashing of the air as the act of the serpent itself.[39]After Ino had drowned herself and her son Melicertes, they became marine divinities, and their names were changed to Leucothea and Palæmon. Statius is more picturesque than Pope. When the apparition of the Fury announced terrible evils to come, the sea was stirred to its depths. On the outburst of the tempest, Palæmon was sailing about on the back of a dolphin, and it was then that his mother snatched him up in her alarm, and pressed him to her bosom. To convey an idea of the tremendous nature of the storm, Statius says that the Corinthian isthmus could hardly resist the violence of the waves which dashed against each of its shores. This circumstance is justly styled by Pope "most extravagantly hyperbolical," but a translator should not have omitted it.[40]A great image, and highly improved from the original, "assueta nube."—Warton.The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,And at the Theban palace did alight.[41]"Ruptæque vices" in the original, which Pope translates, "and all the ties of nature broke," but byvicesis indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles.—De Quincey.[42]The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,—jurisque secundiAmbitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unumStare loco,—than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.—De Quincey.[43]"Bound" is an improper verb as applied to "steers"; besides the simile is not exactly understood. There is nothing about "reins" or "bounding" in the original. What is meant is that the steers do not draw even. Pope confounded the image of the young bullocks with that of a horse, and he therefore introduces "reins" and "bounding."—Bowles.[44]For "armour wait," the first edition had "arms did wait."[45]"Charger" is used in its old sense of a dish.[46]Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,—a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,—and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.[47]In the first edition,Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.[48]Pope borrowed from the translation of Stephens:How wast thou lostIn thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when allAbout thee were thy slaves.[49]It should be "discontented."—Warton.[50]This couplet was interpolated by Pope and seems to have been suggested by his hostility to the revolution of 1688. Nor does Statius call the populace "vile," or say that they are always "discontented," or that they are "still prone to change, though still the slaves of state." Neither does he say that they "are sure to hate the monarch, they have," but he says that their custom is to love his successor, which is a sentiment more in accordance with experience.[51]"Exiled" because the king who was not reigning had to leave the country during his brother's year of power.[52]The warriors who were the produce of the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus fought among themselves till only five were left.[53]"Unrivalled," as the context shows, is not here a term of commendation, but merely signifies that the monarch had no equal in rank or power.[54]"Placido quatiens tamen omnia vultu," is the common reading. I believe it should be "nutu," with reference to the word "quatiens."—Pope.[55]Pope was manifestly unable to extract any sense from the original. It is there said that Jupiter at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but that the other gods did not presume to sit down "protinus," that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. In Pope's translation, the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities.—De Quincey.De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:AnonHe sets him down on his bespangled throne.The rest stand and expect: not one presumedTo sit till leave was beckoned.[56]The winds would have been inconvenient members of a deliberative assembly if they had taken to howling, whistling, and sighing. Nevertheless their propensity to blow was so inveterate that, in Statius, they are only kept quiet by their fear of Jove.[57]Our author is perpetually grasping at the wonderful and the vast, but most frequently falls gradually from the terrible to the contemptible.—Warton.By "our author" Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the "eluded rage of Jove,"—an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.[58]Hiera, one of the Æolian islands in the neighbourhood of Sicily, was supposed to be the workshop of Vulcan. The island was volcanic, and the underground noises were ascribed to Vulcan, and his assistants, the Cyclopes, as they plied their trade. The circumstance that the fires of the Æolian forge were exhausted was doubtless introduced by Statius because in his day the eruptions had ceased in Hiera.[59]Agave, the daughter of Cadmus. Her son Pentheus appeared among the women who were celebrating the Bacchic revelries on Mount Cithæron, and his mother, mistaking him in her frenzy for a wild beast, like a wild beast tore him to pieces.[60]There is no mention of "the direful banquet" in the original. "The savage hunter" alludes to Athamas chasing and slaying his son under the delusion that he was a lion.[61]The king of Argos.[62]Tantalus, king of Argos, invited the gods to a banquet, and served up the boiled flesh of his own son, Pelops.[63]Phoroneus was commonly reputed to have been the founder of the city of Argos.[64]Juno employed Argus to keep guard over Io, transformed by Jupiter into a cow. Mercury, being sent by Jupiter to rescue Io, lulled Argus to sleep by melodious airs on the flute, and then cut off his head.[65]An oracle announced to Acrisius, king of Argos, that he would die by the hands of his grandson. The king endeavoured to escape his fate by imprisoning his daughter, Danae, in a brazen tower, but Jupiter obtained access to her in the shape of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, who fulfilled the prediction, according to the established legendary usage.[66]The force of this taunt is weakened in Pope's translation by the change from the second person to the third, as though the invectives of Juno had not been addressed to Jupiter himself.[67]Jupiter visited Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, in all the majesty of the thunderer, and she was consumed by the lightning.[68]Homer makes Juno say that there are three cities pre-eminently dear to her—Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ. Samos had no less title to the distinction. It was one of the localities which contended for the renown of having given her birth, and was, with Argos, the principal seat of her worship. Virgil ranks Samos second among the places she delighted to honour.[69]The river Alpheus, which takes its rise in Arcadia, loses itself underground in parts of its course, and again reappears. This suggested the fiction that it ran in a subterranean channel, below the bottom of the sea, to the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily, where it once more emerged to day. Pope had less regard to the text of Statius than to Dryden's translation of Virgil's lines on the same legend in Ecl. x. 5:So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.[70]The Arcadians celebrated the worship of Jupiter with human sacrifices.[71]He was king of Pisa in Elis, where was the celebrated Olympia, with its temple of Jupiter. Œnomaus had ascertained from an oracle that he would perish by the agency of his son-in-law, and he was anxious, in self-defence, to keep his daughter, Hippodamia, from marrying. As he possessed the swiftest horses in the world he required her suitors to contend with him in a chariot-race, which allowed them no chance of success. The prize of victory was to be his daughter; the penalty of defeat was death, and the bones which laid unburied in the neighbourhood of Jupiter's temple were those of the lovers of Hippodamia.[72]The Cretans claimed to possess both the birth-place and burial-place of Jupiter.[73]"Derived from Jove," inasmuch as Perseus, one of the kings of Argos, was the son of Jupiter and Danae.[74]Eteocles and Polynices.—Pope.[75]Mercury, so called because he was born upon Mount Cyllene.[76]Eteocles.[77]Stephens's translation:This were such a dayHe'd spend an age to see 't.[78]To Argos, of which Danaus had been king, whence the Argives were also called Danai.[79]Atreus, king of Mycenæ, murdered the two sons of his brother Thyestes, and feasted their father with dishes made of their flesh.[80]Bacchus forced the Theban women to assemble, and give loose to the wild rites by which he was celebrated. It was on this occasion that Pentheus was massacred by his mother.[81]Nisus was king of Megara when it was besieged by Minos. The king's daughter, Scylla, conceived a passion for Minos, and to ensure him the victory she plucked from her father's head a purple hair upon which depended the preservation of himself and the city.[82]Statius says that when Polynices was in the middle of the isthmus of Corinth he could hear the waves beat against both its shores. "This," remarked Pope, "could hardly be; for the isthmus of Corinth is full five miles over," and he calls the introduction of the circumstance "a geographical error." It was his own geography that was at fault. The width of the isthmus is only three miles and a half. Pope spoilt the incident when he transferred it to the Scironian rock. Sciron was a robber and murderer, who compelled his victims to wash his feet upon the cliff, and while they were engaged in the operation he kicked them over into the sea.[83]"We have scarcely in our language eight more beautiful lines than these, down to human care," ver. 481.—Warton.[84]Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens:The silent world does viewHer airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.[85]He again borrowed from Stephens:And nodding through the air brings down in hasteA sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.[86]A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,—"rolls a deluge on."—Warton.He copied Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 638:As when the winds their airy quarrel try.He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565:Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,Contending for the kingdom of the sky.[87]"Showers" is an inappropriate word to denote the deluge of rain which flooded the earth, and "swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main."[88]The Inachus, and the Erasinus were rivers in the plain of Argos.[89]The waters of the Lerna were infected by the venom from the serpent Hydra, which Hercules slew.[90]The storm, by blowing down trees or branches, made an opening in the dense foliage through which the sun had never penetrated.[91]In the first edition:The prince with wonder did the waste behold,While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.[92]Dryden's Virg. Æn. ii. 413:The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from farThe wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war.[93]Dryden's Virg. Geor. i. 652:Bore houses, herds, and lab'ring hinds away.[94]Statius represents Polynices as terrified by the tempest. Pope appears to have thought that this was derogatory to the character of the fugitive king, and he calls him, when gazing on the ravages caused by the storm, "the intrepid Theban," which conveys the impression that he was undaunted by the spectacle. In the same spirit Pope at ver. 527, has the line, "Thus still hiscouragewith his toils increased," where the original says that the stimulus which urged him on was fear. But while Pope has obliterated the alarm which was generated by the tempest he has introduced in its place an alarm which had no existence. In the midst of the havoc worked by the elements the recollection of his brother "wings the feet" of the intrepid Theban "with fears," though he is beyond his brother's reach, and has no suspicion at present that he designs to break the compact to reign alternately. The influence which the remembrance of Eteocles exercised over the mind of the wanderer is expressly distinguished by Statius from the fear, and means no more than that since Polynices was an exile from Thebes, he was compelled to proceed onwards till he could find an asylum in another state.[95]A mountain on which stood the citadel of Argos.[96]The temple at Prosymna was dedicated to Juno.[97]Pope took the expression from Dryden, Virg. Æn. vii. 79:One only daughter heired the royal state.And ver. 367:Only one daughter heirs my crown and state.[98]Strictly his sons-in-law.[99]That is, he ordained that the oracles should be incapable of interpretation before it was fulfilled.[100]Calydon, of which his father Œneus was king.[101]The mode in which the two fugitives became known to the king and gained admission to the palace, is not told by Pope, who has left upwards of seventy lines untranslated, and by the mutilation rendered the incidents improbable. Polynices reaches the palace first and lies down, worn out, on the pavement of the vestibule. Tydeus arrives at the same spot, and Polynices is unwilling that he should share the shelter. A quarrel ensues, and from words they proceed to blows. The king is disturbed by the uproar; he issues forth from the palace with attendants and torches to ascertain the cause; explanations follow, and these result in Tydeus and Polynices becoming the guests of Adrastus. "There is an odd account," Pope says to Cromwell, "of an unmannerly battle at fisty-cuffs between the two Princes on a very slight occasion, and at a time when, one would think, the fatigue of their journey, in so tempestuous a night, might have rendered them very unfit for such a scuffle. This I had actually translated, but was very ill satisfied with it, even in my own words, to which an author cannot but be partial enough of conscience."[102]Before the victory of Hercules over the Nemean lion, he is said by Statius to have worn the skin of a lion which he slew in the neighbourhood of Mount Temessus.[103]"Horror" at the thought of the dreadful forebodings which had been suggested by the literal language of the oracle; "glad" because of the manner in which the prediction was verified. Jortin, in a note on another passage of the Thebais, says, "Statius could not help falling into his beloved fault of joining contraries together. He is too apt to seek this opposition in his words. He never indeed misses this favourite figure when he can bring it in."[104]"Firm" for confirm was sanctioned by the frequent example of Dryden, from whose translation of Virg. Æn. viii. 107, Pope has borrowed the entire couplet:But oh! be present to thy people's aid,And firm the gracious promise thou hast made.[105]In the first edition this verse was an Alexandrine, ending with "and wake the sleeping fires," which Pope took from Dryden, Virg. Æn. viii, 720:And on his altars waked the sleeping fires.[106]"Fry" was the reading of all the editions till that of 1736, when "fly" was substituted by an evident error of the press, and has been retained ever since.[107]"Tutress" in the first edition. Acestis had been the nurse, and was now the duenna of the two daughters of Adrastus.[108]The gorgon, Medusa, changed every one who saw her to stone. Perseus avoided the penalty by only looking at her reflection in a mirror as he cut off her head while she slept. Being the grandson of a king of Argos he was an Argive hero, whence his triumph was engraved upon the royal goblet. The artist had selected the moment when Perseus is darting into the air with the head of the gorgon, which, newly separated from the body, still retained the traces of expiring life.[109]On account of the beauty of Ganymede, Jove sent an eagle to convey him from the earth to the habitations of the gods. There he was appointed cup-bearer, which rendered the incident appropriate to a drinking-vessel.[110]He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem—atris—terentem—nigro—centum per jugera,—all of them picturesque epithets.—Warton.Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.[111]The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.[112]Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:earth prepares thy roomGarnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched aboveWith oaken leaves close woven; whilst the groveLends bark to make thy garments.[113]Much superior to the original.—Warton.[114]Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi.And calls the furies from the depth of hell.[115]Pope copied Stephens:devouring someWith rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes,And fats herself with public miseries.[116]Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.[117]Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with classical: in the original it is "ense metit;"—"mowswith hissword." Pope has introduced a "scythe," to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.—Bowles.[118]Chorœbus.[119]Statius states that Chorœbus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being "unwilling," by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Chorœbus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Chorœbus the "sad boon of life" out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Chorœbus would have preferred to die.[120]Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.—Warton.[121]Apollo was specially worshipped by the Lycians.[122]The celebrated fountain sacred to Apollo on Parnassus.[123]Apollo was surnamed the Cynthian, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, which was the place of his birth, and the most revered of all the localities set apart for his worship. The island, which had previously floated over the ocean, was, according to one version of the legend, rendered stationary by Jupiter when Apollo was born; according to another version, it was subsequently fixed by Apollo himself.[124]The walls of Troy were the work of Apollo and Neptune.[125]In the first edition it wasThou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.[126]The Phrygian was Marsyas, who contended on the flute against Apollo with his lyre. When the umpires decided in favour of the god, he flayed Marsyas for his presumption.[127]Tityus assaulted the mother of Apollo, and her son shot the offender.[128]Niobe, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, thought herself superior to Latona, who had only one son, and one daughter,—Apollo and Diana. These divinities, in revenge, destroyed the fourteen children of Niobe.[129]In the first edition:He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try,But dreads the mould'ring rock that trembles from on high.Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circumstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil's description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression "mould'ring rock" is taken from Dryden's translation of the passage, Æn. vi. 816:High o'er their heads a mould'ring rock is placedThat promises a fall, and shakes at ev'ry blast.The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason assigned by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.[130]After Apollo, in the later mythology, had been identified with the sun, all the names personifying the sun, of which Titan was one, became applicable to Apollo.[131]Diodorus maintained that the Osiris of the Egyptians was their god of the sun, and Statius has adopted this erroneous view. According to the statement of Herodotus, Osiris answered to the Grecian Bacchus, and there is little doubt that the old historian was right.[132]Mithras was the Persian god of the sun. He was worshipped in caves, or, as Pope has it, in "hollow rocks," because the spherical form of the cave symbolised the universe, of which Mithras was the maker. The "blaze of light which adorns his head" in Pope's version, makes no part of the description in the original. The final line is explained by several ancient works of art, in which a man, wearing a Phrygian cap, is depicted cutting the throat of a bull he has flung to the ground. The man is said by an old scholiast on Statius to typify the sun, the bull the moon, and the intention, he states, is to represent the superiority of the sun over the moon. Statius speaks of the bull as indignant at being compelled to follow Mithras,—an idea which suits ill with the tranquil aspect of the moon as it floats through the heavens.

[1]"Dire," in the Latin sense of ill-omened.

[2]When Jupiter had carried off Europa, her father, Agenor, sent her brother Cadmus to seek her, and commanded him not to return without his sister. Unable to find her he settled at Thebes, and built the city. He slew the dragon, which guarded a neighbouring well, and a portion of the armed men, who sprung up from its teeth, were reputed to be the ancestors of the Thebans.

[3]A second legend ascribed the building of the city to the wonder-working music of Amphion, which caused the stones to pile themselves together. Both legends were subsequently blended, and Cadmus had the credit of the upper part of the city, and Amphion of the lower.

[4]Juno visited Athamas, king of Thebes, with madness, and in his frenzy he shot his own son, Learchus, whom he took for a young lion. Upon this his wife, Ino, who was a daughter of Cadmus, fled with her second son, Melicertes, and threw herself and her boy into the sea.

[5]Domitian. The panegyric on this timid and cruel tyrant was disgraceful flattery. The boasted victories over the Dacian's were in reality defeats. They compelled the emperor to sue for an inglorious peace which was only purchased by the promise of an immediate ransom and an annual tribute. Most of his pretended triumphs were of a similar character, and led Pliny the younger to remark, that they were always the token of some advantage obtained by the enemies of Rome.

[6]During the contest between Vespasian and Vitellius for the empire, Domitian, at the age of eighteen, took refuge in the temple of the Capitol to escape from the fury of the soldiers opposed to his father. It was self-preservation and not daring which impelled him, and when the temple of Jupiter was set on fire he again fled, and hid himself until the party of Vespasian prevailed.

[7]This line is very obscure. There is nothing corresponding to it in the Latin.

[8]From the translation of Stephens:The time may come when a divinor rage.

[8]From the translation of Stephens:

The time may come when a divinor rage.

[9]Pope is closer to Stephens than to the original:funeral flamesDivided, like the souls they carry.The rival brothers ultimately engaged in single combat, and both fell. The body of Polynices was placed by mistake upon the funeral pile of Eteocles, and the flames rose upwards in diverging currents.

[9]Pope is closer to Stephens than to the original:

funeral flamesDivided, like the souls they carry.

The rival brothers ultimately engaged in single combat, and both fell. The body of Polynices was placed by mistake upon the funeral pile of Eteocles, and the flames rose upwards in diverging currents.

[10]Stephens's translation:When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.

[10]Stephens's translation:

When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.

[11]The dirce ran on one side of Thebes, the Ismenus on the other, and they afterwards united in a common stream. Both were mere watercourses, which were only filled by the rains of winter.

[12]The Thebans are subsequently represented by Statius as driven into the Ismenus by the Greeks, and the hosts which were killed or drowned were carried by the river into the sea.

[13]What hero, that is, of the famous seven who went up against Thebes to dispossess Eteocles for violating the compact to reign alternately with Polynices. The five persons whom Statius enumerates as joining with Polynices and Adrastus, king of Argos, are Tydeus, Amphiaraus, Hippomedon, Parthenopæus, and Capaneus.

[14]When Tydeus had received his death-wound from a javelin hurled by Menalippus, he gathered up his failing strength, and flung a dart by which he mortally wounded Menalippus in turn. Full of revengeful spite Tydeus begged that the head of Menalippus might be brought to him. He grasped it with his dying hand, gazed at it with malignant joy, gnawed it in his frenzy, and refused to relinquish his hold. This was "the rage of Tydeus," which Statius says the Greeks themselves condemned as exceeding the recognised latitude of hate.

[15]The prophet was Amphiaraus, who predicted that all who took part in the expedition, except Adrastus, would be destroyed. The earth opened while Amphiaraus was fighting, and swallowed up him and his chariot. Statius paints him sinking calmly into the yawning gulf, without dropping his weapons or the reins, and with his eyes fixed on the heavens.

[16]Hippomedon is made by Statius the hero of the conflict in the river Ismenus, where he at last succumbs to the god of the river. The piles of dead formed a dike, which turned back the waters.

[17]Parthenopæus.—Pope.

[18]He declared that Jupiter himself should not keep him from ascending the walls of Thebes. Jupiter punished his defiance by setting him on fire with lightning on the scaling ladder, and he was burnt to death.

[19]Œdipus did not strike his wounds. He struck the ground, which was the usage in invoking the infernal deities, since their kingdom was in the bowels of the earth.

[20]One of the three principal furies or avengers of crime, who inhabited the world of condemned spirits.

[21]The great difference between raising horror and terror is perceived and felt from the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks of the dreadful incest of Œdipus, and from the manner in which Statius has enlarged and dwelt upon it, in which he has been very unnaturally and injudiciously imitated by Dryden and Lee, who introduce this most unfortunate prince not only describing but arguing on the dreadful crime he had committed.—Warton.

[22]Laius, king of Thebes, warned by the oracle that he would be killed by his own offspring, exposed his son Œdipus on Mount Cithæron. The infant was found by a shepherd, and carried to Polybus, king of Corinth, who adopted him. Arrived at man's estate, he too was informed by the oracle that he would take the life of his father, and commit incest with his mother. Believing that the king and queen who brought him up were his parents, he determined not to go back to Corinth, and in attempting to avert his destiny, he fulfilled it. As he journeyed towards Thebes he met his real father, Laius, and slew him in a conflict which grew out of a dispute with his charioteer.

[23]Or the temple at Delphi, where Œdipus went to consult the oracle.

[24]The Sphinx sat upon a rock near Thebes propounding a riddle to every one who passed by, and destroying all who were unable to explain it. The Thebans proclaimed that whoever would rid the kingdom of this scourge should marry the widow of Laius, and succeed to the vacant throne. Œdipus, by solving the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commit suicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified the remainder of the oracle.

[25]Œdipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully, instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are so suited to his condition.—Warton.

[26]In the first edition he had writtenWhich shall o'er long posterity prevail.The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 132:And children's children shall the crown sustain.

[26]In the first edition he had written

Which shall o'er long posterity prevail.

The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 132:

And children's children shall the crown sustain.

[27]This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:Put on that diadem besmeared with goreWhich from my father's head these fingers tore.

[27]This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:

Put on that diadem besmeared with goreWhich from my father's head these fingers tore.

[28]Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 78:Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth

[28]Dryden's Virg. Æn. iii. 78:

Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth

[29]Pope uses "preventing" in the then common but now obsolete sense of "anticipating."

[30]A river in the lower world.

[31]Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.—Warton.

[32]The entrance to the infernal regions was said to be through a cave in the Tænarian promontory, which formed the southern extremity of Greece.

[33]Pope has judiciously tamed the bombast image "caligantes animarum examine campos," "the plains darkened with a swarm of ghosts." "Lucentes equos," he translates, "fair glories," omitting the image entirely. To mount Atlas he has added an idea which makes the passage more ridiculous than sublime. It is poorly expressed in the original; in the translation it is ludicrous; "and shook the heavensand gods he bore." There are many images which if indistinctly seen are sublime; if particularised they become quite the contrary. However, the translation is certainly wonderful, when the age of the author is considered. It shows his powers of metrical language, at so early a period of his poetical studies, though it is very unfaithful in particular passages.—Bowles.

[34]Pope's acquaintance with Latin prosody, from his confined education, was probably very small, or he would not have used Malēa, instead of Malěa, with the line of Statius before him.—Bowles.

[35]"Well-known," because the Fury had before visited the Theban palace to instigate the crimes and passions of which it had been the scene. The haste with which she goes, and her preference for the terrestrial journey, even over the haunts of her own Tartarus, indicate the signal malevolence of the mission. Hence the delight she takes in it.

[36]The original is more forcible and less extravagant. The sunken eyes of the Fury glared with a light like that of red-hot iron—ferrea lux.

[37]This expression, which is not in Statius, is common with Dryden, as in his Virg. Æn. x. 582:And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.

[37]This expression, which is not in Statius, is common with Dryden, as in his Virg. Æn. x. 582:

And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.

[38]Statius depicts the frenzied virulence of the Fury, by saying that she lashed the air with the serpent. Pope has marred the description by representing the lashing of the air as the act of the serpent itself.

[39]After Ino had drowned herself and her son Melicertes, they became marine divinities, and their names were changed to Leucothea and Palæmon. Statius is more picturesque than Pope. When the apparition of the Fury announced terrible evils to come, the sea was stirred to its depths. On the outburst of the tempest, Palæmon was sailing about on the back of a dolphin, and it was then that his mother snatched him up in her alarm, and pressed him to her bosom. To convey an idea of the tremendous nature of the storm, Statius says that the Corinthian isthmus could hardly resist the violence of the waves which dashed against each of its shores. This circumstance is justly styled by Pope "most extravagantly hyperbolical," but a translator should not have omitted it.

[40]A great image, and highly improved from the original, "assueta nube."—Warton.The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,And at the Theban palace did alight.

[40]A great image, and highly improved from the original, "assueta nube."—Warton.

The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:

Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,And at the Theban palace did alight.

[41]"Ruptæque vices" in the original, which Pope translates, "and all the ties of nature broke," but byvicesis indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles.—De Quincey.

[42]The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,—jurisque secundiAmbitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unumStare loco,—than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.—De Quincey.

[42]The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,—

jurisque secundiAmbitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unumStare loco,—

than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.—De Quincey.

[43]"Bound" is an improper verb as applied to "steers"; besides the simile is not exactly understood. There is nothing about "reins" or "bounding" in the original. What is meant is that the steers do not draw even. Pope confounded the image of the young bullocks with that of a horse, and he therefore introduces "reins" and "bounding."—Bowles.

[44]For "armour wait," the first edition had "arms did wait."

[45]"Charger" is used in its old sense of a dish.

[46]Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,—a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,—and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.

[47]In the first edition,Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.

[47]In the first edition,

Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.

Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.

[48]Pope borrowed from the translation of Stephens:How wast thou lostIn thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when allAbout thee were thy slaves.

[48]Pope borrowed from the translation of Stephens:

How wast thou lostIn thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when allAbout thee were thy slaves.

[49]It should be "discontented."—Warton.

[50]This couplet was interpolated by Pope and seems to have been suggested by his hostility to the revolution of 1688. Nor does Statius call the populace "vile," or say that they are always "discontented," or that they are "still prone to change, though still the slaves of state." Neither does he say that they "are sure to hate the monarch, they have," but he says that their custom is to love his successor, which is a sentiment more in accordance with experience.

[51]"Exiled" because the king who was not reigning had to leave the country during his brother's year of power.

[52]The warriors who were the produce of the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus fought among themselves till only five were left.

[53]"Unrivalled," as the context shows, is not here a term of commendation, but merely signifies that the monarch had no equal in rank or power.

[54]"Placido quatiens tamen omnia vultu," is the common reading. I believe it should be "nutu," with reference to the word "quatiens."—Pope.

[55]Pope was manifestly unable to extract any sense from the original. It is there said that Jupiter at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but that the other gods did not presume to sit down "protinus," that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. In Pope's translation, the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities.—De Quincey.De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:AnonHe sets him down on his bespangled throne.The rest stand and expect: not one presumedTo sit till leave was beckoned.

De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:

AnonHe sets him down on his bespangled throne.The rest stand and expect: not one presumedTo sit till leave was beckoned.

[56]The winds would have been inconvenient members of a deliberative assembly if they had taken to howling, whistling, and sighing. Nevertheless their propensity to blow was so inveterate that, in Statius, they are only kept quiet by their fear of Jove.

[57]Our author is perpetually grasping at the wonderful and the vast, but most frequently falls gradually from the terrible to the contemptible.—Warton.By "our author" Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the "eluded rage of Jove,"—an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.

[57]Our author is perpetually grasping at the wonderful and the vast, but most frequently falls gradually from the terrible to the contemptible.—Warton.

By "our author" Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the "eluded rage of Jove,"—an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.

[58]Hiera, one of the Æolian islands in the neighbourhood of Sicily, was supposed to be the workshop of Vulcan. The island was volcanic, and the underground noises were ascribed to Vulcan, and his assistants, the Cyclopes, as they plied their trade. The circumstance that the fires of the Æolian forge were exhausted was doubtless introduced by Statius because in his day the eruptions had ceased in Hiera.

[59]Agave, the daughter of Cadmus. Her son Pentheus appeared among the women who were celebrating the Bacchic revelries on Mount Cithæron, and his mother, mistaking him in her frenzy for a wild beast, like a wild beast tore him to pieces.

[60]There is no mention of "the direful banquet" in the original. "The savage hunter" alludes to Athamas chasing and slaying his son under the delusion that he was a lion.

[61]The king of Argos.

[62]Tantalus, king of Argos, invited the gods to a banquet, and served up the boiled flesh of his own son, Pelops.

[63]Phoroneus was commonly reputed to have been the founder of the city of Argos.

[64]Juno employed Argus to keep guard over Io, transformed by Jupiter into a cow. Mercury, being sent by Jupiter to rescue Io, lulled Argus to sleep by melodious airs on the flute, and then cut off his head.

[65]An oracle announced to Acrisius, king of Argos, that he would die by the hands of his grandson. The king endeavoured to escape his fate by imprisoning his daughter, Danae, in a brazen tower, but Jupiter obtained access to her in the shape of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, who fulfilled the prediction, according to the established legendary usage.

[66]The force of this taunt is weakened in Pope's translation by the change from the second person to the third, as though the invectives of Juno had not been addressed to Jupiter himself.

[67]Jupiter visited Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, in all the majesty of the thunderer, and she was consumed by the lightning.

[68]Homer makes Juno say that there are three cities pre-eminently dear to her—Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ. Samos had no less title to the distinction. It was one of the localities which contended for the renown of having given her birth, and was, with Argos, the principal seat of her worship. Virgil ranks Samos second among the places she delighted to honour.

[69]The river Alpheus, which takes its rise in Arcadia, loses itself underground in parts of its course, and again reappears. This suggested the fiction that it ran in a subterranean channel, below the bottom of the sea, to the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily, where it once more emerged to day. Pope had less regard to the text of Statius than to Dryden's translation of Virgil's lines on the same legend in Ecl. x. 5:So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.

So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.

[70]The Arcadians celebrated the worship of Jupiter with human sacrifices.

[71]He was king of Pisa in Elis, where was the celebrated Olympia, with its temple of Jupiter. Œnomaus had ascertained from an oracle that he would perish by the agency of his son-in-law, and he was anxious, in self-defence, to keep his daughter, Hippodamia, from marrying. As he possessed the swiftest horses in the world he required her suitors to contend with him in a chariot-race, which allowed them no chance of success. The prize of victory was to be his daughter; the penalty of defeat was death, and the bones which laid unburied in the neighbourhood of Jupiter's temple were those of the lovers of Hippodamia.

[72]The Cretans claimed to possess both the birth-place and burial-place of Jupiter.

[73]"Derived from Jove," inasmuch as Perseus, one of the kings of Argos, was the son of Jupiter and Danae.

[74]Eteocles and Polynices.—Pope.

[75]Mercury, so called because he was born upon Mount Cyllene.

[76]Eteocles.

[77]Stephens's translation:This were such a dayHe'd spend an age to see 't.

[77]Stephens's translation:

This were such a dayHe'd spend an age to see 't.

[78]To Argos, of which Danaus had been king, whence the Argives were also called Danai.

[79]Atreus, king of Mycenæ, murdered the two sons of his brother Thyestes, and feasted their father with dishes made of their flesh.

[80]Bacchus forced the Theban women to assemble, and give loose to the wild rites by which he was celebrated. It was on this occasion that Pentheus was massacred by his mother.

[81]Nisus was king of Megara when it was besieged by Minos. The king's daughter, Scylla, conceived a passion for Minos, and to ensure him the victory she plucked from her father's head a purple hair upon which depended the preservation of himself and the city.

[82]Statius says that when Polynices was in the middle of the isthmus of Corinth he could hear the waves beat against both its shores. "This," remarked Pope, "could hardly be; for the isthmus of Corinth is full five miles over," and he calls the introduction of the circumstance "a geographical error." It was his own geography that was at fault. The width of the isthmus is only three miles and a half. Pope spoilt the incident when he transferred it to the Scironian rock. Sciron was a robber and murderer, who compelled his victims to wash his feet upon the cliff, and while they were engaged in the operation he kicked them over into the sea.

[83]"We have scarcely in our language eight more beautiful lines than these, down to human care," ver. 481.—Warton.

[84]Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens:The silent world does viewHer airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.

[84]Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens:

The silent world does viewHer airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.

[85]He again borrowed from Stephens:And nodding through the air brings down in hasteA sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.

[85]He again borrowed from Stephens:

And nodding through the air brings down in hasteA sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.

[86]A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,—"rolls a deluge on."—Warton.He copied Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 638:As when the winds their airy quarrel try.He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565:Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,Contending for the kingdom of the sky.

[86]A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,—"rolls a deluge on."—Warton.

He copied Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 638:

As when the winds their airy quarrel try.

He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, Æn. ii. 565:

Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,Contending for the kingdom of the sky.

[87]"Showers" is an inappropriate word to denote the deluge of rain which flooded the earth, and "swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main."

[88]The Inachus, and the Erasinus were rivers in the plain of Argos.

[89]The waters of the Lerna were infected by the venom from the serpent Hydra, which Hercules slew.

[90]The storm, by blowing down trees or branches, made an opening in the dense foliage through which the sun had never penetrated.

[91]In the first edition:The prince with wonder did the waste behold,While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.

[91]In the first edition:

The prince with wonder did the waste behold,While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.

[92]Dryden's Virg. Æn. ii. 413:The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from farThe wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war.

[92]Dryden's Virg. Æn. ii. 413:

The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from farThe wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war.

[93]Dryden's Virg. Geor. i. 652:Bore houses, herds, and lab'ring hinds away.

[93]Dryden's Virg. Geor. i. 652:

Bore houses, herds, and lab'ring hinds away.

[94]Statius represents Polynices as terrified by the tempest. Pope appears to have thought that this was derogatory to the character of the fugitive king, and he calls him, when gazing on the ravages caused by the storm, "the intrepid Theban," which conveys the impression that he was undaunted by the spectacle. In the same spirit Pope at ver. 527, has the line, "Thus still hiscouragewith his toils increased," where the original says that the stimulus which urged him on was fear. But while Pope has obliterated the alarm which was generated by the tempest he has introduced in its place an alarm which had no existence. In the midst of the havoc worked by the elements the recollection of his brother "wings the feet" of the intrepid Theban "with fears," though he is beyond his brother's reach, and has no suspicion at present that he designs to break the compact to reign alternately. The influence which the remembrance of Eteocles exercised over the mind of the wanderer is expressly distinguished by Statius from the fear, and means no more than that since Polynices was an exile from Thebes, he was compelled to proceed onwards till he could find an asylum in another state.

[95]A mountain on which stood the citadel of Argos.

[96]The temple at Prosymna was dedicated to Juno.

[97]Pope took the expression from Dryden, Virg. Æn. vii. 79:One only daughter heired the royal state.And ver. 367:Only one daughter heirs my crown and state.

[97]Pope took the expression from Dryden, Virg. Æn. vii. 79:

One only daughter heired the royal state.

And ver. 367:

Only one daughter heirs my crown and state.

[98]Strictly his sons-in-law.

[99]That is, he ordained that the oracles should be incapable of interpretation before it was fulfilled.

[100]Calydon, of which his father Œneus was king.

[101]The mode in which the two fugitives became known to the king and gained admission to the palace, is not told by Pope, who has left upwards of seventy lines untranslated, and by the mutilation rendered the incidents improbable. Polynices reaches the palace first and lies down, worn out, on the pavement of the vestibule. Tydeus arrives at the same spot, and Polynices is unwilling that he should share the shelter. A quarrel ensues, and from words they proceed to blows. The king is disturbed by the uproar; he issues forth from the palace with attendants and torches to ascertain the cause; explanations follow, and these result in Tydeus and Polynices becoming the guests of Adrastus. "There is an odd account," Pope says to Cromwell, "of an unmannerly battle at fisty-cuffs between the two Princes on a very slight occasion, and at a time when, one would think, the fatigue of their journey, in so tempestuous a night, might have rendered them very unfit for such a scuffle. This I had actually translated, but was very ill satisfied with it, even in my own words, to which an author cannot but be partial enough of conscience."

[102]Before the victory of Hercules over the Nemean lion, he is said by Statius to have worn the skin of a lion which he slew in the neighbourhood of Mount Temessus.

[103]"Horror" at the thought of the dreadful forebodings which had been suggested by the literal language of the oracle; "glad" because of the manner in which the prediction was verified. Jortin, in a note on another passage of the Thebais, says, "Statius could not help falling into his beloved fault of joining contraries together. He is too apt to seek this opposition in his words. He never indeed misses this favourite figure when he can bring it in."

[104]"Firm" for confirm was sanctioned by the frequent example of Dryden, from whose translation of Virg. Æn. viii. 107, Pope has borrowed the entire couplet:But oh! be present to thy people's aid,And firm the gracious promise thou hast made.

[104]"Firm" for confirm was sanctioned by the frequent example of Dryden, from whose translation of Virg. Æn. viii. 107, Pope has borrowed the entire couplet:

But oh! be present to thy people's aid,And firm the gracious promise thou hast made.

[105]In the first edition this verse was an Alexandrine, ending with "and wake the sleeping fires," which Pope took from Dryden, Virg. Æn. viii, 720:And on his altars waked the sleeping fires.

[105]In the first edition this verse was an Alexandrine, ending with "and wake the sleeping fires," which Pope took from Dryden, Virg. Æn. viii, 720:

And on his altars waked the sleeping fires.

[106]"Fry" was the reading of all the editions till that of 1736, when "fly" was substituted by an evident error of the press, and has been retained ever since.

[107]"Tutress" in the first edition. Acestis had been the nurse, and was now the duenna of the two daughters of Adrastus.

[108]The gorgon, Medusa, changed every one who saw her to stone. Perseus avoided the penalty by only looking at her reflection in a mirror as he cut off her head while she slept. Being the grandson of a king of Argos he was an Argive hero, whence his triumph was engraved upon the royal goblet. The artist had selected the moment when Perseus is darting into the air with the head of the gorgon, which, newly separated from the body, still retained the traces of expiring life.

[109]On account of the beauty of Ganymede, Jove sent an eagle to convey him from the earth to the habitations of the gods. There he was appointed cup-bearer, which rendered the incident appropriate to a drinking-vessel.

[110]He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem—atris—terentem—nigro—centum per jugera,—all of them picturesque epithets.—Warton.Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.

[110]He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem—atris—terentem—nigro—centum per jugera,—all of them picturesque epithets.—Warton.

Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.

[111]The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.

[112]Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:earth prepares thy roomGarnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched aboveWith oaken leaves close woven; whilst the groveLends bark to make thy garments.

[112]Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:

earth prepares thy roomGarnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched aboveWith oaken leaves close woven; whilst the groveLends bark to make thy garments.

[113]Much superior to the original.—Warton.

[114]Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi.And calls the furies from the depth of hell.

[114]Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi.

And calls the furies from the depth of hell.

[115]Pope copied Stephens:devouring someWith rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes,And fats herself with public miseries.

[115]Pope copied Stephens:

devouring someWith rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes,And fats herself with public miseries.

[116]Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.

[117]Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with classical: in the original it is "ense metit;"—"mowswith hissword." Pope has introduced a "scythe," to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.—Bowles.

[118]Chorœbus.

[119]Statius states that Chorœbus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being "unwilling," by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Chorœbus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Chorœbus the "sad boon of life" out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Chorœbus would have preferred to die.

[120]Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.—Warton.

[121]Apollo was specially worshipped by the Lycians.

[122]The celebrated fountain sacred to Apollo on Parnassus.

[123]Apollo was surnamed the Cynthian, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, which was the place of his birth, and the most revered of all the localities set apart for his worship. The island, which had previously floated over the ocean, was, according to one version of the legend, rendered stationary by Jupiter when Apollo was born; according to another version, it was subsequently fixed by Apollo himself.

[124]The walls of Troy were the work of Apollo and Neptune.

[125]In the first edition it wasThou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.

[125]In the first edition it was

Thou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.

[126]The Phrygian was Marsyas, who contended on the flute against Apollo with his lyre. When the umpires decided in favour of the god, he flayed Marsyas for his presumption.

[127]Tityus assaulted the mother of Apollo, and her son shot the offender.

[128]Niobe, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, thought herself superior to Latona, who had only one son, and one daughter,—Apollo and Diana. These divinities, in revenge, destroyed the fourteen children of Niobe.

[129]In the first edition:He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try,But dreads the mould'ring rock that trembles from on high.Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circumstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil's description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression "mould'ring rock" is taken from Dryden's translation of the passage, Æn. vi. 816:High o'er their heads a mould'ring rock is placedThat promises a fall, and shakes at ev'ry blast.The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason assigned by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.

[129]In the first edition:

He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try,But dreads the mould'ring rock that trembles from on high.

Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circumstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil's description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression "mould'ring rock" is taken from Dryden's translation of the passage, Æn. vi. 816:

High o'er their heads a mould'ring rock is placedThat promises a fall, and shakes at ev'ry blast.

The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason assigned by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.

[130]After Apollo, in the later mythology, had been identified with the sun, all the names personifying the sun, of which Titan was one, became applicable to Apollo.

[131]Diodorus maintained that the Osiris of the Egyptians was their god of the sun, and Statius has adopted this erroneous view. According to the statement of Herodotus, Osiris answered to the Grecian Bacchus, and there is little doubt that the old historian was right.

[132]Mithras was the Persian god of the sun. He was worshipped in caves, or, as Pope has it, in "hollow rocks," because the spherical form of the cave symbolised the universe, of which Mithras was the maker. The "blaze of light which adorns his head" in Pope's version, makes no part of the description in the original. The final line is explained by several ancient works of art, in which a man, wearing a Phrygian cap, is depicted cutting the throat of a bull he has flung to the ground. The man is said by an old scholiast on Statius to typify the sun, the bull the moon, and the intention, he states, is to represent the superiority of the sun over the moon. Statius speaks of the bull as indignant at being compelled to follow Mithras,—an idea which suits ill with the tranquil aspect of the moon as it floats through the heavens.

Great is the change in passing from Statius to Ovid; from force to facility of style; from thoughts and images which are too much studied and unnatural to such as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Ovid seems to have had the merit of inventing this beautiful species of writing epistles under feigned names. It is a high improvement on the Greek elegy, to which its dramatic form renders it much superior. The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced, just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments, and the most sudden, and violent turns of passion to be displayed. Ovid may perhaps be blamed for a sameness of subjects in these epistles of his heroines; and his epistles are likewise too long, which circumstance has forced him into a repetition and languor in the sentiments. On the whole the epistle before us is translated by Pope with faithfulness and with elegance, and much excels any Dryden translated in the volume he published, several of which were done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease,"—that is, Sir C. Scrope, Caryll, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. Lord Somers translated Dido to Æneas, and Ariadne to Theseus. Though I regret the hours our poet spent in translating Ovid and Statius, yet it has given us an opportunity of admiring his good sense and judgment, in not suffering his taste and style, in his succeeding works, to be infected with the faults of these two writers.—Warton.

Warton says, "The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced at such a period of time as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments." How beautifully is this displayed in Pope's Epistle to Abelard, a poem that has another most interesting circumstance, which Ovid appears, as well as our Drayton, to have neglected,—I mean the introduction of appropriate and descriptive imagery, which relieves and recreates the fancy by the pictures, and by the landscapes which accompany the characters. Ovid, in this Epistle, seems not insensible to the effect of the introduction of such scenes; and the Leucadian rock, theantra nemusque, the aquatic lotus, the sacred pellucid fountain, and particularly the genius of the place, the Naiad, addressing the despairing Sappho (which circumstance Pope has beautifully imitated and improved in Eloisa), are in the genuine spirit of poetical taste. Dr. Warton observes that this translation is superior to any of Dryden's. If, indeed, we compare Pope's translationswith those of any other writer, their superiority must be strikingly apparent. There is a finish in them, a correctness, a natural flow, and a tone of originality, added to a wonderful propriety and beauty of expression and language. If he ever fails, it is where he generalises too much. This is particularly objectionable, where in the original there is any marked, distinct, and beautiful picture. So, ver. 253, Pope only says,

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