Book III

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The scenes described in this book are exceedingly lifesome. The figures are animating and beautiful, and the mind of the reader is borne along with breathless interest over the sonorous verse.—Felton.

This is a striking simile, from its exactness in two points—the noise and the order. It has been supposed that the embattling of an army was first learned by observing the close order of the flight of these birds. The noise of the Trojans contrasts strongly with the silence of the Greeks. Plutarch remarks upon this distinction as a credit to the military discipline of the latter, and Homer would seem to have attached some importance to it, as he again alludes to the same thing.

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