Book XIX
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[Brave men are great weepers—was a proverbial saying in Greece. Accordingly there are few of Homer’s heroes who do not weep plenteously on occasion. True courage is doubtless compatible with the utmost sensibility. See Villoisson.]—Tr.
The fear with which the divine armor filled the Myrmidons, and the exaltation of Achilles, the terrible gleam of his eye, and his increased desire for revenge, are highly poetical.—Felton.
The ancients had a great horror of putrefaction previous to interment.
[Achilles in the first book also summons a council himself, and not as was customary, by a herald. It seems a stroke of character, and intended by the poet to express the impetuosity of his spirit, too ardent for the observance of common forms, and that could trust no one for the dispatch he wanted.]—Tr.
['Ασπασιως γονυ καμψειν.—Shall be glad to bend their knee, i.e. to sit and repose themselves.]—Tr.
[Τουτον μυθον.—He seems to intend the reproaches sounded in his ear from all quarters, and which he had repeatedly heard before.]—Tr.
[By some call’d Antibia, by others, Nicippe.]—Tr.
It was unlawful to eat the flesh of victims that were sacrificed in confirmation of oaths. Such were victims of malediction.
Nothing can be more natural than the representation of these unhappy young women; who, weary of captivity, take occasion from every mournful occurrence to weep afresh, though in reality little interested in the objects that call forth these expressions of sorrow.—Dacier.
Son of Deidameia, daughter of Lycomedes, in whose house Achilles was concealed at the time when he was led forth to the war.
[We are not warranted in accounting any practice unnatural or absurd, merely because it does not obtain among ourselves. I know not that any historian has recorded this custom of the Grecians, but that it was a custom among them occasionally to harangue their horses, we may assure ourselves on the authority of Homer, who would not have introduced such speeches, if they could have appeared as strange to his countrymen as they do to us.]—Tr.
Hence it seems, that too great an insight into futurity, or the revelation of more than was expedient, was prevented by the Furies.—Trollope.
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