is throne in terror, lest his loathsome dominions should be
laid open to mortals and immortals.--FELTON.

5. [The Leleges were a colony of Thessalians, and the first
inhabitants of the shores of the Hellespont.]--TR.

6. Hector was the son of Priam, who descended from Ilus, and AEneas the
son of Anchises, whose descent was from Assaracus, the brother of
Ilus.

7. This dialogue between Achilles and AEneas, when on the point of
battle, as well as several others of a similar description, have
been censured as improbable and impossible. The true explanation is
to be found in the peculiar character of war in the heroic age. A
similar passage has been the subject of remark.--FELTON.

8. [Some commentators, supposing the golden plate the outermost as the
most ornamental, have perplexed themselves much with this passage,
for how, say they, could two folds be pierced and the spear be
stopped by the gold, if the gold lay on the surface? But to avoid
the difficulty, we need only suppose that the gold was inserted
between the two plates of brass and the two of tin; Vulcan, in this
particular, having attended less to ornament than to security.

See the Scholiast in Villoisson, who argues at large in favor of
this opinion.]--TR.

9. Tmolus was a mountain of Lydia, and Hyda a city of the same
country. The Gygaean lake was also in Lydia.

10. [Neptune. So called, either because he was worshiped on Helicon, a
mountain of Boeotia, or from Helice, an island of Achaia, where he
had a temple.]--TR.

If the bull bellowed as he was led to the altar, it was considered
a favorable omen. Hence the simile.--FELTON.

11. [It is an amiable trait in the character of Hector, that his pity
in this instance supercedes his caution, and that at the sight of
his brother in circumstances so affecting, he becomes at once
inattentive to himself and the command of Apollo.]--TR.

Footnotes for Book XXI:
1. The scene is now entirely changed, and the battle diversified with
a vast variety of imagery and description. It is worthy of notice,
that though the whole war of the Iliad was upon the banks of these
rivers, yet Homer has reserved the machinery of the river-gods to
aggrandize his hero in this battle. There is no book in the poem
which exhibits greater force of imagination, none in which the
inexhaustible invention of the poet is more powerfully exerted.