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.]

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

[Footnote 8: From the translation of Stephens:

The time may come when a divinor rage.]

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

funeral flames
Divided, 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.]

[Footnote 10: Stephens's translation:

When Dirce blushed, being stained with Grecian blood.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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, Parthenopaeus, and Capaneus.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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
cha