Dryden's Virgil, i. 670

167 The manner in which this episode is introduced, is well illustrated
by the following remarks of Mure, vol. i. p.298: "The poet's method
of introducing his episode, also, illustrates in a curious manner
his tact in the dramatic department of his art. Where, for example,
one or more heroes are despatched on some commission, to be executed
at a certain distance of time or place, the fulfilment of this task
is not, as a general rule, immediately described. A certain interval
is allowed them for reaching the appointed scene of action, which
interval is dramatised, as it were, either by a temporary
continuation of the previous narrative, or by fixing attention for a
while on some new transaction, at the close of which the further
account of the mission is resumed."

168 --_With tablets sealed._ These probably were only devices of a
hieroglyphical character. Whether writing was known in the Homeric
times is utterly uncertain. See Grote, vol ii. p. 192, sqq.

169 --_Solymaean crew,_ a people of Lycia.

170 From this "melancholy madness" of Bellerophon, hypochondria received
the name of "Morbus Bellerophonteus." See my notes in my prose
translation, p. 112. The "Aleian field," _i.e._ "the plain of
wandering," was situated between the rivers Pyramus and Pinarus, in
Cilicia.

171 --_His own, of gold._ This bad bargain has passed into a common
proverb. See Aulus Gellius, ii, 23.

172 --_Scaean, i e._ left hand.

173 --_In fifty chambers._

"The fifty nuptial beds, (such hopes had he,
So large a promise of a progeny,)
The ports of plated gold, and hung with spoils."

Dryden's Virgil, ii.658

174 --_O would kind earth,_ &c. "It is apparently a sudden, irregular
burst of popular indignation to which Hector alludes, when he
regrets that the Trojans had not spirit enough to cover Paris with a
mantle of stones. This, however, was also one of the ordinary formal
modes of punishment for great public offences. It may have been
originally connected with the same feeling--the desire of avoiding
the pollution of bloodshed--which seems to have suggested the
practice of burying prisoners alive, with a scantling of food by
their side. Though Homer makes no menti