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[258] “This legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned subjugator of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellenes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead, and receives in marriage Hebe.”—Grote, vol. i. p. 128.

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[257] Coleridge (Greek Classic Poets, p. 182, seq.) has diligently compared this with the description of the shield of Hercules by Hesiod. He remarks that, “with two or three exceptions, the imagery differs in little more than the names and arrangements; and the difference of arrangement in the Shield of Hercules is altogether for the worse. The natural consecution of the Homeric images needs no exposition: it constitutes in itself one of the beauties of the work. The Hesiodic images are huddled together without connection or congruity: Mars and Pallas are awkwardly introduced among the Centaurs and Lapithae;— but the gap is wide indeed between them and Apollo with the Muses, waking the echoes of Olympus to celestial harmonies; whence however, we are hurried back to Perseus, the Gorgons, and other images of war, over an arm of the sea, in which the sporting dolphins, the fugitive fishes, and the fisherman on the shore with his casting net, are minutely represented. As to the Hesiodic images themselves, the leading remark is, that they catch at beauty by ornament, and at sublimity by exaggeration; and upon the untenable supposition of the genuineness of this poem, there is this curious peculiarity, that, in the description of scenes of rustic peace, the superiority of Homer is decisive—while in those of war and tumult it may be thought, perhaps, that the Hesiodic poet has more than once the advantage.”

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“Here was a corn field; reapers in a row, Each with a sharp-tooth’d sickle in his hand, Work’d busily, and, as the harvest fell, Others were ready still to bind the sheaves: Yoked to a wain that bore the corn away The steers were moving; sturdy bullocks here The plough were drawing, and the furrow’d glebe Was black behind them, while with goading wand The active youths impell’d them. Here a feast Was graved: to the shrill pipe and ringing lyre A band of blooming virgins led the dance. As if endued with life.” —Dyce’s Calaber.

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The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table, where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring out the coffee, in so close a confederacy, that there was not a single vacancy near her which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen’s approaching, one of the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper,--

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“And here Were horrid wars depicted; grimly pale Were heroes lying with their slaughter’d steeds Upon the ground incarnadin’d with blood. Stern stalked Bellona, smear’d with reeking gore, Through charging ranks; beside her Rout was seen, And Terror, Discord to the fatal strife Inciting men, and Furies breathing flames: Nor absent were the Fates, and the tall shape Of ghastly Death, round whom did Battles throng, Their limbs distilling plenteous blood and sweat; And Gorgons, whose long locks were twisting snakes. That shot their forky tongues incessant forth. Such were the horrors of dire war.”

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[254] On seats of stone. “Several of the old northern Sagas represent the old men assembled for the purpose of judging as sitting on great stones, in a circle called the Urtheilsring or gerichtsring”— Grote, ii. p. 100, note. On the independence of the judicial office in The heroic times, see Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. p. 166.

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“In the wide circle of the shield were seen Refulgent images of various forms, The work of Vulcan; who had there described The heaven, the ether, and the earth and sea, The winds, the clouds, the moon, the sun, apart In different stations; and you there might view The stars that gem the still-revolving heaven, And, under them, the vast expanse of air, In which, with outstretch’d wings, the long-beak’d bird Winnow’d the gale, as if instinct with life. Around the shield the waves of ocean flow’d, The realms of Tethys, which unnumber’d streams, In azure mazes rolling o’er the earth, Seem’d to augment.”

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