The time may come when a divinor rage.]
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Footnote 9: Pope is closer to Stephens than to the original: funeral flamesDivided, 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 ofEteocles, 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 theother, and they afterwards united in a common stream. Both were merewatercourses, which were only filled by the rains of winter.] [Footnote 12: The Thebans are subsequently represented by Statius asdriven into the Ismenus by the Greeks, and the hosts which were killedor drowned were carried by the river into the sea.] [Footnote 13: What hero, that is, of the famous seven who went upagainst Thebes to dispossess Eteocles for violating the compact to reignalternately with Polynices. The five persons whom Statius enumerates asjoining 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 javelinhurled by Menalippus, he gathered up his failing strength, and flung adart by which he mortally wounded Menalippus in turn. Full of revengefulspite 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 condemnedas exceeding the recognised latitude of hate.] [Footnote 15: The prophet was Amphiaraus, who predicted that all whotook part in the expedition, except Adrastus, would be destroyed. Theearth opened while Amphiaraus was fighting, and swallowed up him and hischariot. Statius paints him sinking calmly into the yawning gulf,without dropping his weapons or the reins, and with his eyes fixed onthe heavens.] [Footnote 16: Hippomedon is made by Statius the hero of the conflict inthe river Ismenus, where he at last succumbs to the god of the river.The piles of dead formed a dike, which turned back the waters.] [Footnote 17: Parthenopaeus.--POPE.] [Footnote 18: He declared that Jupiter himself should not keep him fromascending the walls of Thebes. Jupiter punished his defiance by settinghim on fire with lightning on the scaling ladder, and he was burnt todeath.] [Footnote 19: Oedipus did not strike his wounds. He struck the ground,which was the usage in invoking the infernal deities, since theirkingdom was in the bowels of the earth.] [Footnote 20: One of the three principal furies or avengers of crime,who inhabited the world of condemned spirits.] [Footnote 21: The great difference between raising horror and terror isperceived and felt from the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks ofthe dreadful incest of Oedipus, and from the manner in which Statiushas enlarged and dwelt upon it, in which he has been very unnaturallyand injudiciously imitated by Dryden and Lee, who introduce this mostunfortunate prince not only describing but arguing on the dreadful crimehe had committed.--WARTON.] [Footnote 22: Laius, king of Thebes, warned by the oracle that he wouldbe killed by his own offspring, exposed his son Oedipus on MountCithaeron. The infant was found by a shepherd, and carried to Polybus,king of Corinth, who adopted him. Arrived at man's estate, he too wasinformed by the oracle that he would take the life of his father, andcommit incest with his mother. Believing that the king and queen whobrought him up were his parents, he determined not to go back toCorinth, and in attempting to avert his destiny, he fulfilled it. As hejourneyed towards Thebes he met his real father, Laius, and slew him ina conflict which grew out of a dispute with his charioteer.] [Footnote 23: Or the temple at Delphi, where Oedipus went to consultthe oracle.] [Footnote 24: The Sphinx sat upon a rock near Thebes propounding ariddle to every one who passed by, and destroying all who were unable toexplain it. The Thebans proclaimed that whoever would rid the kingdom ofthis scourge should marry the widow of Laius, and succeed to the vacantthrone. Oedipus, by solving the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commitsuicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified theremainder of the oracle.] [Footnote 25: Oedipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully,instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are sosuited to his condition.--WARTON.] [Footnote 26: In the first edition he had written
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