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126 summons his brother-river Simois to his aid, Vulcan sends flames that scorch all the river-banks, consuming the trees and shrubs that clothe them, and threatening to dry up the very streams themselves. The river yields, and retires to his banks, leaving Achilles free to pursue his victories. He drives the Trojans inside their walls, and but that Apollo guards the gates, would have entered the city in hot pursuit. Hector alone remains without—his doom is upon him.

The gods, meanwhile, have entered the field of battle on their own account, and contributed, as before, a ludicrous element to the action of the poem. Minerva fells Mars the war-god to the ground with a huge mass of rock, an ancient landmark, which she hurls against him; and he lies covering "above seven hundred feet," till Venus comes to his aid to lead him from the field, when the terrible goddess strikes her to the earth beside him. Juno shows the strength of those "white arms" which the poet always assigns to her, by a terrible buffet which she bestows, for no particular reason apparently, upon Diana, who drops her bow and loses her arrows, and flies weeping to her father Jupiter. He, for his part, has been watching the quarrels of his court and family with a dignified amusement;—

Those philosophers who see a moral allegory in the whole of the Homeric story, have supplied us with a key to the conduct and feelings of Jupiter during this curious combat. "Jupiter, as the lord of nature, is well pleased with the war of the gods—that is, of earth, sea, air, &c.—because the harmony of all beings