The august Juno hastening flew through the air,
And came to high Olympus."
His scenery is always true, and not invented. He does not leap in
imagination from Asia to Greece, through mid air,
for there are very many
Shady mountains and resounding seas between.
If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles, we do not
wonder how they got there, but accompany them step by step along
the shore of the resounding sea. Nestor's account of the march
of the Pylians against the Epeians is extremely lifelike: -
"Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator
of the Pylians,
And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue."
This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone: "A certain
river, Minyas by name, leaps seaward near to Arene, where we
Pylians wait the dawn, both horse and foot. Thence with all
haste we sped us on the morrow ere 't was noonday, accoutred for
the fight, even to Alpheus's sacred source," &c. We fancy that
we hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas discharging its
waters into the main the livelong night, and the hollow sound of
the waves breaking on the shore, - until at length we are cheered
at the close of a toilsome march by the gurgling fountains of
Alpheus.
