Compare the beautiful passage on the Greek mythology in Wordsworth’s Excursion, Book IV.
“O Jove, be thou mine aid.”
Of the high functions which belong to the supreme god of the Greeks, that of avenger is not the least notable, and is alluded to with special frequency in the Odyssey, of which poem, retribution in this life for wicked works is the great moral—whence the frequent line—
ἀι κε πόθι Ζεὺς δῶσι παλίντιτα ἔργα γενέσθαι.
“And my cheeks, that herald sorrow.”
“As these violent manifestations of grief were forbidden by Solon (Plut. 21), we are to look upon them in this place as peculiarly characteristic of the foreign captive maidens who compose the chorus”—Kl.; though the epithet of ἄμφιδρυφὴς ἄλοχος applied to the wife of Protesilaus by Homer (Il. ii. 700, xi. 393), shows that, in the heroic times, at least, the expression of sorrow was almost as violent on the west as on the east side of the Hellespont.
“And now fear rules.”