“How beautiful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!”
Mitchell, in a note on the metaphors of Æschylus (Aristoph. Ran. 871), mentions this as being one of those tropes, where the high-vaulting tragedian has jerked himself over from the sublime into the closely-bordering territory of the ridiculous; but neither here nor in διαδρομᾶν (ο)μαίμονες, which he quarrels with, is there anything offensive to the laws of good taste. It sounds, indeed, a little queer to translate literally, Rapine near akin to running hither and thither; but, as a matter of plain fact, it is true that, when in the confusion of the taking of a city, men run hither and thither, rapine is the result. In my version, Plunder, daughter of Confusion ([p. 272] above), expresses the idea intelligibly enough, I hope, to an English ear.
“Round its hollow belly was embossed
A ring of knotted snakes.”
The old Argolic shield, round as the sun—
“Argolici clypei aut Phœbæœ lampadis instar.”
See Dict. Antiq. Clypeus. The kind described in the text finds its modern counterpart in those hollow Burmese shields often found in our museums, only larger.