Observation, both close and sympathetic, assuredly dictated the brilliant lines in which Paris, issuing from the Scæan gate, is compared to a courser breaking loose from confinement to disport himself in the open.
As some proud steed, at well-fill’d manger fed,
His halter broken, neighing, scours the plain,
And revels in the widely-flowing stream
To bathe his sides; then tossing high his head,
While o’er his shoulders streams his ample mane,
Light borne on active limbs, in conscious pride,
To the wide pastures of the mares he flies.[[133]]
The simile, less happily appropriated to Hector, is repeated in a subsequent part of the poem;[[134]] and it was by Virgil transferred bodily to the Eleventh Æneid, where it serves to adorn Turnus, the wearer of many borrowed Iliadic plumes. They, however, it must be admitted, make a splendid show in their new setting.
[133]. Iliad, vi. 506-11 (Lord Derby’s trans.).