The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:
Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,
And at the Theban palace did alight.
[41] "Ruptæque vices" in the original, which Pope translates, "and all the ties of nature broke," but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles.—De Quincey.
[42] The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,—
jurisque secundi
Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum
Stare loco,—
than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.—De Quincey.
[43] "Bound" is an improper verb as applied to "steers"; besides the simile is not exactly understood. There is nothing about "reins" or "bounding" in the original. What is meant is that the steers do not draw even. Pope confounded the image of the young bullocks with that of a horse, and he therefore introduces "reins" and "bounding."—Bowles.
[44] For "armour wait," the first edition had "arms did wait."
[45] "Charger" is used in its old sense of a dish.
[46] Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,—a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,—and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.