The God by sudden turns of fate
Can change the lowest with the loftiest state:
Eclipse of glory the diminish’d ray,
And lift obscurity to day.
Le Clerc conjectures this exordium to be the addition of one of the rhapsodists: of whom Pindar says, Nem. Od. 2.
Th’ Homeric bards, who wont to frame
A motley-woven verse,
Ere they the song rehearse,
Begin from Jove, and prelude with his name.
[28] The other elder rose.] Night is meant to be the mother of both the Strifes. Guietus remarks that ευφρονη is a term for night: from ευφρονεω, to be wise. She was the mother of wise designs, because favourable to meditation: the mother of good, therefore, as well as of evil. The good Strife is made the elder, because the evil one arose in the later and degenerate ages of mankind.