Omnibus endo locis ingens apparet imago
Tristitia.
Sorrow, a giant form, uprears the head
In every place.
This is adopted by Grævius and Robinson. In like manner φως its opposite, light, is often used for χαρα, joy: as appears in the oriental style of scripture. But they have omitted to notice that this is a specific sorrow: for what connexion have these horrible symptoms with sorrow in general? I conceive that the prosopopœia describes the misery attendant on war: and especially in a city besieged, with its usual accompaniments of famine, blood, and tears, and the dust or ashes of mourning. Longinus selects the line “an ichor from her nostrils flowed,” as an instance of the false sublime; and compares it with Homer’s verse on Discord,
Treading on earth, her forehead touches heaven.
This is to compare two things totally unlike: why should an image of exhaustion and disease be thought to aim at sublimity? The objection of Longinus that it tends to excite disgust rather than terror is nugatory. The poet did not intend to excite terror, but horror: that kind of horror which arises from the contemplation of physical suffering.
[263] A well-tower’d city.] Homer, Il. book xviii. Shield of Achilles:
Two splendid cities also there he form’d
Such as men build: in one were to be seen