“As when a dull mill ass comes near a goodly field of corn,
Kept from the birds by children’s cries, the boys are overborne
By his insensible approach, and simply he will eat
About whom many wands are broke, and still the children beat,
And still the self-providing ass doth with their weakness bear,
Not stirring till his paunch be full, and scarcely then will steer.”[3]
Apollo, sweeping away the rampart of the Greeks, does it as easily as a boy, who has heaped a pile of sand upon the seashore in childish sport, in sport razes it with feet and hands. Achilles half pities, half chides, the imploring, weeping Patroclos, when he says,—
“Wherefore weeps my friend
So like a girl, who, though she sees her mother cannot tend
Her childish humors, hangs on her, and would be taken up,