Sometimes roaring waters are used in the Bible as symbols of a battle cry, or of the tumult of an invading army. Thus we find in the eighth chapter of Isaiah the following description of the invasion of Palestine by the king of Assyria: “Behold, the Lord bringeth up upon thee the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks . . . he shall overflow and go over and shall reach even to the neck.” A similar metaphor is contained in the seventeenth book of the Iliad (263), which runs thus:—
Like a mountain billow that foams and raves,
Where some swoll'n river disembogues his waves;
Full in the mouth is stopp'd the rushing tide,
The boiling ocean works from side to side,
The river trembles to his utmost store,
And distant rocks re-bellow to the roar:
So fierce to the charge great Hector led the strong,
Whole Troy embodied rush'd with shouts along.
Metaphors of a similar kind are also now and again employed by Virgil, and once he uses both fire and the torrent at the same time as similes of uproar and destruction, which usually take place on the battlefield. The simile in question, which occurs in the Aeneid (xii. 760), reads thus:—