In the second, 16 long syllables to 22 short.
In the third, 11 long syllables to 10 short.
He has imparted much of the same glowing movement to the speech, which in the Nineteenth Iliad is assigned to the Immortal horses of Achilles; though the subject includes a reference to the death of their master[766]. In nearly every line, throughout the passage, that relates to their own motion, the number of dactyls is at the maximum, and in the ten lines there are eighty-six short syllables to sixty long ones; a proportion, which I doubt our finding elsewhere in Homer, except it be among the similes, to which Homer seems in many cases to give a peculiarly elastic prosodial movement.
Rhesus, king of the Thracians, who arrives at Troy after the commencement of the Wrath, becomes sufficiently distinguished for the central point of interest in the Doloneia, by virtue chiefly of his horses. They are the most beautiful, says Dolon, and the largest that I have ever seen[767];
λευκότεροι χιόνος, θείειν δ’ ἀνέμοισιν ὁμοῖοι.
The justice of this panegyric is corroborated by the emphatic expression of Nestor, who pronounces them,
αἰνῶς ἀκτίνεσσιν ἐοικότες ἠελίοιο·
and their unparalleled excellence forms the subject of the speech of the old king, on the return of Ulysses and Diomed to the camp[768].
It is not only, however, in elaborate pictures that Homer shows his feeling for horses, but also, and not less markedly, in minor touches. Does he not speak with the manifest feeling of a skilled admirer of the animal, when he describes the pair driven by Eumelus, rapid as birds, the same in shade of colour, the same in years, the same to a hair’s breadth in height across their backs[769]?
ποδώκεας, ὄρνιθας ὣς,