Force of the term αἴζηος.
There is not a single passage, where this word is used with any indication of meaning youths as contra-distinguished from mature men. But there is a particular passage which precisely illustrates the meaning that has now been given to αἴζηος. In the Catalogue we are told that Hercules carried off Astyoche[79]:
πέρσας ἄστεα πολλὰ Διοτρεφέων αἰζηῶν.
Pope renders this in words which, whatever be their intrinsic merit, are, as a translation, at once diffuse and defective:
‘Where mighty towns in ruins spread the plain,
And saw their blooming warriors early slain.’
Cowper wholly omits the last half of the line, and says,
‘After full many a city laid in dust’....
Chapman, right as to the epithet, gives the erroneous meaning to the substantive: