καὶ Σιμόεις, ὅθι πολλὰ βοάγρια καὶ τρυφάλειαι
κάππεσον ἐν κονίῃσι.
Again, Scamander is personified as the god Xanthus, and plays a great part in the action: Simois is not personified at all. Scamander is δῖος, διοτρεφὴς and much besides: Simois has no epithets. Simoeisius is the son of Anthemion, a person of secondary account; but Scamandrius is the name given by Hector to his boy. Simois, for all we know, may have been either a dry bed, or little better than a rivulet; but armed men are thrown into Scamander, and whirled by him to the sea. Lastly, the plain where the Greek army was reviewed is λειμὼν Σκαμάνδριος, πέδιον Σκαμάνδριον. Now a right conception of these rivers is not altogether an insignificant affair, but is material to the clearness of our ideas upon the military action of the poem. What then has Virgil done with them? He has simply reversed the Homeric representation. Xanthus is with him the unmarked river, Simois is the mighty torrent. Witness these passages:
Mitto ea, quæ muris bellando exhausta sub altis,
Quos Simois premat ille viros. (Æn. xi. 256.)
Again:
Victor apud rapidum Simoenta sub Ilio alto. (Æn. v. 261.)
And most of all, the passage which he has directly carried off from Homer, and corrupted it on his way (Æn. i. 104):
Ubi tot Simois correpta sub undis