3.59

To all the Gods his conftant vows were paid:
Sure, tho' he wars for Troy, he claims our aid.
Fate wills not this; nor thus can Jove refign
The future father of the Dardan line;
The first great ancestor obtain'd his grace,
And ftill his love defcends on all the race.
For Priam now, and Priam's faithless kind,
At length are odious to th' all-seeing mind;
On great Æneas fhall devolve the reign,
And fons fucceeding fons the lasting line sustain.
the copy, which are in the original, and he is the fame Æneas
in Rome as he was in Troy.

*. 355. On great Æneas fhall devolve the reign,

355

And fons fucceeding fons the lasting line sustain.] The story of Æneas's founding the Roman empire, gave Virgil the finest occafion imaginable of paying a compliment to Auguftus, and his countrymen, who were fond of being thought the defcendants of Troy. He has tranflated these two lines literally, and put them in the nature of a prophecy; as the favourers of the opinion of Æneas's failing into Italy, imagine Homer's to be,

Αἰνείαν βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει

Καὶ παῖδες παίδων τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται.

"Hic domus Enea cunctis dominabitur oris,
"Et nati natorum & qui nafcentur ab illis."

There has been a very ancient alteration made (as Strabo obferves) in these two lines, by substituting wáloos in the room of rpc. It is not improbable but Virgil might give occa

The great earth-shaker thus: to whom replies Th' imperial Goddess with the radiant eyes.

Euftathius does not entirely discountenance this story: if it be understood, fays he, as a prophecy, the poet might take it from the Sibylline oracles. He farther remarks, that the poet artfully interweaves into his poem not only the things which happened before the commencement, and in the prosecution of the Trojan war; but other matters of importance which happened even after that war was brought to a conclufion. Thus for instance, we have here a piece of history not extant in any other author, by which we are informed that the house of Eneas fucceeded to the crown of Troas, and to the kingdom of Priam. Euftathius.

This paffage is very confiderable, for it ruins the famous chimæra of the Roman empire, and of the family of the Cafars, who both pretended to deduce their original from Venus by Eneas, alledging that after the taking of Troy, Æneas came into Italy: and this pretenfion is hereby actually destroyed. This teftimony of Homer ought to be looked upon as an authentick act, the fidelity and verity thereof cannot be queftioned. Neptune, as much an enemy as he is to the Trojans, declares that Æneas, and after him his pofterity, fhall reign over the Trojans. Would Homer have put this prophecy in Neptune's mouth, if he had not known that Eneas did not leave Troy, but that he reigned there, and if he had not seen in his time the defcendants of that Prince reign there likewife? That poet wrote two hundred and fixty years, or thereabouts after the taking of Troy; and what is very remarkable, he wrote in fome of the towns of Ionia, that is to say, in the neighbourhood of Phrygia, fo that the time and place gave fuch a weight to his depofition that nothing can invalidate it. All that the hiftorians have written concerning Eneas's voyage into Italy, ought to be confidered as a Romance, made on purpose to destroy all hiftorical truth; for the most ancient of them is pofterior to Homer by fome ages. Before Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, fome writers being fenfible of the ftrength of

Good as he is, to immolate or spare

The Dardan Prince, O Neptune, be thy care; 360

Pallas and I, by all that Gods can bind,

Have sworn destruction to the Trojan kind;

this paffage of Homer, undertook to explain it so as to reconcile it with this fable; and they faid that Æneas, after having been in Italy, returned to Troy, and left his son Ascanius there. Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, little fatisfied with this folution, which did not feem to him to be probable, has taken another method he would have it that by these words, "He fhall "reign over the Trojans," Homer meant, He shall reign over the Trojans whom he fhall carry with him into Italy. "For "is it not poffible, fays he, that Eneas fhould reign over the "Trojans, whom he had taken with him, though settled "elfewhere?"

That hiftorian, who wrote in Rome itself, and in the reign of Auguftus, was willing to make his court to that Prince, by explaining this paffage of Homer, fo as to favour the chimæra he was poffeffed with. And this is a reproach that may with fome justice be caft on him; for Poets may by their fictions flatter Princes and welcome: it is their trade. But for hiftorians to corrupt the gravity and severity of history, to fub stitute fable in the place of truth, is what ought not to be pardoned. Strabo was much more fcrupulous, for though he wrote his books of geography towards the beginning of Tiberius's reign, yet he had the courage to give a right explication to this paffage of Homer, and to aver, that this Poet said, and meant, that Eneas reinained at Troy, that he reigned therein, Priam's whole race being extinguished, and that he left the kingdom to his children after him, lib. xiii. You may fee this whole matter difcuffed in a letter from M. Bochart to M. de Segrais, who has prefixed it to his remarks upon the

Not ev'n an instant to protract their fate,
Or fave one member of the finking state;

"Till her last flame be quench'd with her laft

་

gore,

365

And ev❜n her crumbling ruins are no more.
The King of Ocean to the fight descends,
Thro' all the whistling darts his course he bends,
Swift interpos'd between the warriours flies,
And cafts thick darkness o'er Achilles' eyes. 37°
From great Æneas' fhield the fpear he drew,
And at its master's feet the weapon threw.
That done, with force divine he fnatch'd on high
The Dardan Prince, and bore him thro' the sky,
Smooth-gliding without step, above the heads 375
Of warring heroes, and of bounding fteeds:
"Till at the battle's utmost verge they light,
Where the flow Caucans close the rear of fight.

. 378. Where the flow Caucans clofe the rear.] The Caucones (says Euftathius) were of Paphlagonian extract; and this perhaps was the reason why they are not distinctly mentioned in the catalogue, they being included under the general name of Paphlagonians: though two lines are quoted which are said to have been left out by fome transcriber, and immediately followed this,

The Godhead there (his heav'nly form confefs'd) With words like these the panting chief ad

drefs'd.

380

What Pow'r, O Prince, with force inferiour far Urg'd thee to meet Achilles' arm in war? Henceforth beware, nor antedate thy doom, Defrauding Fate of all thy fame to come. But when the day decreed (for come it must) 385 Shall lay this dreadful hero in the dust,

Let then the furies of that arm be known,

Secure, no Grecian force transcends thy own.

Κρῶμναν τ' Αἰγιαλόνε καὶ ὑψηλὸς Ἐρυθίνες.

Which verfes are these,

Καύκωνας αὖτ ̓ ἦγε πολυκλέος ὑιὸς ̓Αμύμων.

Or as others read it, "Aμ☞.

Οἱ περὶ παρθένιον ποταμὸν κλυτὰ δώματ' ἔναιον,

Or according to others,

Κατὰ δώματ ̓ ἔναιον.

Yet I believe these are not Homer's lines, but rather the addition of some transcriber, and it is evident by consulting the paflage from which they are said to have been curtailed, that they would be abfurd in that place; for the second line is actually there already; and as these Caucons are faid to live upon the banks of the Parthenius, fo are the Paphlagonians in the above-mentioned paffage. It is therefore more probable that the Caucons are included in the Paphlagonians.