• These two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, were so hostile to each other, that, when after death their bodies were burned on the same funeral pile, the flames swayed apart, and the ashes separated. Statius, Thebaid , XII 430, Lewis’s Tr. :⁠— “Again behold the brothers! When the fire Pervades their limbs in many a curling spire, The vast hill trembles, and the intruder’s corse Is driven from the pile with sudden force. The flames, dividing at the point, ascend, And at each other adverse rays extend. Thus when the ruler of the infernal state, Pale-visaged Dis, commits to stern debate The sister-fiends, their brands, held forth to fight, Now clash, then part, and shed a transient light.” ↩
• The most cunning of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, now united in their punishment, as before in warlike wrath. ↩
• As Troy was overcome by the fraud of the wooden horse, it was in a poetic sense the gateway by which Aeneas went forth to establish the Roman empire in Italy. ↩