• See 2 Samuel 17:1, 2:⁠— “Moreover, Ahithophel said unto Absalom, let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night. And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak-handed, and will make him afraid; and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will smite the king only.” Dryden, in his poem of Absalom and Achitopbel , gives this portrait of the latter:⁠— “Of these the false Achitophel was first; A name to all succeeding ages curst; For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfix’d in principles and place; In power unpleas’d, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pygmy body to decay, And o’er inform’d the tenement of clay.” Then he puts into the mouth of Achitophel the following description of Absalom:⁠— “Auspicious prince, at whose nativity Some royal planet rul’d the southern sky; Thy longing country’s darling and desire; Their cloudy pillar and their guardian fire; Their second Moses, whose extended wand Divides the seas, and shows the promised land; Whose dawning day, in every distant age, Has exercised the sacred prophet’s rage; The people’s prayer, the glad diviner’s theme, The young men’s vision, and the old men’s dream.” ↩