reign, Refusing to accept as great a share Of hazard as of honour, due alike to him Who reigns, and so much to him due Of hazard more, as he above the rest High honour'd sits." --"Paradise Lost," ii. 450. 227 --_Each equal weight._ "Long time in even scale The battle hung." --"Paradise Lost," vi. 245. 228 "He on his impious foes right onward drove, _Gloomy as night._" --"Paradise Lost," vi. 831 229 --_Renown'd for justice and for length of days,_ Arrian. de Exp. Alex. iv. p. 239, also speaks of the independence of these people, which he regards as the result of their poverty and uprightness. Some authors have regarded the phrase "Hippomolgian," _i.e._ "milking their mares," as an epithet applicable to numerous tribes, since the oldest of the Samatian nomads made their mares' milk one of their chief articles of diet. The epithet abion or abion, in this passage, has occasioned much discussion. It may mean, according as we read it, either "long-lived," or "bowless," the latter epithet indicating that they did not depend upon archery for subsistence. 230 Compare Chapman's quaint, bold verses:-- "And as a round piece of a rocke, which with a winter's flood Is from his top torn, when a shoure poured from a bursten cloud, Hath broke the naturall band it had within the roughftey rock, Flies jumping all adourne the woods, resounding everie shocke, And on, uncheckt, it headlong leaps till in a plaine it stay, And then (tho' never so impelled), it stirs not any way:-- So Hector,--" 231 This book forms a most agreeable interruption to The continuous round of battles, which occupy the latter part of the Iliad. It is as well