* Whether it should be called
courage, or mere mechanical instinct, may be questioned, but assuredly
no other animal, exposed to continual danger, is so absolutely without
sign of fear.
* See farther on, sec. 148, pp. 154-156.
36. You will, perhaps, have still patience to hear two instances, not of
the communication as strength, but of the personal agency of Athena as
the air. When she comes down to help Diomed against Ares, she does not
come to fight instead of him, but she takes his charioteer's place.
"She snatched the reins, she lashed with all her force,
And full on Mars impelled the foaming horse."
Ares is the first to cast his spear; then--note this--Pope says:
"Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance,
Far from the car, the strong immortal lance."
She does not oppose her hand in the Greek--the wind could not meet the
lance straight--she catches it in her hand, and throws it off. There is
no instance in which a lance is so parried by a mortal hand in all the
Iliad, and it is exactly the way the wind would parry it, catching it,
and turning it aside.
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