Note 252 — THE SHIELD OF HERCULES.
George Chapman translation
In height surpass’d.] Aristotle observes that persons of small stature may be elegantly and justly formed, but cannot be styled beautiful, Ethics, iv. 7. Xenophon in his Cyropædia, ii. 5, describes the beautiful Panthea as “of surpassing height and vigour.” Theocritus mentions a fulness of form as equally characteristic of beauty:
So bloom’d the charming Helen in our eyes With full voluptuous limbs and towering size: In shape, in height, in stately presence fair, Straight as a furrow gliding from the share: A cypress of the gardens, spiring high, A courser in the cars of Thessaly. Idyl, xviii.
It is remarkable that Chaucer appears to glance at this comparison:
Winsing she was, as is a jollie colt, Long as a maste and upright as a bolt. The Miller’s Tale.