Note 46 — STATIUS'S THEBAIS.

Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,—a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,—and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.