Note 413 — APPENDIX B WAGNER AND SUPER-WAGNER

See Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 44 ff. Compare the passage in which Lessing (Laokoön, Chap. XII) is discussing the felling of Mars by Minerva by means of a huge stone. The overthrown god, according to Homer, "covered seven acres." "It is impossible," says Lessing, "that the painter could give this extraordinary size to the god; but if he does not give it him, then Mars does not lie upon the ground like the Homeric Mars, but like a common warrior."