But a thunder-shower in the mountains, unobserved perhaps by the traveller on the plain, may suddenly immerse him in the flood of a mighty river.

The rescue of Achilles by the fiery arms of Vulcan scarcely admits of the same ready explanation from physical causes.

Yet the subsiding of the flood at the critical moment when the hero's destruction appeared imminent, might, by a slight extension of the figurative parallel, be ascribed to a god symbolic of the influences opposed to all atmospheric moisture."-- Mure, vol.i.p.

480, sq.
270 Wood has observed, that "the circumstance of a falling tree, which is described as reaching from one of its banks to the other, affords a very just idea of the breadth of the Scamander." 271 -- _Ignominious._ Drowning, as compared with a death in the field of battle, was considered utterly disgraceful.
272 -- _Beneath a caldron._ "So, when with crackling flames a caldron fries, The bubbling waters from the bottom rise.
Above the brims they force their fiery way; Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day." Dryden's Virgil, vii.

644.
273 "This tale of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Jove, as a punishment for misbehaviour, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the Mythical world."-- Grote, vol.i.p.