The Earth power, half hidden by the earth, its hair and hand becoming
roots, the strength of its life passing through the ground into the oak
tree. With Cercyon, but first named, (Plato, _Laws_, book VII., 796),
Antæus is the master of contest without use;--[GREEK: philoneikias
achrestou]--and is generally the power of pure selfishness and its
various inflation to insolence and degradation to cowardice;--finding
its strength only in fall back to its Earth,--he is the master, in a
word, of all such kind of persons as have been writing lately about the
"interests of England." He is, therefore, the Power invoked by Dante
to place Virgil and him in the lowest circle of Hell;--"Alcides whilom
felt,--that grapple, straitened sore," etc. The Antæus in the sculpture
is very grand; but the authorship puzzles me, as of the next piece, by
the same hand. I believe both Giotto's design.