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Book Nine
lying waste, cf. 2.505). If the line is traditional, as it may well be, the
reference would certainly have been to the two Boeotian cities. Verses 382-
4 are a 'most prosy interpolation' according to Leaf, but that comment is
better applied to the amplified description at 383-4; 382 (= Od. 4.127) is
effective here, Akhilleus saying in effect '... Thebes, and I don't mean
Boeotian Thebes but the infinitely wealthier Thebes in Egypt'. The description
of the Theban armies is indeed rhetorically otiose. Akhilleus is piling
up a crescendo of exaggerations and descriptive digression is out of place;
each 0O6' ei ... or 0O6' ocxcc ... must strike home before his hearers have
recovered from the previous blast. — Why the Greeks called the Egyptian
city Thebes is a mystery, none of the native names bearing any obvious
resemblance (see A. L. Lloyd, Herodotus Book ii 11 (Leiden 1976) 12-13, for
details, more briefly West on Od. 4.125-7). I* ^ s a question whether the city
was ever walled, but the verses need not be supposed to reflect more than
the reports that filtered down to Greek visitors to the Delta. In Od. the
dominant image of Egypt is of its wealth {Od. 3.301, 4.229-30, and - it was
worth raiding - 14.2456°.). Thebes was sacked by the Assyrians in 663 B.C.,
but the implications of that are uncertain, see W. Burkert, WS 89 (1976)
5-21, for the view that the verses reflect the revival of the city under the
Ethiopian dynasty 715-663 B.C. Lorimer, HM 97-8, maintains the view
that the verses preserve a memory of the glories of the New Kingdom.
383 av 9 £K&