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Book Nine
13.214, linguistically a very untraditional passage, see Hoekstra, Od. ad loc,
but also at Hesiod, Theog. 222, with reference to irapai|3aaiai.
502-12 The Anrou: Phoinix produces an allegory (as we should call it),
a figure rarely employed in Greek epic, cf. 505^, because 'in Hesiod's time
it was not understood what abstractions are. They must be something; they
are invisible, imperishable, and have great influence over human affairs;
they must be gods' (West, Theogony 33). A rejected suppliant, like Khruses
in book 1, prayed to the god whom his rejection had dishonoured for
vengeance. The allegory, however, embellishes that natural and comprehensible
action in a way that complicates the doctrine and its application
to the present case. A chain of action and reaction is begun by V ATT| (505).
TVrn here has in personified form its usual Homeric sense of the spirit that
inspires an act of irrational folly (cf. &a