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Book Eleven
starting-point of the Odyssey proper: here they mark the Achaeans' final
attempt to master the Trojans in fair fight without Akhilleus, there being
no gods to cloud the issue as there were in books 5 and 6. Verse 2 = 19.2. —
dyauou TiOcovoTo: the three spondees which end the verse, if that is what
the poet sang, are not chosen for their rhythmical effect. The verse is
formular and as such had to be accepted. The gen. sing, dyauou, however,
uniquely among the case-forms of dyauos is invariably found in the thirdfourth
foot in archaic epic (except at Hesiod fr. 141.7 M-W) and must have
been fixed in that position in the form dyauoo so as to give an elegant and
normal dactyl in the fourth foot, cf. the similar location of the genitive
UEyaOuuou (31 x ). dyauos is probably an Aeolism (note the -au- diphthong
< -ap-): dyrjTOS is the Ionic form. TiOcovoTo: for his pedigree see 20.237 and
the stemma at vol. v 316. He was a scion of the Trojan royal house and
father of Memnon, Akhilleus' last great opponent, but that is irrelevant to
the dawn-formula: we are not to suppose that this dawn is biased against
the Achaeans. His miserable immortality is first attested at HyAphr 218-38,
and Mimnermus fr. 4 West. Like others of his dynasty (see 13.171-3^)
Tithonos may have a genuinely Anatolian name, cf. TITCO' fjcbs, aupiov
(Hsch.), and TITCO, 'dawn goddess' (Callimachus, fr. 21.3 Pfeiffer, Lycophron
940-
3 Zeus now begins to implement his threat at 8.740-2 to wreak even
worse destruction on the Achaeans, but as usual the will of Zeus is accomplished
by a devious route; catastrophe will be preceded by victory. The
Olympian gods have been banished from the battlefield by Zeus's edict at
8.10-17, which he reaffirmed to a rebellious Here and Athene at 8.399-
408, cf. 73-9 below. Eris, of course, is not a god in the same sense, not a
person but a personification; however, the poet seems aware that he has
undercut his picture of the battle and inserts a comment, see 74-5 and n.
Since it takes two to make a quarrel Eris' actions are often more impartial
than her present intervention. See further 4.440-in.
4 TroAeuoio Tepas: what Eris held in her hands it is impossible to say and
perhaps was never precisely conceived (Arn/A mentions dorpa-nf), 5190s,
AauTrds). Like her war-shout it is the more awesome for being vague.
Athene's aegis, decorated with various allegories including Eris, is called a
Aids Tepas at 5.742, and at 2.450-2 was used to urge on the Achaeans.
(The aegis was primarily a means of causing stupefaction and panic, cf.
15.320-2, Od. 22.297-8.) In the parallel scene at 8.220-6 Agamemnon
waved iropcpupeov ueya 9apos. As Fenik remarks, TBS 78, this looks like a
small typical scene.
5—9 =8.222—6, where it was Agamemnon who did the shouting. Whatever
it describes, the Catalogue of Ships does not describe the order of
the ships drawn up on the Trojan shore, in spite of Aias ...