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Book Eleven
43 A unique verse, surprisingly, but cf. 3.18, 16.139. The concord of
plural and dual in ocAKiua 8o0p6 is a strong indication of a secondary usage,
cf. OCTCJE 9oceiv& 13.435, a mid-verse variant of the verse-end formula OCTCTE
9aeivco. The verse EIAETO 8' OCAKIUOC 5o0pe 8uco KSKopuOueva XOCAKCO | o^sa is
adapted from the verse describing the thrusting-spear ETAETO 8 s OCAKIUOV
iyxos dKaxiievov 6£EI ycxk^Co (15.482). The two spears are for throwing, and
describe the equipment of the Iron Age or even that of the Late Geometric
period when warriors armed with two spears become a frequent element in
iconography. It is characteristic of oral poetry that it tends to substitute the
familiar (i.e. what is contemporary with the poet or within the memory of
his audience) for the archaic but does not do so systematically. Agamemnon
will use a single thrusting-spear in his aristeia, see 95~8n. KEKOPU8UEVOS
(< Kopus), properly 'helmeted', replaces the archaic OCKOCXUEVOS; the sense
'tipped' is confined to this verse and its congener (3.18), with an ambiguous
use at 16.802.
44-5 The gleam of the armour is a good omen; its absence is a portent
of death, cf. T. Krischer, Konventionen 36. OCUT091 (6x //. only, always in
fourth foot) supplies a convenient dactylic form for the genitive and dative
plurals of auTos; the reference is to the SoOps of 43. hri ... iySouTrnaav: only
here of thunder (which must be meant). Thunder, elsewhere the prerogative
of Zeus and expressed by KTUTTETV, is a favourable omen, cf. 8.170,
1 5-377? 1 7-595? Od- 21.413, heralding victory. (At 8.75-7 it is the (JEAas not
the thunder that cows the Achaeans.) Agamemnon's entry into battle must
have some divine accompaniment, but Zeus for the moment favours his
enemies and he must make do with a distant rumble from the goddesses on
Olumpos.
46 = 7.180 (and TToAuxpuaoio MuKrjvns at Od. 3.305). The wealth of
Mycenae and its dynasty was proverbial long before modern archaeological
discoveries, cf. Hesiod fr. 203 M-W &AKTIV UEV yap E8COKEV 'OAuumos
AiccKiS-ncri, I voOv 8' s A(jiu6aovi8ais, TTAOUTOV 8' ETrop' 'ATpEi8rjc7i. (The sons of
Amuthaon were Melampous and Bias, cousins of Nestor.) The tholos tombs
at Mycenae (and Orchomenos) were known in late antiquity as Or|aaupoi
(Paus. 2.16.5), but it is uncertain when that erroneous identification was
first made. TToAuxpOcroio MuxT)vr|S is presumably an old formula created
when the wealth of Mycenae existed or was remembered, but its combination
with pacjiAfla is not traditional. POCCTIAEUS denotes a person of rank in
the epic but otherwise is imprecise: for the extensive bibliography on the
term see LfgrE s.v. Where it is least vague, e.g. in the description of the
polity of the Phaeacians at Od. 8.390-1 (see Hainsworth, Od. adloc. and pp.
342-3), a poccnAEUS is a nobleman of consequence but is outranked by the
monarch. For POCCTIAEUS, 'chief (qa-si-re-u), in Linear B texts see Ventris and
Chadwick, Documents 121, 409. POCCTIAEUS is a common word in the epic (over
ioox ), but makes only three noun-epithet formulas: 8ioTp£9E£S
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