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Book Eleven
The vulgate reading ixov would require ucruivr) to be emended into the
dative.
73—83 The poet reminds his audience of the state of the conflict on
Olumpos. Other summaries of the politics of Olumpos, e.g. 13.345-60 and
15.592-604, explicitly adumbrate the course of events, and this reminder of
the watchful eye of Zeus is more than a hint that Agamemnon's offensive
will fail. The point is made repeatedly (cf. 11.300, 12.37, 12.174, 12.255,
12.437, and 3X in book 15), as if to explain the paradox of this day of
Trojan victory. Reinhardt (IuD 253) notes the 'demonic' rule that every
Achaean success in the Iliad up to the return of Akhilleus to the war leads
finally to disaster. The gods were confined to Olumpos by Zeus's edict at
8.10-17. Their absence is maintained consistently (except in book 10, and
see 438n.) until the intervention of Poseidon at 13.34. This deprives the poet
of some useful motifs: no one prays for divine aid, no one is divinely rescued
from danger or inspired with pievos, no fog is shed over the combatants, but
the most consequential absence is that of Athene from the Achaean side:
Athene is the concomitant of success, and her absence here, like her absence
in book 16, dooms the Achaean efforts to failure.
73-5 These verses are a naive comment on, or explanation of, the poet's
allegory of Eris with which he introduced this day of conflict. Eris is a
personification as we should say, a rhetorical abstraction, and from this
point the poet forgets her, but for his audience at least she is a daimon and
therefore formally contravenes Zeus's confinement of the gods to Olumpos.
75-6 itcnAos (properly 'not involved in', < EK&S, but usually = ou TIV'
ixeiv TTOVOV, cf. Od. 13.423) is not a permanent epithet of the gods, although
it would well describe their condition, cf. psia £cbovT6s (ix //., 2X Od.).
The word is here merely the complement of ou irdpeaav; the gods are 'not
involved' but by no means 'at their ease', acpolcnv: for the vulgate olaiv,
which should imply a singular reference, see i42n.
78-83 The usual pattern of omission (Zenodotus) and athetesis
(Aristophanes and Aristarchus (Did/AT, Am/A)) makes its appearance.
The objections were partly pedantic ('all' the gods could not include the
pro-Trojan party), partly sensitive to the situation and the conventions of
the Iliad (Zeus prefers to superintend the battle from Ida but is currently on
Olumpos), partly ideological (the gods should not be represented as angry
with Zeus). Hellenistic criticism is often over-precise, cf. 17.545-6 and n.
What the gods found objectionable, of course, was that Zeus was keeping
control of events to himself. Exasperated at the interference of Here and
Athene Zeus had taken up his station on Ida (80-3 echo 8.47-52), to enjoy
the view of the fray. He had then withdrawn to Olumpos (8.438), whence
he returns at 11.182-4 oupavoOev KCCTa(3&s; the only objectionable verses are
therefore 82-3 (= 8.51-2). Some note of where Zeus took his station would
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