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Book Eleven
96 (7T69dvr| could mean the rim of the headgear rather than the whole
helmet here and at 7.12 (but not at 10.30), but probably serves as a
synonym (with metrically useful err-) for TrqAric; (so D. H. F. Gray, CQ4.1
(1947) 116 = Language and Background 62, contra Lorimer, HM 243, preferring
'rim').
97—8 The whole phrase eyK^ocAos §e | evSov cmas TreTT&AaKTO is formular
(3X in the vulgate, but see I2.i83-6n., with 11.535 = 20.500 as a variant).
The brain was not 'spattered all about', for the injury was ev8ov, probably
within the helmet, cf. Friedrich, Verwundung 46—7. A similar injury is more
lucidly described (and in detail) at 17.295-8 where the brain is said to gush
from the wound. Apollonius Rhodius is reported to have excised 98 and
read eyKecpccAovSs in 97, construing it with the preceding fjAOe. The Alexandrians
suspected repeated groups of verses but rarely resorted to excision if
that necessitated emendation of the verse retained.
100 The obscurity of this verse lies in the verb TrepiSuae. Leaf insists, with
justification from classical usage, that without an indication of removal
50co should mean 'put on'; but if TrspiSuae is right the only possible sense is
that Agamemnon stripped the corpses, cf. Antiphon 2.2.5 an d later authors
for this sense. The authors of the banal v.l. eirel KAUTCX Teuxe' airnupa
saw what was required but could not extract the sense needed from the
paradosis. Aristarchus (bT) swallowed the camel but strained at the
gnat, supposing that em*|6een TratJupaivovTas could be separated from TOUS
and construed with x iT & va S (which he took to mean 'armour'). What
Agamemnon inflicts on these minor foes is what he prayed to inflict on
Hektor, 'Eicropsov 5s XITCOVCC irepi orfiOecjCTi 5cacjai (2.416). See G. Murray,
The Rise of the Greek Epic, 4th edn (Oxford 1934) 127-8, on this and 22.75n.
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