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Book Eleven
describe, nor does the poet feel any need to change or abandon them if
'noble' (9ai8i|ios) limbs tremble or 'splendid' gifts prove fatal. If he thought
about it he probably relished the contrast between the superficial brilliance
of the heroic world and its underlying futility and waste.
127-8 ouou 6' ix ov &K6as ITTTTOUS seems to be explained by the following
verse, as ydp suggests. The driver has lost control of the chariot and the
fighting man is helping him regain it (so Did/A), but the plural oxpeas when
the charioteer is meant is unexpected.
128-9 The spear-fodder are petrified at the hero's approach, cf. Thestor
before Patroklos at 16.403, Alkathoos before Idomeneus at 13.434.
129 evccvTiov copTO XECOV obs I recurs at 20.164 with Akhilleus as subject,
but there the short comparison is extended by runover epithet and relative
clauses into a nine-verse simile. A long simile at this point would upset the
balance of these short scenes.
130-5 The appeal for quarter was made in similar words to Menelaos
(131-5 = 6.46-50, cf. 10.378-81), who was willing to give it ear:
Agamemnon, then and now, is made of sterner stuff and displays an unrelenting
animus against everything Trojan. For the expression of the theme
see 10.378-8in. Akhilleus, before the opening of the Iliad, had been willing
to take prisoners, but in the Iliad itself no appeal for mercy is admitted, cf.
6.46, 10.378, 16.330, 20.463, 21.746°.
130 An oddly spondaic verse, especially if we read 'ATpsi8r|s as three
syllables with Am/A. youva£e