Untitled - Get a Free Blog

Book Eleven
they will find themselves isolated like Odysseus at 401. Since the Achaeans
have rallied the losses now fall on the Trojans, whose second-rank warriors
confront the Achaean ocpioroi, but the poet reveals a certain reluctance to
kill Achaeans (only 61 named casualties in the Iliad against 208 Trojans and
allies (see 15.405-591 n.)). No named Achaean falls in the rest of this Book.
The poet's pity, however, is impartial.
310 The verse of transition is apparently formular (= 8.130).
311 TT8CTOV: Tall dead', a necessary but oddly rare sense of TTITTTCO.
Aristarchus, on 15.63, even denied that it was Homeric.
312 The call for aid is a typical detail. As it happens Diomedes had called
for Odysseus' aid at 8.93 and got no response. As usual there is no recollection
of the previous incident.
313 TI TTCCOOVTE is usually thought to be an Attic idiom, being well
attested in that familiar dialect; but it is better to take it (like TTETTOV in 314)
as a mark of informality. It recurs at Od. 24.106.
314 For the imperative form IOTOCO see 10.29 m. iAeyxos: an unbearable
reproach, cf. 22.100 where Hektor will fight Akhilleus sooner than suffer
IXeyxeiri. The Achaeans are now fighting to save their ships - Odysseus'
words are rather alarmist; at an earlier stage the unbearable disgrace had
been to return empty-handed (2.1196°., 2846°.).
315 The Trojans' reaching the ships is the goal set up for the narrative
of the middle Iliad in book 8, see 8.i8o-2n. and 9.230-in. The possibility
of this disaster is mentioned 35 times before the ship of Protesilaos is fired
at 16.122. KopuOaioAos "Eicrcop: the epithet is not 'shaking the helmet'
(LSJ and others) but 'with flashing helmet' according to Page, HHI 248-
51. KopuOaioAos is restricted to Hektor (and Ares (20.38, see n.)) and is of
very fixed use - always juxtaposed except at 22.471 - and perhaps was not
of very clear meaning to the poet. Note its absence from the famous scene
at 6.4666°. It may be glossed by another epithet of Hektor, xaAKOKopuoTT|s
(9X in ace. and dat.); aioAos is used of armour at 5.295, but usually means,
or may mean, 'moving quickly', cf. I2.i67n.
317 Pap. 60 (which is usually prone to random omission of verses and
omits e.g. 313) prefixes Diomedes' short speech with a formal verse of
address, 5ioyev£s AaspTidBri, TroAuufjxav' 'OBucrcreu (= 2.173 etc.), and
adds the same verse before Diomedes' even more laconic remarks at 347-8,
as if every utterance should be introduced by the vocative case.
319 (36AeTai: the conjugation as a root verb |3oA- (cf. Od. 1.234, l §-?fil)
as opposed to the suffixed |3ouA- (probably < (3oAa-) is generally attributed
to Arcadian among the classical dialects. The presence of Arcado-Cypriot
and Mycenaean words and forms in the epic implies at least the antiquity
of its linguistic tradition, although the relation of this 'Achaean' component
(in the sense used by C. J. Ruijgh in UElement acheen) to the Ionic remains
261