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Book Eleven
368 T7aiovi6r|v: Agastrophos, wounded if not slain at 338-9.
the sense of the imperfect is 'proceeded to ...' - to do what? !£evapi£6iv is
properly to strip the svapa, 'spoils', from the body of a slain enemy, though
it can also incorporate the act of slaying as well as despoiling, as at 335. The
primary sense fits best here; Diomedes will be wounded, like many another,
as he drops his guard in seizing a trophy.
369-83 In this case the archery of Paris scores the point, so that there is a
thematic correspondence with the exploits of Teukros on the Achaean side
(8.266ff., 12.3876°., i5.442ff.). Keeping to his usual practice, however, the
poet does not give the Trojan a formal aristeia of successively narrated
successes, contrast 8.266ff., but reuses the motif of the deadly archer to
shape the narrative in the episodes of Makhaon (5O5ff.) and Eurupulos
(58iff.). Paris fights in the open, protected only by his distance from the
spearmen. Only the Greek Aias is regularly thought of as wielding the CT&KOS
T)0T£ TTUpyov, and so the poet cannot reuse the fine image of the archer (who
cannot effectively manage his own shield) crouching behind the great
body-shield, see 8.266-72. This is the only place in the Iliad where an arrow
wound is sustained in the foot, but unfortunately too little is known of the
greatest of Paris' exploits, the fatal wounding of Akhilleus in the ankle
at the Scaean gates (in the Trojan Cycle that occurred in the Aithiopis) for
a useful thematic comparison to be made. His injury has been taken to
symbolize the fact that Diomedes has up to this point played the role of
Akhilleus but cannot in the end replace him (so Kullmann, GRBS 25 (1984)
307-23). The similar, though not identical, location of the wound, however,
is the main point of similarity; in other respects the briefly told
wounding of Glaukos by Teukros (12.387-91) has as good a claim to be
conceived after the death of Akhilleus, for Glaukos is hit while storming a
wall. Fenik, adducing the earlier wounding of Diomedes (5.95-113), maintains
with some justice that on the evidence of the Iliad these injuries are
composites of typical details, not derivatives of a single archetype, see
TBS 234-5. I n tne absence of titulature, representations in art of a hero
wounded in the foot are more likely to depict Akhilleus than Diomedes;
some possible examples are listed in the Lexicon Iconographicum s.v. 'Diomedes'
112-14.
369 The verse, from s AAe£av8pos, is formular (6x). 'AAs^ocvSpos: for
the name see 3.i6n. 'EAevris- an initial digamma is attested in inscriptions
from Sparta, SEG xxvi 458, but the frequent lengthening of a naturally
short syllable before the caesura prevents this verse being cited for a
Homeric FeAevr). Both epics imply *E- by regularly eliding vowels before it
(29x in OCT out of 58 occurrences).
371-2 For the tomb of Ilos see i66n. The battle has now swung back
towards the Achaean ships. Grave-mounds in Homer are memorials
267