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Book Eleven
distinct. The lesser Aias is 'OiAfps TOCXV/S Aias (7X +2 variants) only,
except at 23.779 where he usurps 90C181UOS from the formular system of his
namesake.
497-520 These verses interrupt the main thread of the narrative to look
briefly at another part of the battlefield (still, however, within the range of
Paris' bow), and for that reason have been widely condemned, see Von der
Muhll, Hypomnema 197—8, and van Thiel, Ilias und Hidden 367—8. The episode
serves, however, through the wounding of Makhaon to anticipate and
motivate the important encounter between Nestor and Patroklos.
497 Why is Hektor not opposing Aias? Not this time because Zeus has
warned him off, but because he has somehow wandered from the point
where he attacked Diomedes and Odysseus (the centre, see 5~9n.) to the
edge of the battlefield opposite Nestor and Idomeneus (501), and 'on the
left by Skamandros' (498-9). At the present day, that would have to be
the Trojan left, but the course of the Skamandros in the Iliad is notoriously
unclear. T roundly affirm that Skamandros flowed to the left of the camp,
i.e. further up the Hellespont, see Cuillandre, La Droite et la gauche 64, 99.
The presence of Nestor and Idomeneus confirms that it is the left of the
Achaean army that is in question here. There is a ford over the river (14.433
(see n.) =21.1 = 24.692), though no one is said in as many words to cross
it when moving between Troy and the Achaean camp. Indeed at 21.3-8
Akhilleus splits the Trojan army, drives some towards the scene of today's
action and forces the rest into the river, i.e. for one going southward from
the sea the city is towards the left and the river to the right, as is the case at
the present day. It may be asked, where does the narrator station himself,
as it were, to view the plain of Troy? The gods may sit on Samothrace
behind the Achaeans (13.12), or on Ida behind the Trojans (8.47), but the
poet's* station seems to be with the Achaeans where the detail matters (so
that right and left in reference to the battle mean the Achaean right and
left, see 13.675^) or more generally in their ranks, whence no overall view
of the armies and their disposition is possible. The poet's picture of the scene
may be momentarily confused, for there is something formular about movement
ITT' apiorepd, the 'normal orientation when there is movement from
one part of the battlefield to another' (Fenik, TBS 41); see also 5.35511., or
Hektor's position is simply a graphic detail without military significance.
He must be absent from the focus of the narrative here because the poet is
entering upon a new thematic structure, the Rebuke Pattern, on which see
Fenik, TBS 49-52. At 521 Kebriones draws Hektor's attention to Aias'
attack.
501 Idomeneus is getting on in years (cf. ueo-anroAios, 13.361) and is
fitly associated with Nestor. He has made sporadic appearances earlier,
but his great moment is yet to come, at 13.2106°. Nestor's activity on the
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