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Book Twelve
a space between the ditch and wall. For the purpose of this arrangement, if
it has any foundation in military practice, see 65~6n.
7 Pace Leaf Arjt8a TTOAATJV at the end of this verse implies that the wall
was built when the Iliad says it was, to defend the loot taken in Akhilleus'
raids around the Troad.
9-33 Thus far what the poet has said about the Achaean wall he has said
in his normal role as the observer of the Trojan war, so to speak, as the Muse
unfolded it before his eyes; now he reveals his historical perspective, reporting
as fact what Zeus had prophesied at 7459-63.
11 ETTAEV is the reading (or the implied reading) of the vulgate. It is
guaranteed by the attempts, noted in T, on the part of Zenodotus (by
'apocope' of ETTAETO) and Aristarchus (by syncope of ETTEAEV) to explain it.
The form is indeed, as Leaf says, a vox nihili, but that is from the viewpoint
of vernacular Greek. The Kunstsprache was exempt from the regular rules of
word-formation, and the creation of an active 8TTA6(V) beside the middle
ETTAETO would seem to be well within the limits of its inventiveness. f\sv, the
reading of Allen's 'h' family of MSS, is clearly intrusive from verse 12.
12 TO9pa ... £U7T£6ov f)Ev: the poet speaks generally. In fact Apollo
levelled a whole section of wall to speed on the Trojans' final assault,
15.355—66, 'as easily as a child knocks down a sand-castle'.
14 01 |i£V 5duEV, 01 SE AITTOVTO is barely logical as an expansion of the verb
of the SE-clause. In the oral manner the poet adds to the sentence the
thought that some of the Achaeans survived the war. A formula lurks
behind the expression, cf. TTOAAO! UEV ... 5&UEV, TTOAAOI 8E AITTOVTO (Od.
4-495)-
17 Poseidon and Apollo are the gods concerned and act together in spite
of being currently on opposite sides because, as Poseidon complained at
7.451-3, not only had the Achaeans omitted the proper hecatombs but also
the KAEOS of Agamemnon's wall was like to surpass that of the wall he and
Apollo had built for Laomedon, an unacceptable infringement of the gods'
Tiur| - a good point if it is taken in isolation; however Poseidon and Apollo
had swallowed a direct insult from Laomedon, see 21.442-57, and his wall
stood notwithstanding. The two gods act, as gods usually do in the Iliad, as
persons not as personifications of their provinces in the natural world.
Poseidon was god of earthquakes, EvocnxOcov and Ewocriyocios, in which
capacity he would have been well placed to demolish a wall.
18 TEIXOS &uaA80vai must envisage a wall built in part at least of sundried
brick. Brick walls erected on a stone footing are common at all times,
e.g. at Old Smurne before 800: discussion and examples in Lawrence,
Fortification 203-20. — UEVOS is 'energy'. In the Homeric view of the world
there is little difference in the potential of animate and inanimate forces,
hence UEVOS can denote the power of water (as also at 21.305, 21.383), wind
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