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Book Twelve
unusual as an epithet of a river (otherwise only at 2.522) and it is not clear
what sense should be attributed to it. Its use may reflect a misunderstanding
of SIITTETTIS, in the formula SUTTETEOS TTOTOCUOTO, as 'fallen from Zeus', on
which see LfgrE.
23 f)|ii0EGOv: many heroes were half-divine in the sense that they had a
god or goddess for a parent, although (save for Akhilleus) they did not
enjoy exceptional physical or mental attributes in consequence, see 10.47-
5on. Within his narrative Homer does not recognize them as a separate class
of being and therefore has no use for the present term, which occurs only
here in the Iliad. But the peculiarity of the present passage is that the poet
is not narrating events before Troy as it were as a contemporary observer
but commenting upon them from the standpoint of a later age, from which
the heroes may well have seemed half-divine, cf. h.Hom. 31.19, 32.19. As a
description of the heroes TJUIOEOS expresses a Hesiodic idea, cf.