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Book Twelve
49-50 Delebecque, Cheval 77, finds fault with this passage because it
seems to envisage that chariotry might contemplate leaping such an obstacle
as the Achaean ditch as if they were mounted cavalry. The crucial point,
however, is what the poet thought it a plausible fiction to affirm: at 8.179
he makes Hektor assert that his horses easily T&9pov uirgpOopeovTOU and in
a fine hyperbole at 16.380 he imagines the immortal horses of Akhilleus
doing just that, while the mortal teams were wrecked. The speech of
Pouludamas (61—79) shows that the poet was well aware of the effectiveness
of earthworks as a defence against chariotry. Even so Hektor's team,
for epic horses, put up an unimpressive performance: the heroic horses of
central Asian epic traditions take rivers in their stride, see A. Hatto in
Hainsworth (ed.), Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry 11 (London 1989) io8ff.
— EAiaaeO' rraipous: the etymology of Aiaaouai is unclear, but the initial Aalways
makes position in the Iliad (except at 16.46 a>s 90CTO AICTCTOHEVOS),
probably by analogy with words having a genuinely original