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Book Twelve
more substantial edifice, being constrained perhaps by the traditional diction
for an assault on a city: see 258n. The CTKOAOTTES, for example, were part
of the reinforcement of the town-wall of Skherie in Od. 7.44-5. Here they
are 6£EES - the slight emphasis that the runover position confers marks this
as a significant quality, i.e. it is the upper end that is sharpened - as if
intended to impale an enemy attacking the ditch. The extensive use of
mud-brick and unconsolidated material even in permanent fortifications
makes it impossible to verify the details of the Homeric description from
extant remains of town-walls in Ionia or elsewhere in Greece. Kpr|uvo!
ETrnpEcpEES, literally 'overhanging', must be an impressionistic or hyperbolical
description of the heaped-up earth, unless the CTKOAOTTES are thought
to project horizontally. diJicpoTEpcoOEV is possibly poetical elaboration. In
practice an earthwork is more formidable if the soil is thrown up on one
side. UTTEpdEv: i.e. on the crest of the Kpr||ivoi, so as to form a breastwork.
Lattimore's rendering (The Iliad of Homer (Chicago 1951)), 'the surface
of the floor was thickset with pointed palisades', is more consistent with
Pouludamas' description at 63-4 (q.v.) than with the Greek in this verse.
The ditch plays an important role in the assault until 199, after which
it disappears from view until 15.344. It does not impede the attacks of
Sarpedon or Hektor.
56 fjpfjpEi: the subject is Tcftppos. ioTaaav (not loraorav as in OCT) is the
transmitted form and was accepted by Aristarchus. It is philologically improbable
as a genuine alternative to Ecrrncjav as a 3rd person plural of the
causative aorist, though that would not have deterred ocoiSoi from creating
it. It may be retained, as also at 2.525 and probably at 18.346, for the
erection of the stakes is not a process such as would call for an imperfect
tense. (The quasi-homophone ioTacrav at 55 is the pluperfect, an awkward
jingle to the modern ear.)
60-107 The pause at the ditch enables the poet to set the scene by means of a speech
from Pouludamas for an assault en regie. Pouludamas explains to Hektor the hazard
presented by the ditch and proposes they make the assault as infantry. Hektor accepts
this sensible advice and dismounts. The Trojans divide themselves into Jive companies,
each under three commanders
58 EUTpoxov apucc is probably formular, cf. 8.438, but has a duplicate
EO^OOV ocpuoc at 2.390. The formula system around ccp|ja is weakly developed
(Ooov appia 3X, KOCIXTTUAOV a. and dyKuAov a. ix each). KapiTruAov and
dyKuAov are borrowed from the formula system of the bow.
59 TTE^OI is predicative with EI TEAEOUCTI, 'if they do it on foot'. [iEVoivEov,
like 6|J6KAEOV (15.658), T^VTEOV (7.423), and ECTUAEOV (v.l. at 5.48), represents
a transfer from the -dco to the -EGO conjugation attested only in these
324