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Book Nine
8.521, and 16.191 (where see Hoekstra's note). Akhilleus' abuse of Patroklos'
tears at 16.7-11 as 'girlish' reflects only his indignation that Patroklos
should pity the Achaeans. Other notable weepers are Akhilleus himself
(1.349), Telemakhos (Od. 2.81), Menelaos and company (Od. 4.183), and
Odysseus (Od. 8.86, 8.522). There has been some temptation to take the
blackness of the water as symbolic of Agamemnon's dark mood, e.g. Frankel,
Gleichnisse 21, but neither 6vo96pos nor |ieAavu6pos elsewhere have gloomy
connotations. The spring water must run, or drip, down something to make
a good analogue for tears, though Frankel, loc. cit., supposed that the rock
symbolized the king's iron will beneath his tearful exterior, a gloss that will
not work for the use of the image in book 16. (There are four other extended
similes in the Iliad that are repeated, 5.782-3 = 7.256-7, 5.860-
1 = 14.148-9,6.506-11 = 15.263-8, 13.389-93 = 16.482-6, and one that
is substantially repeated, 11.548-55 cf. 17.657-64. See also Edwards, vol.
v 24. Such comparisons at least are probably traditional.)
15 aiyiAiy is an Iliadic gloss (also h.Hom. 19.4 but not in Od. or Hesiod),
as an epithet always in the formula ociyiAnros ir£Tpr|s. The traditional
explanation 'forsaken even by goats' is a pleasing fantasy; the root is seen in
Lith. lipti, 'climbs', cf. the Hesychian glosses aAiy TteTpoc, and Aiy TTETpa
d