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[149] ἐπιφθονέοις. It seems simpler to write the subjunctive in exact parallelism with ἐᾷς, but if (see crit. note) we decide in favour of ἐπιφθονέοις, it must be taken to mark a degree further from probable occurrence than the subjunctive. So Herm. de legg. subtil. serm. Hom. 1. 19 ‘colloqui enim Ulixes cum umbris cupiebat, quaesieratque non quomodo eas arceret sed quomodo perduceret ad colloquendum.’ Cp. Od.12. 345, 349“ἀφικοίμεθα . . ἐθέλῃ”, marking a remoter and nearer contingency; Od.14. 183“ἁλῴη . . φύγοι”, and Od.22. 444“ἐξαφέλησθε . . ἐκλελάθοιντο”.

With πάλιν … ὀπίσσω cp. “ἂψ αὖτις, ἂψ πάλιν”, etc.

157-159. The lines were rejected by the Alexandrian critics; the reason of the objection being implied in the mutilated Schol. V. “τὸ γὰρ ἑξῆς, μέσον ὠκεανός: γελοῖον δὲ καὶ πεζὸν ἐόντα”. The difficulty is rather this: Anticlea marvels to see her living son in the kingdom of death; so that πῶς ἦλθες; is almost exclamatory. Whereas the three discredited lines emphasise the interrogatory force of “πῶς”, as though Anticlea were questioning her son about the method of his coming, and were dealing with the difficulties of the route. In accordance with this idea, then, we have the description of the intervening rivers, introduced by γάρ, to explain in what the difficulty consists; and the allusion to the ship, as a tentative answer to “πῶς ἦλθες”; In itself the naiveté of πεζὸν ἐόντα (Eustath. “ἰόντα”) is not un-Homeric: cp. Od.1. 173“οὐ μὲν γάρ τί σε πεζὸν ὀίομαι ἐνθάδ᾽” (sc. to Ithaca) “ἱκέσθαι”. In Od.10. 502 the direct contrary of this line is asserted, “εἰς Ἄιδος δ᾽ οὔ πώ τις ἀφίκετο νηὶ μελαίνῃ”. The words μὲν πρῶτα would lead us to believe that a description of the ποταμοί and ῥέεθρα was intended to follow: but nothing more is said about them.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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