previous next

[160] ἐπέπτατο ‘flew by’: “ἐπί” as in “ἐπαληθείς” (l. 176).

δεξιός ‘to the right’: equivalent to “ἐπιδέξια”, and thus meaning ‘from left to right.’ So in l. 164 “δεξιὸς ἤϊξε πρόσθ᾽ ἵππων” means ‘sped to the right in front of the chariot,’ so as to cross its path in the lucky direction.

Note the order of the narrative: first a brief statement, in the words “ἐπέπτατο δεξιὸς ὄρνις” (l. 160), then the incident in detail (ll. 161-165). Hence the main fact is told over again in l. 164 “δεξιὸς ἤϊξε κτλ.” Cp. Il.6. 158-168, where the story begins with the main fact of the banishment of Bellerophon (“ὅς ῤ̔ ἐκ δήμου ἔλασσε”), and then goes back to the cause—“τῷ δὲ γυνὴ Προίτου ἐπεμήνατο κτλ.”

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

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (1 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: