previous next

[285] ἀλαοσκοπιήν, ‘kept no blind man's watch.’ So Düntzer, ‘non caecis oculis vidit.’ The words contain an oxymoron, the attributive part of the compound contradicting the other part. But Ahrens (Philol. 27. 255) would make “ἀλαός” here another form of “ἀλεός” (“ἀλϝός”)=‘vain,’ connected with “ἀλύω”, so that “ἀλαοσκοπιή” would mean ‘a fruitless watch.’ The phrase occurs only here in the Odyssey, but is found in Il.10. 515; 13.10; 14.135.

χρυσήνιος. The horses of Ares are called “χρυσάμπυκες” Il.5. 358.

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 (4 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (4):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: