[383] The common reading ἀερθείς merely reproduces the same notion that is already in ἐφύπερθεν, that he stands above it as a shipwright stands on a balk of timber and uses the drill to make a hole in the wood at his feet. But the reading of two important MSS. is ἐρεισθείς, which is said to have been preferred by Aristarchus. This would signify ‘throwing my weight upon it,’ as a man presses with his body upon the stock of a drill as it turns round. Transl. ‘just as when a man bores shiptimber with a borer, while his mates at the lower end keep it spinning with a strap which they hold at either end; and the drill runs continuously.’ The ἱμάς here serves the same purpose as the string of the ‘bow,’ used in working an ordinary drill. The strap made one turn round the shaft or barrel of the borer, so that by pulling at each end of it alternately the borer was made to revolve a turn or two, first in one direction and then in another. We are not, of course, to suppose that there was any such apparatus attached to this μοχλός, the particulars belonging to the simile of the “τρύπανον” only. What Odysseus means to say is, that the work they were engaged in, and their various attitudes, resembled those of a shipcarpenter and his men using the drill. Euripides copies it exactly,
. Itis usual to describe τρυπῷ as a form of the optative, viz. contracted from “τρυπάοι” (“τρυπάω”). Itmust however be remarked that ὡς ὅτε is nowhere else used in a simile with the optative; which mood is always introduced under such circumstances by “ὡς εἰ”. Either then we must treat “τρυπῷ” as a peculiar usage, or else accept the reading of Draco (de Metr. 86.26), “τρυπᾷ”. Ameis proposes the participle “τρυπῶν”, and supplies, from the foregoing words, “ἐρεισθεὶς δινεῖ” to complete the sentence.“ ναυπηγίαν δ᾽ ὡς εἴ τις ἁρμόζων ἀνὴρ
διπλοῖν χαλινοῖν τρύπανον κωπηλατεῖ
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