previous next

[263] ἐντέτατο should mean was stretched tight, cf. 5.728. In this case the thongs could not have been ‘inside’ the hollow, i.e. next the head. Possibly it is meant that there was a leather cap (“ῥινοῦ” 262) padded with felt (“πῖλος”) inside, and wound round outside for the sake of strength with thongs; while outside these again came an outer covering of boar's tusks. The ἱμάντες are then ἔντοσθεν because they form the middle one of three layers. The tusks may possibly be a relic of the origin of the helmet from the wild beast's head, a form which is very commonly found in primitive headgear; see App. B, vii. 2.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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: