previous next

[659] ποιν́η, blood-wite, compare the phrase “νήποινοι ὄλοισθε” Od. 1.380, Od. 2.145. For a man to die and have no bloodmoney or vengeance exacted by his family was a disgrace, for it brought him to the level of the worthless wretches who, as in the Icelandic sagas, were outlaws on account of their misdeeds, and might be killed without payment. The death of Harpalion is in fact at once avenged by Paris when he slays Euchenor; but the price is not paid by Meriones himself.

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 (2 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: