previous next

[637] μιλτοπάρηιοι (here and Od. 9.125), with cheeks painted with vermilion. This does not indicate so much a personification of the ship as a literal painting of a face upon the bows, the red paint being used as a primitive approximation to the colour of flesh. So “φοινικοπάρηιος” Od. 11.124, Od. 23.271. Though this practice is not expressly recorded otherwise in H., there can be little doubt that it existed then as it did, and still does, all over the world, from Chinese junks to Mediterranean and Portuguese fishing boats, to say nothing of its survival in the ‘figure-head.’ In early vase-paintings the ship of war has an animal's head for the bows, generally a pig's snout. The original idea seems to have been to give the ship eyes with which to see its way. (See Assmann Jahrb. d. d. arch. Inst. iv. 100, Torr Ancient Ships pp. 37, 69.) Of course the actual painting may in Homer's ships have degenerated into a purely conventional daub; but the epithet in question shews that even in that case some consciousness of its origin had survived. Ar. remarked “ἤδη ἡ ἐκ χρωμάτων μίξις ἦν ἐπιπολάσασα πρὸς τὴν ζωγραφικήν”. Cf. Herod.iii. 58 “τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν πᾶσαι αἱ νῆες ἦσαν μιλτηλιφέες”.

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