previous next

[791] 791-5 were obelized by Ar. on good grounds: ‘if the advance of the Greeks was all that had to be announced, there was no need of the goddess; but if the Trojans lacked courage and had to be persuaded to advance, the goddess must appear in person. When the gods take human shape, they are wont to leave at their departure some sign by which they may be known. The message is not adapted to the tone of a son speaking to his father, but is intense (“ἐπιτεταμένοι”) and reproachful; and the words of 802 do not suit Polites; it is Iris herself who should impose the command.’ On the other hand, l. 798 is rather suited to a human warrior than to a goddess. But the whole passage seems forced, and out of place. 804-5 should belong to a description of the first landing of the Greeks (compare the similar advice of Nestor 362-8, and the building of the wall in 7.337-43); and it has been remarked that as a matter of fact the numbers of the enemy must have been largely reduced by the tenth year of the war, especially as the Myrmidons are no longer among them. Robert (Bild u. Lied p. 17) has shewn that Polites was probably the Trojan sentinel in the Kypria, so that the whole passage probably comes thence with the rest of the Catalogue.

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: