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[346] αὐτόν, emphatic, as opposed to the dogs. For the wish compare 4.34, 24.212. So far from the expression involving, as some have thought, a reminiscence of a stage of cannibalism, it is meant, while conveying hatred enough, to express that which is inconceivable; see on 24.213. The idiom by which a certainty is thus expressed, by contrasting it with an impossibility in the form of a wish, is familiar; see 8.538, 13.825, 18.464; Lange, “ΕΙ” 329-32, and 504. The punctuation of the whole speech is Lange's, and is clearly right, from the analogy of 9.379-87, where we have the same climax of repudiation in the two asyndetic clauses with “οὐδ᾽ εἰ”, followed by “οὐδ᾽ ὧς”. Others put a comma after “ἀπαλάλκοι” and colon after “ἄλλα” (350), thus joining the first “οὐδ᾽ εἰ” clause with what precedes, the second with what follows. This entirely emasculates the sentence.

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

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