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[154] ο<*>`ς ἄξει, i.e. “ὅς ϝ᾽ ἄξει”, cf. 183 “ὃς σ᾽ ἄξει”. This brilliant discovery was made by Brandreth, and afterwards (apparently independently) by Bekker and Cobet. The correctness of the conjecture when once made is quite obvious. It is especially important as convincingly shewing that “Ϝ” was still, at the time of the composition of a comparatively late portion of the poems, an actual independent and still living sound in the Epic dialect, and that the many other proofs of its existence are not, as has been argued, mere metrical reminiscences of a lost consonant (H. G. § 402). There appears to be an actual survival of a written “ϝ᾽” = “ἑ” in an inscr. from Metapontum, of which the last line is to be read “δὸς δέ ϝ᾽ ἰν” (= “ἐν”) “ἀνθρώποις δόξαν ἔχειν ἀγαθάν” (see van L. Ench. p. 258). Barnes long ago felt the need of a pronoun and conj. “ὅς σφ᾽ ἄξει”.

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

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