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[213] So says Beatrice in Much Ado, ‘I could eat his heart in the marketplace.’ Compare 4.35, with note, and 22.347. Those who find in such expressions a proof that Homeric Greece retained traces of cannibalism will of course be prepared to extend the same conclusion to Elizabethan England. προσφῦσα, burying my teeth in it; cf. “ὀδὰξ ἐν χείλεσι φύντες” Od. 1.381. ἄντιτα ἔργα, so Od. 17.51 (= 60) “αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεὺς ἄντιτα ἔργα τελέσσηι”, and cf. Od. 1.379 “αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεὺς δῶισι παλίντιτα ἔργα γενέσθαι”. This shows that we must regard the words as a single phrase, work of vengeance. But the addition of παιδὸς ἐμοῦ is awkward: we must explain then might the work of revenge for my son take place. This is not entirely satisfactory. Hence Bekker and others reject 214-16; 215 may be borrowed from 22.514 (note the variant “πρός”). κακιζόμενον playing the coward hardly sounds Homeric, and ἀλεωρ̂ης shelter (= safety) differs somewhat from the use in 12.57, 15.533. The absence of the lines is on the whole a gain. — Some divide “ἂν τιτά”, which is very unlikely; “τιτός” does not occur elsewhere in Greek, and Od. 17.51 is unambiguous. No “ἄν” is required: cf. 19.321.

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

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