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[28] Here, as in several similar passages (112, 366, 20.85, 22.118, 120, and others collected in H. G. § 238), the MSS. vary between the aor. and fut. infin. The same phrase recurs in Od. 20.121 — MSS. “τίσασθαι” only; in Od. 24.470 they are nearly unanimous for “τίσεσθαι”. A has “τίσεσθαι” here, but “τίσασθαι” in 366. The question is an old one, as appears from the scholia on 22.118, Od. 2.373, and the testimony of the MSS. on such a point carries little weight. In most of these cases the fut. is the more natural, and Madvig and others would read it throughout. But the aor. is quite defensible; here the sense would be ‘he thought that he had now got his revenge.’ After words of saying (indirect discourse) there is no question that the tense of the infin. must follow that of the verb in the direct statement. In other cases there are exceptions where the idea of futurity is especially vivid — see the instances in M. and T. § 113. ‘Verbs of hoping, expecting, promising, swearing, and a few others ... regularly take the fut. infin. in indirect discourse, but they also allow the aor. and even the pres. infin. (not in indirect discourse) like verbs of wishing,’ M. and T. § 136. Hence the possibility of two renderings in 98, and of two readings in 112, 366, and other passages. Where the idea to be expressed so easily shades off on the one side to emphasis of the futurity of the subordinate verb, on the other to the mere thought of accomplishment, it is useless to lay down a rigid rule as the purists do.

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

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