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[221] The line is not very suitable to the present context, as the aor. ἤλυθον puts the Trojan attack as a point of time, not as a continuing process. Hence it should be followed at once by the actual conflict, and there is no room for the next episode, the long “ἐπιπώλησις” of Agamemnon. In other words, the episode of the duel of Menelaos and Paris once ended here, and was followed immediately by the general engagement; the “ἐπιπώλησις”, though composed for this place, is a later addition. There is no reason to suspect 221 as an interpolation, as Heyne and others do; an interpolator would obviously use the imperf., not the aor., if he had the “ἐπιπώλησις” before him.

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

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