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[446] The γε here seems quite out of place, and was no doubt, as Heyne remarks, inserted into the original “νηὸς ἐτέτυκτο” from ignorance of the fact that the ictus was sufficient to lengthen a final syllable. Apollo, as often, shares a temple, mentioned again in 7.83, with his mother and sister. This and the temples of Athene in Troy (6.88 etc.) and Athens (2.549, Od. 7.81) are the only temples mentioned in H., for the “νηός” of 1.39 cannot be counted as such; see note there. Vaguer allusions are found in Od. 6.10 and Od. 12.346. So, too, the idea of the ἄδυτον, a holy place ‘not to be entered’ by the profane, belongs to an order of ideas foreign to Homeric thought. Elsewhere we hear only of the “ἄλσος”, the “τέμενος”, and the “βωμός” as the scene of worship (cf., however, “οὐδός” 9.404, Od. 8.80, which may imply a temple at Pytho). See particularly Cauer Grundfragen pp. 197 ff. We seem, therefore, to have clear evidence of the intrusion of later ideas into the primitive Epos. As Cauer remarks, the form “νηός” agrees with this; for in similar words which must have existed in the primitive poems the older “-α_ο-” has not given way to the Ionic “-ηο-”: “λαός, Ἀτρεΐδαο, τάων”, etc.

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

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