previous next

[34] 34 alludes to 4.370 ff. ἀλκήν has the emphatic place in rhetorical antithesis with “ἀλκήν” in 39; ‘it was my valour thou didst make light of .. and it is valour that Zeus denies thee.’ But as so often the thought grows as it is being uttered, and a fresh antithesis to “ἀλκήν” is given by “σκήπτρωι μέν” in 38. πρῶτον, you began by blaming my valour, so now you cannot complain of my retort. The variant “πρῶτος” gives this sense yet more clearly, and is perhaps preferable.

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

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (1 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: