[87] Vs. 87-154. Assembly of the people. Agamemnon's speech and its effect.
ἠύτε: introduces a detailed comparison, as v. 455, 3.3; see §2 g, h. ἔθνεα: swarms. For the following weak hiatus, see § 41 f “δ”. εἶσι: retains its force as a present esp. in comparisons, cf. 3.61. μελισσάων: i.e. wild bees which live in hollow trees and in holes in the rock.—For the comparison of bees cf. ac veluti in pratis ubi apes aestate serena | floribus insidunt variis, et candida circum | lilia funduntur; strepit omnis murmure campus Verg. Aen. vi. 707 ff.; ‘as bees | In spring-time when the sun with Taurus rides, | Pour forth their populous youth about the hive | In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers | Fly to and fro . . . So thick the airy crowd swarm'd.’ Milton Par. Lost i. 768 ff.This text is part of:
Homer's Iliad, Books I-III. Thomas D. Seymour. Boston. Ginn and Company. 1891.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
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.