ἴλη, band, troop, from rt. “ϝελ, εἴλω”, to press: cp. “ὅμ-ιλο-ς” (Curt. Etym. § 660). The Ionic form is “εἴλη” ( Her. 1. 73 etc.). Its poetical use is as free as that of Lat. manus (e.g., Pind. N. 5. 38“εὔφρονες ἶλαι”): but it had also a technical military sense, Xen. An. 1. 2. 16“κατ᾽ ἴλας καὶ κατὰ τάξεις” (‘troops’ of cavalry and ‘companies’ of infantry).— τὸν ὑπασπίδιον κόσμον, the armour ‘under the shield,’ i.e. the body-armour, as the “θώραξ” and the “κνημῖδες”. Ajax had directed that all his armour except his shield should be buried with him (577). “ὑπασπίδιος” occurs only here and in [Eur. ] Rhes. 740 “τὸν ὑπασπίδιον κοῖτον”.
This text is part of:
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.