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[253] This puzzling line was rejected, presumably as unintelligible, by the Alexandrian trio. The long commentary of Porphyrios in Schol. B gives a collection of ‘solutions,’ only two of which deserve serious consideration. None of those which adopt the reading “πλέω” are satisfactory. The best explanation is the most obvious; the words mean ‘more of the night than two (of the three) watches has gone, and the third only remains.’ The objection to this is not really serious; it is pedantic to say that if more than two-thirds have gone, a third cannot remain, for the words imply only that there is nothing but the third watch left to act in; there is no assertion that the whole of the third is left. In other words λέλειπται means rather ‘is left us’ than ‘remains intact.’ There is nothing absurd in saying ‘we have let more than eleven hours slip by, and only the twelfth is left us,’ though the words are not of course those of a mathematician. This is the way in which Chrysippos took the passage; the explanation of Aristotle seems to have been in effect the same as that of Ameis, ‘the greater part of the night, consisting of two-thirds, is gone, and only one-third is left.’ But this is excessively complicated and unnatural even if possible. For the threefold division of the night cf. Od. 12.312 “ἦμος δὲ τρίχα νυκτὸς ἔην, μετὰ δ᾽ ἄστρα βεβήκει”. The scholiast compares the threefold division of the day 21.111 “ἔσσεται ἢ ἠὼς ἢ δείλη ἢ μέσον ἦμαρ. δύο” is indeclinable in Homer, but the only other instances of its use, except in nom. or acc., are Od. 10.515 (gen.), 13.407 (dat.).

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

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