previous next

[394] θοήν as an epithet of night is not very easy to explain. To an inhabitant of a northern climate the twilight of the south of Europe seems comparatively short; but we can hardly suppose, as some have done, that the Aryan immigration, if it came from the North, was sufficiently rapid to allow of such a contrast being felt; nor should we a priori have supposed that even in Greece darkness was felt as absolutely swift, either in approach or in duration. Nitzsch refers it to the sense ‘sharp,’ and understands ‘the keen night air.’ The phrase recurs in 468, 24.366, 653, Od. 12.284.

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 (2 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: