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[756] See 2.615-7, from which it appears that Buprasion is a region, and the hill of Aleision and the Olenian rock localities on its boundaries. The correct form is “Ἀλήσιον”, as Byz. Steph. writes it, confirmed by “Ἀλασυῆς” on an inscr. from Olympia (Collitz 1167 = I.G.A. 120). Steph. s.v. “Ἀλήσιον” says “τὸ δ᾽ Ἀλείσιόν ἐστι τὸ νῦν “Ἀλαισυαίων χώρα” περὶ τὴν Ἀμφιδολίδα .. κεῖται δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς ὀρεινῆς ὁδοῦ τῆς ἐξ Ἤλιδος εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν”. The only clue to the position of the πέτρη Ὠλενίη is the name of “Ὤλενος”, a town on the N. coast at least twenty miles from any point on a road between Elis and Olympia. Βουπράσιον acc. to Strabo was the name of a district between Dyme and Elis, and therefore also roughly half-way between Olenos and “Ἀλαισυαίων χώρα”. The passage in the Catalogue is therefore perfectly intelligible when it names the two latter sites as on the opposite sides of Elis; our present author has taken the names thence with complete disregard of geography, not only treating the two distant points as if they were close together, but evidently conceiving Aleision as the farther, whereas to Nestor coming from the south it was some twenty-five miles nearer than Olenos. No doubt he was an Asiatic Greek completely ignorant of the Peloponnesos. It is as though an inhabitant of Berkshire describing an invasion from the north were made to say, ‘We marched to the Thames and found the invaders besieging Windsor; but we defeated them and drove them all the way to the Chilterns, as far as Aylesbury and Slough; and there we stopped the pursuit’ — which would clearly shew that the author knew nothing of the country but the names.

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

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