previous next

[81] This line has been rejected by Friedländer as a gnomic ‘tag.’ Though such tags were peculiarly suitable for interpolation, there is really no cause for suspicion here. The sentiment of course is the familiar saw about ‘him who fights and runs away.’ For βέλτερον ὅς (where “ὅς” = “εἴ τις”) compare note on 7.401, and Od. 15.72 “ἶσόν τοι κακόν ἐσθ᾽, ὅς τ᾽ οὐκ ἐθέλοντα νέεσθαι ξεῖνον ἐποτρύνει”, Hesiod Opp. 327 “ἶσον δ᾽ ὅς θ᾽ ἱκέτην ὅς τε ξεῖνον κακὸν ἔρξηι”. Similar cases are common in Euripides, Thuk. and others. Ameis compares Luther's words, ‘Wer zu viel Honig isset, das ist nicht gut.’ προφύγηι evidently means escapes, as distinguished from the simple “φεύγων”, by flight.

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):
    • Hesiod, Works and Days, 327
    • Homer, Odyssey, 15.72
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: