previous next

[141] γενέην τε τόκον τε, see note on 7.128. The line is obscure; to say it is hard to protect the lineage and offspring of all men would serve to dissuade Ares from avenging a common mortal, but has little force when the offspring referred to is that of a god, even though the mother be human. Perhaps what Athene means is that ‘it is hard to keep watch and ward over (pay constant attention to) the birth and parentage of all men’; i.e. all heroes — at least all worth mentioning, all of royal blood — are in the last resort sprung from gods, and would then all have a right to involve the gods in their blood-feuds if the claim were once admitted; the only thing therefore is to neglect divine descent altogether. This involves a sense of ῥῦσθαι to which no exact parallel occurs; but a somewhat similar use will be found in 24.584. Van L. boldly reads “ἀθανάτων” for ἀνθρώπων, comparing 16.449, 21.187. This gives the required sense, but there is nothing to account for the alteration.

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 (3 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (3):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: