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[263] 263-68 = 6.506-11. This simile, so fine when applied to the vain and handsome Paris, loses much of its force here, where it is inserted to illustrate not the exultant beauty but merely the speed of Hector. Ar. athetized 265-68 as a wrong repetition, but retained 263-64 as an introduction to 269-70; Zen. rejected 265 only. But the whole passage from 263-70 must go together; 269 is an Epic commonplace, serving to join the simile to its context. We have here, as at the end of “Θ” (557-58), a clear plagiarism of a passage whose intrinsic beauty marked it out for plunder. How a single ‘Homer’ could have thus repeated his own best passages, careless of their appropriateness, it is for the defenders of the unity of the Iliad to say. But we have no right to talk of interpolation; the simile is embedded in the structure of the book and has doubtless been so from the first, like the drums from older temples in the wall of Themistokles.

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

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