previous next

[221] Battle is a labour in which men must be kept up to the mark; for there is plenty of hard work and little reward — as with a farmer who should reap abundant haulm, and find but little grain to harvest. The toil of slaughter is compared to the cutting of the straw with the sickle, but there the likeness ends; ‘pro frugibus sunt funera’ (Valeton in Mnemos. 23. 389 ff.: Lendrum in C. R. iv. 46). Soldiers require strengthening with food for such thankless work. Possibly there may be a thought also of the spoil which is not to be had after a battle as after a siege; but this is not essential. There is another comparison of battle to reaping in 11.67 ff. αἶψά τε, the “τε” is clearly gnomic or generalising; H. G. § 332, and see Od. 1.392 “αἶψά τέ οἱ δῶ ἀφνειὸν πέλεται”.

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: