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[23] The idea seems to be that the lion comes upon a quarry just killed by a hunting party, and eats it under the eyes of the hunters and hounds. Similar pictures of the intruding lion occur in 11.480, 13.198. Some of the old critics objected that the lion will not eat any animal he has not killed himself, and therefore took σώματι = “ζώωι”, a living animal. But Ar. was clearly right in saying that H. never uses “σῶμα” of the living body. It is likely enough that the poet was not acquainted with this habit of the lion; or it may be that the lion's repugnance does not in fact extend to an animal out of which the life has hardly gone, as is notoriously the case with lions in captivity. Cf. 18.161. It has also been suggested that the emphatic position of πεινάων means that the lion is driven by stress of hunger to an unusual meal.

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

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