previous next

[513] Lit. provide thou that honour may attend upon the prayers (of Agamemnon). The respect due to the divine quality of repentance, rather than the mere prayer for forgiveness, is here made the motive which influences men to relent. Phoinix says, ‘admit into thy soul that reverence which bends the minds even of the best.’ Others translate ‘grant to the request of these “λιταί” that recompense (i.e. Agamemnon's gifts) may be bestowed on thee.’ This gives the usual Homeric meaning of “τιμή”, but the connexion of words is unnatural, as no “σοί” is expressed; it does not suit the drift of the allegory, and leaves no force in the emphatic antithesis “καὶ σὺ .. ἄλλων περ”. The purely abstract use of “τιμή” is not so serious a consideration as it would be in an older portion of the poems (cf. note on 1.158). But it must be admitted that von Christ's conj. “αἵ τ᾽ .. ἐπέγναμψαν” gives a simpler sense.

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 Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: