E. M. Cope, Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle

1 The words here assigned to Homer do not occur in our present text: but the substance of them is found at the beginning of the famous simile of the lion, Il. XX 164, Πηλείδης δ᾽ ἑτέρωθεν ἐναντίον ὦρτο λεὼν ὣς, κ.τ.λ. followed by a long description of this animal. On the quotations from Homer in Aristotle, see Heitz, Verl. Schrift. Arist., die homerischen Fragen, p. 258, seq.: and Paley's note, with the extract from Wolf's Proleg. § 11, Introd. (to the ed. of the Iliad) p. XXXVI. The former of course includes this amongst the quotations which differ from Homer's text, but draws from this the inference that the text used by Aristotle (who himself revised it) was here different to our own. I think that nothing more can fairly be inferred from cases like this than that Aristotle has misquoted the words of our present version: all the substance is there. As we have already so many times had occasion to notice, Ar. has here quoted from memory; and like all other men of very extensive reading and very retentive memory, Bacon for example, and Walter Scott, has trusted too much to his memory, not referred to his author, and consequently misquoted. And I think that is all that can reasonably be said about it.