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[352] There seems to be a mixture of two trains of thought in this speech. It opens as though “μιν. περ ἐόντα” were a parenthetical complaint, ‘Mother — for you did give me life, of however short a span.’ But this apparently subordinate clause is then made one part of the emphatic antithesis of the entire sentence, ‘since my life is short, it should at least be glorious.’ The sentence, like the ‘two-sided’ similes (see on 12.151), buds out into new relations while it is being uttered. It is possible, but more prosaic, to leave “μιν. περ ἐόντα” out of sight altogether as a mere parenthesis, and take “ἔτεκες” as involving the claim, the divinity of his mother being understood: ‘since you, a goddess, bore me, the gods should have dealt better by me.’

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

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