previous next

[23] ἡμιθέων, a word which is not only “ἅπαξ λεγόμενον” in Homer, but is totally inconsistent with his idea of the heroes, who, though of divine descent and stronger than men of his own day, are yet no more than men. The word is found in Hesiod Opp. 160 “ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται ἡμίθεοι”, in the thoroughly un-Homeric passage about the successive ages of mankind. Bentley's ingenious “κάππεσον ἐν δίνηισι καὶ ἰφθίμων μένε᾽ ἀνδρῶν” and Axt's simpler “κ. ἐν κονίηι καὶ ἀρηϊθόων γένος ἀνδρῶν” are equally unlikely.

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 (1 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (1):
    • Hesiod, Works and Days, 160
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: