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[4] ἱπποπόλων, only here and 14.427; for the second part of the compound see note on 1.63. The epithet ἀγχεμάχων seems to have caused trouble to the ancients, as all these tribes were famed for their peaceful habits; Strabo explains “ὅτι ἀπόρθητοι καθὰ καὶ οἱ ἀγαθοὶ πολεμισταί”. The Ἱππημολγοί are evidently the nomad Scythian tribes north of the Danube, living on mares' milk like the modern Tartars on their koumiss. So the Massagetai are “γαλακτοπόται”, Herod.i. 216.Information of these distant tribes no doubt reached Greece in the earliest times along the primeval trade-route by which the amber of the Baltic came to the Mediterranean. The Ἄβιοι, ‘most just of men,’ are perhaps connected with the legend of the “Ἀργιππαῖοι” in Herodotos (iv. 23), who “τοῖσι περιοικέουσί εἰσι οἱ τὰς διαφορὰς διαιρέοντες”, abstaining from all war and enjoying a sort of sanctity. (Similarly of the GetaiHerod., iv. 93.) They may be the same as the “Γάβιοι” mentioned by Aischylos in the Prom. Sol. fr. 184 (Dind.); “ἔπειτα δ᾽ ἥξει δῆμον ἐνδικώτατον [βροτῶν] ἁπάντων καὶ φιλοξενώτατον, Γαβίους”. This makes it probable that “Ἄβιοι” is really a proper name, not an epithet ‘having no fixed subsistence,’ i. e. nomads, as Nauck and others have taken it, adding “τ᾽” after “δικαιοτάτων”, a variant alluded to by Nikanor and Did., but not approved by Ar. Similarly some of the old critics regarded “Ἀγαυῶν” as a proper name, and “ἱππημολγῶν” as an epithet.

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

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