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[511] 511-12. Cf. Od. 12.350-51 “βούλομ᾽ ἅπαξ . . ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὀλέσσαι, ἢ δηθὰ στρεύγεσθαι ἐὼν ἐν νήσωι ἐρήμηι. ἕνα χρόνον” here is clearly equivalent to “ἅπαξ” there, and answers exactly to our idiomatic use ‘three times’ = thrice, etc. The phrase is a strange one, as “χρόνον” in H. (where the acc. is the only case which is found), as in later Greek, always means ‘a while,’ duration of time, whereas “ἅπαξ” marks a point of time. The sentence consists of two main clauses “βέλτερον . . βιῶναι” and “ἢ . . χειροτέροισιν”, opposing “ἕνα χρόνον” to “δηθά”, of which the first includes the two disjunctive clauses, “ἢ ἀπολέσθαι” and “ἠὲ βιῶναι”, two alternatives both comprised under “ἕνα χρόνον. βιῶναι” must be taken in the strict sense of the aor., ‘to win life,’ not simply ‘to live.’ στρεύγεσθαι is explained by the Schol. with “στραγγίζεσθαι”, ‘to be wrung, squeezed out,’ and in Od. 12.351 “στρέγγεσθαι” is a variant in Harl. The metaphor of squeezing vividly expresses the situation of the Achaians; it is hardly ‘better adapted to express slow death by starvation in a desert island’ as Kammer thinks, holding that the phrase is copied from

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

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