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[506] Ἤϊσσον, sprang up to speak. The verb is used only of rapid rushes, such as would hardly seem to accord with the dignity of “γέροντες”. But it must be remembered that the scene is more like a political debate, with all its excitement, than a judicial decision in our sense (H. Sidgwick in C. R. viii. 3). τοῖσιν, with the staves, comitative dat. as “φασγάνωι, ἔγχεϊ, ἵπποις ἀΐσσειν”. It would be simpler to refer “ἤϊσσον” with Död. to the litigants, ‘they rushed before the judges’; but we must then take “δίκαζον” as = “δικάζοντο”, pleaded, Od. 11.545 (a sense for which there is no support in Homeric or later Greek; the act. always means to give judgment, see also 23.579), or admit an abrupt change; ‘before them rushed the litigants, and they (the judges) gave judgment in turn.

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

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