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[362] This tactical counsel, like the advice to build a wall round the ships in 7.327-43 (q.v.), is singularly out of place in the last year of the war; it is the first of many such didactic passages put into Nestor's mouth, and is meant at once to present him as the leading counsellor of the Greek army, and to introduce the coming Catalogue. For φρήτρας, clans, lit. brotherhoods, cf. 9.63 “ἀφρήτωρ”: the word does not recur in H., but is only slightly disguised in the Attic “φρατρία”, and is used by Herod.i. 125, where, as here, some MSS. give the form “φήτρη”, perhaps by confusion with the Dor. “πάτρα”. So in Attic “φατρία” has some support from grammarians and late authorities (see Lex.). There can, however, be no doubt of the connexion with frater, etc. The word seems to be a relic of the patriarchal time when the family, not the tribe, was the unit.

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

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