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[269] 269-72. These lines are spurious, as was perceived by Ar.; and Schol T says “προηθετοῦντο δὲ καὶ παρ᾽ ἐνίοις τῶν σοφιστῶν, ἐν ἐνίοις δὲ οὐδὲ ἐφέροντο” (the ‘Sophists’ are only here mentioned as Homeric critics, and the reading is suspicious). They are evidently inserted by some one who thought that the “πέντε πτύχες” of 18.481 were formed by the different metals, whereas they were no doubt of hide. Even if the “πτύχες” were of metal the arrangement here given would be absurd, for the gold is hidden away in the middle where it would be neither useful nor ornamental. 268, as appears from 21.165, needs no further expansion. Ar.'s explanation of the interpolation is curious. “ἀθετοῦνται στίχοι δ́, ὅτι διεσκευασμένοι εἰσὶν ὑπό τινος τῶν βουλομένων πρόβλημα ποιεῖν. μάχεται δὲ σαφῶς τοῖς γνησίοις: ἄτρωτα γὰρ τὰ ἡφαιστότευκτα συνίσταται” (An.); the passage was interpolated to support the views of some of those who had made a problem of the arrangement of the metals in “Σ” — a favourite crux mentioned by Gellius (xiv. 6), and discussed at length by Porphyrios in Schol. B, and probably by Aristotle in his Homeric Problems (see below). Porphyrios held that the gold was the middle, Ar. that it was the outer, of the layers; and the latter, that he might not be accused of athetizing the lines because he could not reconcile them with his view (“ἵνα μὴ δοκῆι λύσεως ἠπορηκέναι καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἠθετηκέναι”), gave as an explanation of the lines as they stood that the spear was stopped by the outer layer, not piercing it, but bending back the next layers, so that “ἐγένετο κοιλότης, οὐ τρῶσις”, and two layers were ‘driven through,’ though the outer one stopped the point! Aristotle quotes 272 in an extremely obscure passage of the Poetics (xxv. 15), which is practically unintelligible, but probably points to a “λύσις” of the same sort.

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

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