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[483] γυναιξί is the emphatic word, ‘even if you have a bow, it was only given you to use against women, not against goddesses.’ The masc. λέοντα is strange, but the fem. does not occur in H. (see on 17.134, 18.318), and the masc. may therefore be taken as of common gender, especially as it appears to be a borrowed (Semitic) word. Death is commonly personified under the form of a lion in Semitic mythology, and some traces of this appear even in Greek symbolism, of which the present passage is the clearest. For Artemis as a deathgoddess see 6.205, 428, etc. She is said to have been worshipped in Ambrakia in the form of a lioness.

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

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