previous next

[21] “ ὠμά, ” Od. 18.87 “μήδεά τ᾽ ἐξερύσας δώηι κυσὶν ὠμὰ δάσασθαι”, where the neut. plur. is natural; cf. “ὠμὸν βεβρώθοις Πρίαμον” 4.35. Here, where there is no subst. for it to agree with, it may either be due to the implied notion of “κρέα” (“ὤμ᾽ ἀποταμνόμενον κρέα ἔδμεναι” 22.347) which might be omitted when “ὠμὰ δάσασθαι” had coalesced into a single phrase; or more probably it is analogous to the ordinary adverbial use of the neut. plur. as in “ὀξέα κεκληγώς”, etc. The difference here evidently is that the adj. expresses a quality of the object of the verb, and does not qualify the meaning of the verb itself. But the logical inaccuracy though real is not unnatural. P. Knight and others regard 21-3 as an interpolation to explain what Achilles refers to, made up from 18.336-37 with a reminiscence of Od. 18.87. This is quite possible. Note the neglect of “ϝ” in “ἑρύσας” (“ϝερύς” Schulze; see App. D, vol. i. p. 594).

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

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (4 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (4):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: