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[420] The way back to the startingpoint leads through a ravine, the dried bed of a stream, one of the “ἔναυλοι” of 16.71. It is common enough in primitive countries for such gullies to serve in turn as roads and watercourses according to the weather. The road is the stream-bed, and does not lie beside it. Antilochos proposes to spurt up level with Menelaos at this point, where there is room for only one chariot, and thus force him either to give way or to face the certainty of a collision. ῥωχμός, a break or sudden dip in the ground, which had been cut through by a flood. The form “ῥωγμός” is, perhaps, linguistically preferable, though the text can be supported by the analogy of forms like “πλοχμός, ἰωχμός”.

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

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