previous next

[77] 77-91 are quoted by Aischines with large variations (see App. Crit.), which give us a valuable glimpse into the popular texts of his day. For 84, which happens to be quoted as in our texts by Plato, Aischines has three lines which are in all respects worse; grammar and thought are alike confused, and “ἀμφιφορεῖ” is a non-Epic form for -“ῆϊ”. Generally speaking the quotation — the longest from H. in any classical writer — may console us for the loss of these corrupt texts, and warn us against setting ourselves too high an ideal in restoring fragments of new lines such as we find in the oldest papyri. The fortunate coincidence of the citation from Plato answers once for all the suggestion that our present vulgate was made up by Alexandrian critics from these ‘praeAristarchean’ texts.

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 Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: