previous next

[704] ὄψεσθε is most naturally taken as an aor. imper., see note on 5.212. The imper. is the mood regularly used in appeals made with the formula “εἴ ποτε”, see Il. 22.82 “ τάδε τ᾽ αἴδεο καί μ᾽ ἐλέησον αὐτήν, εἴ ποτέ τοι λαθικηδέα μαζὸν ἐπέσχον” , and other instances in 1.39, 5.116, 15.372, Od. 3.98; and the appeal to the past becomes meaningless if it merely follows upon a bare statement of what they will now behold. The ‘jussive’ future expresses the indifference of the speaker, e.g. 6.71, and is thus out of place here. There is some other slight evidence for a sigmatic aor. from the root “ὀπ”-, e.g. “ἐπόψατο”, Pind. fr. 88. 7 (Schr.), and “ὦψα: εἶδον” in Suidas. Herodianos took “ὄψεσθε” in Od. 8.313 also as an imper., and this certainly gives a better sense.

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 (7 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (7):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: