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[117] ἕρμα: a well-known crux, not easily explicable from any other uses of the word. These are in Homer (1) the prop put under a ship drawn up on land, 1.486, 2.154, (2) metaphorically “ἕρμα πόληος”, prop of the city, 16.549, Od. 23.121; (3) in pl. earrings, 14.182, Od. 18.297. The senses ballast and reef come in later Greek. The usual explanation is from 2, foundation of woes. But Ar. felt this to be so unsatisfactory that he athetized the line, “γελοῖον γάρ φησιν ἔρεισμα τῶν ὀδυνῶν λέγεσθαι”. In favour of the athetesis we might add the synizesis of “-έων” (“-άων”); but on the other hand Ap. Rhod. imitates the line, which clearly has respectable antiquity ( iii. 279 “τόξα τανύσσας ἰοδόκης ἀβλῆτα πολύστονον ἐξέλετ᾽ ἰόν” ). No really satisfactory explanation has been given. Curtius derives from a root meaning to flow, Skt. sar, comparing “ὁρμή” and translating spring, source; but there is no other trace of such a sense in Greek. The sense ballast suggests at least the possibility of understanding it of a cargo, charge, freight, of woes; compare Aisch. Supp. 580 “λαβοῦσα δ᾽ ἕρμα Δῖον .. γείνατο παῖδ᾽ ἀμεμφῆ”, of the child in the womb.

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

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