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[511] ἤθεα, haunts; so the word is used in Od. 14.411 of the sties in which the swine sleep, and frequently for ‘dwelling-places’ by Herodotos (v. 15, etc.). νομόν, pasturage. Virgil takes ἵππων as fem., in pastus armentaque tendit equarum, but this is not necessary, nor does it suit the point of the simile.

The swing of the dactylic verse has been universally recognized as harmonizing with the horse's gallop, like Virgil's quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum. The effect depends not only on the rhythm, but partly on the nasal consonants and the “ρ”. It is dangerous to lay too great stress, however, on the rhythm; Mr. Nicholson has pointed out that the two passages which in all Homer shew the largest consecutive number of purely dactylic lines (five) occur in the description of Patroklos' funeral! (23.135-9, 166-70). Our habit of neglecting quantity and attending only to stress misleads us into reading dactyls into ‘triple’ time instead of ‘common’ time, <*> instead of <*>. Hence a dactylic hexameter is to us a galloping rhythm — to the Greek it was rather a stately marching rhythm. The so-called ‘cyclic’ dactyl of the lyric poets is of course in triple time, but it is not epic.

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

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