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[99] The line is a curse, ‘May you rot away to the elements of which you were made.’ The legend that man was formed out of water and clay, the ‘clod of saturated earth cast by the Maker into human mould,’ is very common; e.g. in Hesiod Opp. 61, when Zeus creates Pandora, he commands Hephaistos “γαῖαν ὕδει φύρειν”: and the same idea occurs in the lines quoted by Schol. A from Xenophanes, which are to be read

“πάντες γὰρ γαίης τε καὶ ὕδατος ἐκγενόμεσθα: ἐκ γαίης γὰρ πάντα, καὶ εἰς γῆν πάντα τελευτᾶι”.

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

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    • Hesiod, Works and Days, 61
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