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[400] ἔρεζε: the “ϝ” is neglected as in 19.150 “ἄρεκτον,” 23.570 “ἔρεξας,” Od. 24.458 “ἔρεζον”.

From here eleven consecutive lines have the trochaic caesura, which is commoner than the penthemimeral in H. (about 54.5 per cent of the lines have it in Il. and 58 per cent in Od., see Van L. Ench. p. 14 note), and was perhaps originally invariable. For the genesis of the Homeric hexameter reference may be made to a very interesting paper by F. Allen A. of Cincinnati, in Kuhn's Ztsch. xxiv. 558 (1879), where it and the Saturnian verse, as well as the typical old German measure, are traced back to a common origin still found as a metre in the Zend-Avesta. Another view is taken by Usener, Altgriechischer Versbau. He takes the original form of the hexameter to have been a couplet of which the second half had an anacrusis, long or short — and of this doubtful length he holds that traces still remain in numerous cases of ‘neglect of “ϝ᾽”’ and other irregularities after the trochaic caesura. But the evidence is not decisive enough to raise this above the level of an attractive hypothesis; and it gives no explanation of the importance of the bucolic diaeresis.

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

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