previous next

[178] τόσσον πολλόν must go together, in the sense so much. This use of “τόσσον” with adjectives (which is regular in modern Greek) is rare, except in the case of comparatives. There are, however, a few cases, cf. Od. 15.405 “οὔ τι περιπληθὴς λίην τόσον”, not so very populous, Od. 4.371, 21.275, 370 “τόσον αἴτιος. τοσοῦτο” is similarly used by later writers. The peculiarity of the phrase is that “πολλόν” is pleonastic, as “τόσσον” itself includes the idea of quantity. But this pleonasm serves to emphasize the idea of the very great distance, and so heightens the sarcasm. ὁμίλου may be construed in two ways — (1) as an ablative, sallying against me so far forth from the throng; (2) as gen. after “τόσσον πολλόν”, traversing so large a part of the army. For the use of the gen. in (1) cf. “σταθμοῖο δίεσθαι” 12.304, and Od. 18.8 there quoted. This gives the most vigorous sense (cf. “ἐρχόμενον προπάροιθεν ὁμίλου” 3.22), and suits the common use of “ἐπελθεῖν”; but the constr. would be more natural if we read “ἀπελθών” with P. This regularly takes the gen. in H. (24.766, Od. 2.136, Od. 19.223, Od. 24.310). “ἐπελθεῖν” in most cases means come upon, attack; but the sense traverse can be supported by 18.321 “ἄγκε᾽ ἐπῆλθε,” Od. 4.268 “ἐπ. γαῖαν”.

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 (12 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: