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[563] On the authority again of one MS. only I have adopted the reading οἶκτον, originally conjectured by Heyne. The sense plaintive wail is not found in H., but is common in Trag. (see Lexx.). It is clearly what is wanted here (cf. Eur. I. T. 1090 “ἁλκυών, ἔλεγον οἰκτρὸν ἀείδεις”). The vulg. “οἶτον”, having the fate of the halcyon, is very feeble. But it must be admitted that do what we may it is impossible to make anything but a most confused and clumsy piece of narration out of all this. It has all the air of a fragment of an old Epic interspersed with lines taken from other portions of the original story — aids to the memory, perhaps, of hearers who partly knew a not very common legend, but to us only darkening the obscurity.

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

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    • Euripides, Iphigeneia in Taurus, 1090
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