Homer’s Iliad. Book XXIV

348 Pages·1.821 MB·English

by  Brügger, Claude

Homer’s Iliad
The Basel Commentary
Homer’s Iliad
The Basel Commentary

Editors
Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz
Managing Editor
Magdalene Stoevesandt
General Editor of the English Edition
S. Douglas Olson
Homer’s Iliad
The Basel Commentary
Edited by
Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz
Book XXIV
By Claude Brügger
Translated by Benjamin W. Millis and Sara Strack and
edited by S. Douglas Olson
The publication of Homer’s Iliad: The Basel Commentary has been made possible
by the kind financial support from the following organizations:
Stavros Niarchos Foundation
Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft (FAG), Basel
L. & Th. La Roche Stiftung, Basel
ISBN 978-1-5015-1229-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0439-6
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0429-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
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Table of Contents
Preface  VII
Notes for the Reader (including list of abbreviations)  IX
24 Rules Relating to Homeric Language (R)  1
Overview of the Action in Book 24  9
Commentary  11
Bibliographic abbreviations  285

Preface
ἓξ δέ οἱ υἷες ἔασιν, ἐγὼ δέ οἱ ἕβδομός εἰμι·
τῶν μέτα παλλόμενος κλήρῳ λάχον ἐνθάδ’ ἕπεσθαι.
Iliad 24.399  f.
Following on the publication of the Prolegomena and the commentaries on Books
1, 2, 3, 6, and 19 of the Iliad, the present volume presents the commentary on Book
24, the final book of the Iliad. This Book is undoubtedly one of the most touch-
ing and stimulating sections of Homeric epic; this was another reason for not
delaying the commentary on it until the end of the project, but instead bringing
it forward within the overall concept of the series (on which, see the preface in
volume II.2, pp. VIIf.). In this regard, the present volume follows the principles of
commenting outlined in the ones that preceded it (esp. vols. I.2 and IV.2).
The existence of first-rate commentaries, including those by Rudolf Pepp-
müller (1876), Colin W. Macleod (1982) and Nicholas J. Richardson (1993), τοσσάδ’
ὀνείατ’ ἄγοντες (24.367), as well as monographs by e.g. Götz Beck (1964) and Karl
Deichgräber (1972) – to mention only the most pertinent from the vast bibliogra-
phy – both facilitates and impedes a new treatment of Book 24 and its 804 verses.
My initial aim to encapsulate what has been recognized and well discussed, and
perhaps to go a bit beyond this here and there has proved almost overly ambi-
tious. If the undertaking has nevertheless come to a happy conclusion and one
that will, I hope, be fruitful for further research, I am indebted to a number of
institutions:
the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen
Forschung and the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur,
which took a leading role in facilitating the completion of this commentary via
their generous financial support;
the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel and the Max Geldner-Stiftung
Basel, which supported the entire project financially;
the University of Basel and the library of the University of Basel, which sub-
stantially facilitated my research by providing infrastructure and awarding me a
privileged user status;
the Walter de Gruyter publishing house, which, in the person of Dr. Elisabeth
Schuhmann, followed the development of this volume with great goodwill and
interest (the careful technical production of the volume by Florian Ruppenstein
has also to be mentioned with gratitude).
VIII   Iliad 24
I am personally greatly indebted to:
my esteemed teacher Prof. Dr. Joachim Latacz, who has unflaggingly encour-
aged me during both my studies and my lengthy collaboration on the research
project he initiated, and who has shown unqualified confidence in me;
Prof. Dr. Anton Bierl, who continually followed this work and provided a
welcome opportunity to ‘try out’ a preliminary version of the commentary in the
context of a seminar with interested students;
my colleagues Dr. Marina Coray, Dr. Martha Krieter-Spiro, Dr. Magdalene
Stoe vesandt and Prof. Dr. Robert Plath, who spared neither time nor effort in
critically reading draft versions and sharing their knowledge with me;
the external experts, who offered valuable advice based on their individual
areas of expertise and saved me from many errors: Rudolf Führer, Fritz Graf, Irene
de Jong, Michael Meier-Brügger, Sebastiaan R. van der Mije, René Nünlist, Rolf A.
Stucky, Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg, Rudolf Wachter and Martin L. West †.
Prof. Dr. Michael Meier-Brügger and the staff of the Lexikon des früh grie chi-
schen Epos (LfgrE), who in May 2006 invited me, together with Magdalene Stoeve-
sandt, to Hamburg for a fruitful exchange and who also continuously and readily
entrusted the team of the Basel commentary with unpublished versions of indi-
vidual lemmata from not yet published fascicles of the LfgrE;
the student assistants Tamara Hofer and Alexandra Scharfenberger, who
read through the proofs with a keen eye and alert mind;
all the other individuals who helped me on individual issues with sugges-
tions, advice and by sending relevant material;
my parents, who facilitated my studies in Classical Philology, and my family,
who sometimes had to forego a husband or father for the sake of Homer.
To all, I express my heartfelt thanks.
Basel, August 2009 Claude Brügger
The present English edition has been made possible by the support of the Stavros
Niarchos Foundation, the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel (FAG) and
the L. & Th. La Roche Stiftung Basel, as well as the publisher Walter de Gruyter
(Boston/Berlin). During the revision of the text for the English edition, errors were
corrected and in some cases bibliographic references were supplemented (January
2015). Particular thanks are due to the translators Dr. Sarah Strack and Dr. Benja-
min W. Millis and to the editor Prof. Dr. S. Douglas Olson for their most careful work.
Basel, July 2016
Notes for the Reader
1. In the commentary, four levels of explanation are distinguished graphically:
a) The most important explanations for users of all audiences are set in
regular type. Knowledge of Greek is not required here; Greek words
are given in transliteration (exception: lemmata from LfgrE, see
COM 41 [1]).
b) More detailed explanations of the Greek text are set in medium type.
These sections correspond to a standard philological commentary.
c) Specific information on particular sub-fields of Homeric scholarship is
set in small type.
d) The ‘elementary section’, designed to facilitate an initial approach to
the text especially for school and university students, appears beneath a
dividing line at the foot of the page.
The elementary section discusses Homeric word forms in particu-
lar, as well as prosody and meter. It is based on the ‘24 Rules Relating to
Homeric Language’, to which reference is made with the abbreviation ‘R’.
Particularly frequent phenomena (e.g. the lack of an augment) are not
noted throughout but are instead recalled ca. every 50 verses. — Informa-
tion relating to Homeric vocabulary is largely omitted; for this, the reader
is referred to the specialized dictionaries of Cunliffe and Autenrieth/
Kaegi.
Complex issues are addressed in the elementary section as well as
the main commentary; they are briefly summarized in the elementary
section and discussed in greater detail in the main commentary. Such
passages are marked in the elementary section with an arrow (↑). In con-
trast, references of the type ‘cf. 73n.’ in the elementary section refer to
notes within the elementary section itself, never to the main commen-
tary.
2. The chapters of the Prolegomena volume are cited by the following abbrevia-
tions:
CG/CH Cast of characters in the Iliad: Gods/Human Beings
COM Introduction: Commenting on Homer
FOR Formulaity and Orality
G Grammar of Homeric Greek
HT History of the text
M Homeric Meter (including prosody)
MYC Homeric-Mycenaean Word Index
NTHS New Trends in Homeric Schorlarship
X   Iliad 24
xxxP Superscript ‘P’ following a term refers to the definitions of terms
in ‘Homeric Poetics in Keywords’.
STR Structure of the Iliad
In addition:
R refers to the ‘24 Rules Relating to Homeric Language’ in the
present commentary (below, pp. 1  ff.).
3. Textual criticism
The commentary is based on the Teubner text of M. L. West. In some pas-
sages, the commentators favor decisions differing from that edition. In these
cases, both versions of the lemma are provided; West’s text is shown first in
square brackets, followed by the version favored in the commentary.
4. English lemmata
The English lemmata in the commentary are taken from the translation of
R. Lattimore. In places where the commentators favor a different rendering,
both versions of the lemma are provided; the rendering of Lattimore is shown
first in square brackets, followed by the version favored in the commentary.
5. Quotations of non-English secondary literature
Quotations from secondary literature originally written in German, French or
Italian are given in English translation; in such cases, the bibliographic ref-
erence is followed by the notation ‘transl.’. In the case of terms that are espe-
cially important or open to misinterpretation, the original is given in square
brackets.
6. Formulaic language
On the model of ‘Ameis-Hentze(-Cauer)’, repeated verses and verse-halves
are usually noted (on this, cf. COM 30). Other formulaic elements (verse
beginning and verse end formulae in particular) are only highlighted to the
extent necessary to convey an overall impression of the formulaic character
of Homeric language.
7. Type-scenesP
For each type-scene, the commentary provides at the appropriate place an
‘ideal version’ by compiling a cumulative, numbered list of all characteristic
elements of the scene that occur in the Iliad and/or Odyssey; the numbers of
the elements actually realized in the passage in question are printed in bold.
Each subsequent occurrence refers back to this primary treatment and uses
numbering and bold print in accord with the same principle.