FOOTNOTES
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Homer, Southey, Robert, and Cowper, William
[The repetition follows the original.]—Tr.
[παρακαββαλε.]
[With which they bound on the cestus.]—Tr.
[τετριγει—It is a circumstance on which the Scholiast observes that it denotes in a wrestler the greatest possible bodily strength and firmness of position.—See Villoisson.]—Tr.
[I have given what seems to me the most probable interpretation, and such a one as to any person who has ever witnessed a wrestling-match, will, I presume, appear intelligible.]—Tr.
[The Sidonians were celebrated not only as the most ingenious artists but as great adepts in science, especially in astronomy and arithmetical calculation.]—Tr.
[King of Lemnos.]
[That is to say, Ulysses; who, from the first intending it, had run close behind him.]—Tr.
The prodigious weight and size of the quoit is described with the simplicity of the orientals, and in the manner of the heroic ages. The poet does not specify the quantity of this enormous piece of iron, but the use it will be to the winner. We see from hence that the ancients in the prizes they proposed, had in view not only the honorable but the useful; a captive for work, a bull for tillage, a quoit for the provision of iron, which in those days was scarce.
[The use of this staff was to separate the cattle. It had a string attached to the lower part of it, which the herdsman wound about his hand, and by the help of it whirled the staff to a prodigious distance.—Villoisson.]—Tr.
[The transition from narrative to dramatic follows the original.]—Tr.
[Apollo; frequently by Homer called the King without any addition.]—Tr.
Teucer is eminent for his archery, yet he is excelled by Meriones, who had not neglected to invoke Apollo the god of archery.
Footnotes for Book XXIV:
This is the first allusion in the Iliad to the Judgment of Paris, which gave mortal offence to Minerva and Juno. On this account it has been supposed by some that these lines are spurious, on the ground that Homer could not have known the fable, or he would have mentioned it earlier in the poem.—Felton.
[His blessing, if he is properly influenced by it; his curse in its consequences if he is deaf to its dictates.]—Tr.
[This is the sense preferred by the Scholiast, for it is not true that Thetis was always present with Achilles, as is proved by the passage immediately ensuing.]—Tr.
[The angler’s custom was, in those days, to guard his line above the hook from the fishes’ bite, by passing it through a pipe of horn.]—Tr.
[Jupiter justifies him against Apollo’s charge, affirming him to be free from those mental defects which chiefly betray men into sin, folly, improvidence, and perverseness.]—Tr.
[But, at first, he did fly. It is therefore spoken, as the Scholiast observes, φιλοστοργως, and must be understood as the language of strong maternal affection.]—Tr.
[κοροιτυπιησιν αριστοι.]
[Through which the reins were passed.]—Tr.
[The yoke being flat at the bottom, and the pole round, there would of course be a small aperture between the band and the pole on both sides, through which, according to the Scholium in Villoisson, they thrust the ends of the tackle lest they should dangle.]—Tr.
[The text here is extremely intricate; as it stands now, the sons are, first, said to yoke the horses, then Priam and Idæus are said to do it, and in the palace too. I have therefore adopted an alteration suggested by Clarke, who with very little violence to the copy, proposes instead of ζευγνυσθην to read—ζωννυσθην.]—Tr.
[The words both signify—sable.]—Tr.
Priam begins not with a display of the treasures he has brought for the redemption of Hector’s body, but with a pathetic address to the feelings of Achilles. Homer well knew that neither gold nor silver would influence the heart of a young and generous warrior, but that persuasion would. The old king therefore, with a judicious abruptness, avails himself of his most powerful plea at once, and seizes the sympathy of the hero, before he has time to recollect who it is that addresses him.
[Mortified to see his generosity, after so much kindness shown to Priam, still distrusted, and that the impatience of the old king threatened to deprive him of all opportunity to do gracefully what he could not be expected to do willingly.]—Tr.
[To control anger argues a great mind—and to avoid occasions that may betray one into it, argues a still greater. An observation that should suggest itself to us with no little force, when Achilles, not remarkable either for patience or meekness, exhorts Priam to beware of provoking him; and when having cleansed the body of Hector and covered it, he places it himself in the litter, lest his father, seeing how indecently he had treated it, should be exasperated at the sight, and by some passionate reproach exasperate himself also. For that a person so singularly irascible and of a temper harsh as his, should not only be aware of his infirmity, but even guard against it with so much precaution, evidences a prudence truly wonderful.—Plutarch.]—Tr.
['Επικερτομεων. Clarke renders the word in this place, falso metû, ludens, and Eustathius says that Achilles suggested such cause of fear to Priam, to excuse his lodging him in an exterior part of the tent. The general import of the Greek word is sarcastic, but here it signifies rather—to intimidate. See also Dacier.]—Tr.
The poet here shows the importance of Achilles in the army. Agamemnon is the general, yet all the chief commanders appeal to him for advice, and on his own authority he promises Priam a cessation of arms. Giving his hand to confirm the promise, agrees with the custom of the present day.
This lament of Andromache may be compared to her pathetic address to Hector in the scene at the Scæan gate. It forms indeed, a most beautiful and eloquent pendant to that.—Felton.
[This, according to the Scholiast, is a probable sense of προσφατος.—He derives it απο των νεωστι πεφασμενων εκ γης φυτων.—See Villoisson.]—Tr.
Helen is throughout the Iliad a genuine lady, graceful in motion and speech, noble in her associations, full of remorse for a fault for which higher powers seem responsible, yet grateful and affectionate towards those with whom that fault had connected her. I have always thought the following speech in which Helen laments Hector and hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation in Troy, as almost the sweetest passage in the poem.—H.N. Coleridge.
[Ως οι γ'αμφιεπον ταφον Εκτορος ιπποδαμοιο.]