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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2016
Hermes, rising for action, is twice (Il. 24.340-1 and Od. 5.44-5) described as follows: αὐτίκ’ ἔπειθ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα, | ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια (‘then, at once he bound beneath his feet beautiful sandals, ambrosial and golden’). In both cases, the verses that follow imply that the sandals enable Hermes to travel over land and sea, as fast as the wind. Athena is described in the same way at Od. 1.96-7: ὣς εἰποῦσ’ ὑπὸ ποσσὶν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα, | ἀμβρόσια χρύσεια. And a line including ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα and preceded by ὑπὸ ποσσὶν or ποσσὶ … ὑπό, but without reference to any divine powers, appears four times in the Iliad, describing the actions of Agamemnon (2.44, 10.22), Nestor (10.132) and Hera (14.186), and five times in the Odyssey, describing the actions of Odysseus (2.4), Menelaus (4.309) and Telemachus (15.550, 17.2, 20.126).
I wish to thank an anonymous referee for comments that improved this essay.
1 I.e. immortal or divine. Hainsworth comments (on Od. 5.45): ‘ἀμβρόσιος, strictly “undying” (< *ἀ-μρότ-ιος) is an epithet of anything connected with the gods.’ In A. Heubeck, S. West and J.B. Hainsworth, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey, Volume I: Introduction and Books I-VIII (Oxford, 1988), 259.
2 And some critics (ancient and modern) object to attributing these sandals to Athena. See S. West's comment on Od. 1.96-101 in Heubeck et al. (n. 1), 87.
3 I wonder whether the original might not have had πτεροῦσθαι instead of φέρεσθαι, thus: ‘does not say that the sandals are furnished with wings, but that they carry and lighten Athena as if they were winged’. πτεροῦσθαι appears once in Eustathius, though not in his Homer commentaries (Orat. 1, p. 8 Wirth); πτεροῦται appears once in his commentary on the Iliad (vol. 4, p. 985 van der Valk) and once in Orat. 16 (p. 276 Wirth).
4 Cf. Heraclitus, Homeric Problems 59.1: ἐπὶ τέλει οὖν τῆς Ἰλιάδος σφόδρα τὸν Ἑρμῆν ἐναργῶς ἀκολουθοῦντα Πριάμῳ δεδήλωκεν ἀλληγορήσας (‘At the end of the Iliad, [Homer] quite vividly portrayed Hermes accompanying Priam, this being allegory’). Heraclitus goes on (59.2-8) to explain that Hermes allegorically represents verbal persuasion.
5 The T-scholia are in Burney MS 86, in the British Library. (A beautiful digital copy is available here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=burney_ms_86_fs001r.) The scholium that concerns me (on Il. 24.340) is found on fol. 273r.
6 I add ‘likely’ because one could claim that Hermes' sandals are winged, and that this is an allegory for his speed (or the speed of persuasive language). Given Aristotle's usual treatment of the divine (more on this shortly), it is unlikely that he would have done this. In fact, I know of only one ancient scholar who does so, namely Cornutus, Theol. 16.3 (p. 22.3-5 Lang): ‘He [sc. Hermes] wears winged sandals and travels through air, in accord with the so-called “winged words”’ (πέδιλα δὲ φέρει πτερωτὰ καὶ δι’ ἀέρος φέρεται συμφώνως τῷ καθὼς εἴρηται τὰ ἔπη πτερόεντα).
7 Diogenes Laertius' list of Aristotle's works includes an Ἀπορημάτων Ὁμηρικῶν in six books (5.26), as does the list in the biography of Aristotle attributed to Hesychius (no. 106). An appendix to this latter also includes a Προβλημάτων Ὁμηρικῶν in ten books (no. 147), which appears to be the same as an item in the biography (extant only in Arabic) attributed to Ptolemy al-Gharīb.
8 See R. Lamberton, ‘Introduction’, in R. Lamberton and J. Keaney (edd.), Homer's Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic's Earliest Exegetes (Princeton, 1992), x-xvi, and N. Richardson, ‘Aristotle's reading of Homer and its background’, in Lamberton and Keaney (this note), 35–40. A possible exception is fr. 175 Rose (i.e. schol. V Od. 12.128, schol. V Od. 12.129 and Eust. Od. 12.130 [vol. 2, p. 18 Stallbaum]), in which Aristotle seems to provide an allegorical interpretation of the number of the Cattle of the Sun. On fr. 175 Rose, see H. Hintenlang, ‘Untersuchungen zu den Homer-Aporien des Aristoteles’ (Diss., University of Heidelberg, 1961), 131–7.
9 Schol. T Od. 9.311 is virtually identical. On fr. 172 Rose, see Hintenlang (n. 8), 48–51.
10 Aristotle had previously (1460b29-35) mentioned two ways of solving Homeric problems (or answering objections to Homer): if the objection is that something is factually wrong, one could reply that it is nevertheless not aesthetically wrong (e.g. painting a doe with horns); and, if the objection is that people are not presented realistically, one could reply that the poet is presenting them not as they are but as they ought to be (e.g. as in the plays of Sophocles).
11 Frr. 21 B 11–12, 14–16, 23–6, 32, 34 DK.
12 V. Rose, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1886), frr. 142–79. (In an earlier work, Rose claimed that Ἀριστοτέλης in this scholium should be ‘corrected’ to Ἀριστοφάνης [Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, Pars Prima: Fragmenta Aristotelis Philosophica (Leipzig, 1863), 167], but I see no compelling reason to accept this emendation.) O. Gigon, Aristotelis Opera, vol. 3: Librorum Deperditorum Fragmenta (Berlin, 1987), frr. 366–404. B. Breitenberger, ‘Aporemata Homerica’, in H. Flashar et al. (edd.), Aristoteles: Fragmente zu Philosophie, Rhetorik, Poetik, Dichtung (Berlin, 2006), 305–21 and 369–430. Neither was this text discussed by Hintenlang (n. 8), the fullest discussion of the Homeric Puzzles to date.
13 E. Heitz, Fragmenta Aristotelis (Paris, 1869), 142 (fr. 192).
14 A. Bierl and J. Latacz, Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar (Basler Kommentar/BK) (Band VIII: 24 Gesang. Faszikel 2) (Berlin, 2009), 125: ‘Aus dem Text geht nicht hervor, ob man sich Hermes Schuhe als geflügelt vorzustellen hat … ; bildliche Darstellung der Flügelschuhe finden sich in Griechenland erst seit archaischer Zeit.’ N. Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume VI: Books 21–24 (Cambridge, 1993), 308: ‘Hermes’ divine sandals, which carry him over sea and land, were portrayed as winged in archaic and later art: T criticizes Aristotle … for regarding them as such here, but why should he not be right?’