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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Sing, Goddess, of the Wrath of Achilles son of Peleus,
Fatal and accurséd Wrath: for on the Greeks it laid
Innumerable Griefs, and many souls of stalwart Heroes
Hurl'd headlong to the house of Death, and of their bodies made
A prey for dogs, a feast for birds; fulfilling the Design
Of Zeus:—Begin the story when the King, the son of Atreus,
First fell apart in quarrel from Achilles the divine.
δῖος is one of Homer's favourite heroic epithets. He uses it for hero after hero, when the name scans suitably. It must be part of an inherited stock-in-trade. Yet here, where the form of the paragraph gives it emphasis, the ‘faded’ epithet is vivid and significant. The music haunts us.
It haunted Homer when he made the Odyssey:— ‘Muse … the resourceful Man … his Wife … the Nymph, bright among goddesses … the gods … godlike Odysseus.’ It haunted Virgil:— ‘Arms and the Man … Fate … Juno's Wrath … the Gods … the walls of Rome,’ and Milton:— ‘Man … One Greater Man … sing, Heavenly Muse….’
1 L'épithète traditionelle dans Homère, Paris, 1928, pp. 218 ff.Google Scholar
2 For the full-line formula as climax of a series cf. I 489 (Achilles: discussed below); Odysseus I 138Google Scholar, δῖος Ο. 145, πολύμητις Ο. 311, 
II 169, 
173; Ajax reaches such a climax at VII 234, Menelaus not until XVI 12, at the moment of his first exploit, the defence of Patroclus' body.
3 The Pattern of the ‘Iliad,’ London, 1922, p. 16Google Scholar.
4 Op. cit. p. 156.
5 Tradition and Design in the ‘Iliad,’ p. 84.
6 ‘The Last Book of the Iliad,’ JHS lii, 1932, p. 287Google Scholar.
7 IX 158.
8 IX 168 f.
9 IX 607 f.
10 XVIII 79 f.
11 Op. cit. p. 290.
12 XXIV 110. For the interpretation of this speech, as for much else, I am indebted to Mr. J. L. Myres (op. cit. p. 292).
13 XXIV 748 ff.
