43-44. mvp-comment-20-1 10.43–44 χρεὼ βουλῆς ἐμὲ καὶ σὲ … κερδαλέης Here again we see a parallel with Iliad 9. Compare Nestor’s words at 9.74–76: πολλῶν δ’ ἀγρομένων τῷ πείσεαι ὅς κεν ἀρίστην/ βουλὴν βουλεύσῃ· μάλα δὲ χρεὼ πάντας Ἀχαιοὺς/ ἐσθλῆς καὶ πυκινῆς (“When many are gathered you can be persuaded to obey him who counsels the best plan. All of the Achaeans are especially in need of good, close [ pukinos] counsel”). In 10.17, Agamemnon, after tossing and turning with grief and worry, comes up with a plan ( βουλή), a sequence that, as we have seen, parallels the opening of Book 2. He decides that he will go to Nestor and ask him to come up with a plan (there called μῆτιν). Boulē is used therefore in several places in Iliad 2, 9, and 10 to denote a plan of action. As it happens, all three plans are conceived and carried out during the night, and it seems that in these contexts boulē is closely associated with mētis. (See also 10.302, where Hektor likewise conceives of a πυκινὴν … βουλήν in a line that matches Iliad 2.55 in our texts. According to the testimony that has survived about the Cypria [testimonium 1 Bernabé], that epic opened with Zeus in distress about the overpopulation of the earth. It is unfortunately not clear from the context whether Zeus is attempting to sleep or if these thoughts are in fact occurring during the day, but the thoughts that lead to the plan he formulates, called βουλή in line 7 of the surviving fragment, are termed πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσιν [3].) Here in Book 10 Agamemnon says that their plan must be wily ( κερδαλέης); in Book 9 the adjective used is pukinos (as at 10.302; see also on 10.5–9 above). In Odyssey 13, Athena calls Odysseus “by far the best of all mortals in planning” ( βροτῶν ὄχ’ ἄριστος ἁπάντων βουλῇ, 13.297–298) and “crafty in intricate ways” ( ποικιλομῆτα, 13.293). In Odyssey 22.230, Athena tells Odysseus that the city of Troy was taken by his boulē ( σῇ δ’ ἥλω βουλῇ Πριάμου πόλις εὐρυάγυια)—another ambush that according to epic tradition occurred at night. This is how Menelaos describes Odysseus in the wooden horse when he tells Telemakhos the story in Odyssey 4:

I have become familiar with the planning and thinking

of men who are heroes, and I have traveled over much of the earth.

But I have not yet known with my eyes a man equivalent

to my friend Odysseus’ enduring mind.

The boulē of the wooden horse is arguably Odysseus’ signature mētis, on which see Haft 1990.

47. mvp-comment-21-1 10.47 οὐ γάρ πω ἰδόμην, οὐδ᾽ ἔκλυον Note the augment on ἔκλυον. Egbert Bakker (2005) has argued that in Homeric diction the verbal augment has a primarily deictic function, and signifies proximity or immediacy rather than emphasizing a past tense. For this reason we find it used more often in similes and in speeches than in narrative contexts. In speeches, augmented aorists are almost always best translated as perfects (Bakker 2005:116, with further bibliography ad loc.). Bakker points out that the use of negating particles like οὔ πω with aorist verbs similarly “effaces the distinctness of any past, making it come into the speaker’s present” (Bakker 2005:170). Indeed, our first instance of an augmented aorist in Book 10 is paired with an unaugmented aorist that is preceded by οὔ πω.

47-48. mvp-comment-22-1 10.47–48 οὐ γάρ πω ἰδόμην, οὐδ’ ἔκλυον αὐδήσαντος / ἄνδρ’ ἕνα τοσσάδε μέρμερ’ ἐπ’ ἤματι μητίσασθαι See also below at 10.289–290 and 10.524 for more on μέρμερα ἔργα. Agamemnon gives important details as to just what is “astounding” about what Hektor did on the battlefield. He has never seen or even heard tell of one man devising so many astounding deeds in one day. Hektor’s deeds on the battlefield are unprecedented in Agamemnon’s experience, and are of course the reason why he is sleepless this night. The language even juxtaposes the “one” and “so many”: mermera erga are accomplished by one man (or two men, as we shall see) who kill many more. In the next day’s battle, too, Hektor is reported to be accomplishing mermera erga and destroying phalanxes of young men ( Iliad 11.502–503). On mourning the loss of so many men in one day of battle cf. Aeschylus Persians 431–432.

51-52. mvp-comment-23-1 10.51–52 These lines were athetized by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, two great directors of the library in Ptolemaic Alexandria in the second century BCE. Aristarchus was considered the premier editor of Homer in antiquity, and the scholia that survive in our medieval manuscripts of the Iliad and Odyssey are full of references to him. As Gregory Nagy has demonstrated (see especially Nagy 2004), Aristarchus had available to him at the library of Ptolemaic Alexandria a great number of Homeric texts. Aristarchus’ practice was to collate the many texts known to him and to comment on the various readings that he found, often asserting which reading he felt to be the correct one. Unlike a modern editor, however, Aristarchus confined his opinions to his commentary, which was published in its own separate volume. The notes in the commentary were linked to the appropriate passages in the text by means of a system of critical signs. These signs are preserved in the Venetus A manuscript of Homer, and to a lesser extent elsewhere (see Bird 2009). So here, although both Aristarchus and his predecessor Aristophanes did not feel verses 51–52 were composed by Homer, they left them in the text, and indicated their judgment with the sign for athetesis (see Figure 4). The scholia in the margins of the Venetus A tell us that Aristarchus condemned 10.51 because it repeats the content of 10.49, and because δηθά and δολιχόν mean the same thing. There is a tendency among the Alexandrian editors to disapprove of verses that they feel to be repetitive, preferring compression over expansion. This preference for compression is rooted in the poetics of their day (see Dué 2001a), and does not offer us good grounds for condemning the lines. But it is noteworthy that these scholars did not impose their preferences on the text itself, with the result that much more Homeric poetry survives for us today than probably would have otherwise.

53. mvp-comment-24-1 10.53 Αἴαντα The Ajax being referred to here is the son of Telamon. (See below on 10.110–113.) Evidence from the Venetus A scholia indicates that Aristarchus may have known a reading Αἴαντε instead of Αἴαντα:

Didymus says that the Aristarchean reading is “ Αἴαντε” in the dual, but Telephos says that Didymus has misspoken, since Menelaos is not sent to both Ajaxes.

This disagreement in the scholia about Aristarchus’ reading may reflect an evolution in the meaning of the dual form Αἴαντε that has been noted by previous scholars. In some early stage of the Greek epic tradition, the dual Αἴαντε referred not to Ajax the son of Telamon and Ajax the son of Oileus as a pair, but rather to Telamonion Ajax and his brother Teucer (whose special fighting style is discussed above at p.60; see Ebbott 2003:41–43 with references ad loc.) The dual form of the name that Aristarchus knew here would be perfectly appropriate in a time when it was understood to refer to Ajax and Teucer. In any case, at 10.228 the two Ajaxes ( Αἴαντε δύω) volunteer to go on the spying mission with Diomedes, but it is not clear whether at that point both Ajaxes are volunteering, or whether it is the fighting pair of Ajax and Teucer. It is possible that the dual would have been understood differently by audiences of different periods.

53. mvp-comment-24-2 10.53 Ἰδομενῆα κάλεσσον It is significant that Idomeneus figures prominently here among the chief heroes, since he is the speaker of the most explicit description of ambush warfare in Homeric epic. He and Meriones discuss what it takes to succeed in ambush at Iliad 13.266–294 (discussed above, pp. 45–47). Idomeneus and Meriones are from Crete, and Odysseus links himself to both Idomeneus and Crete throughout his “Cretan lies” in the second half of the Odyssey, including a tale involving the ambush of the son of Idomeneus ( Odyssey 13.259–275). The alternative warfare of ambush, with its reliance on cunning and dissimulation rather than force, may have been traditionally a Cretan specialty or in some way associated with Cretans. Certainly in the Odyssey, mention of Crete functions as a narrative signal for the external audience, and possibly for the internal audience as well, since Odysseus seems to use these stories as a kind of coded message or ainos ( Odyssey 14.508), by which he gauges the recipient’s loyalty and character. Crete serves as a cloak for Odysseus’ true identity as he carefully and cleverly sets up his return, just as, in war, heroes camouflage themselves for a nighttime spying expedition or ambush. (For more on the concept of the cloak and its connection to Odysseus’ ainos in Odyssey 14, see below at 10.149.)

56. mvp-comment-25-1 10.56 ἐλθεῖν ἐς φυλάκων ἱερὸν τέλος ἠδ᾽ ἐπιτεῖλαι A night watch is explicitly set up in Iliad 9.80–88, where the guards assemble and take their post armed. There, we hear that the guard consists of seven leaders, each of whom is named, and each leader has a hundred young men with long spears. As we will see later (10.196–197), Meriones and Thrasymedes, named as two of the seven in Iliad 9 but given special mention here at 10.57–59, will join the leaders to deliberate about the plan, and, importantly, give Diomedes and Odysseus some of their armor. Back in Iliad 9.87, we are told that the guard takes up their post between the ditch and the wall (see further on 10.194). For more on the anxieties about the watch falling asleep, see on 10.98. See Singor 1992:403 for his arguments that the seven leaders of the night watch implies that the Achaean wall has seven gates, and that the adjective hieros is used here, as well as for both the gatekeepers of Troy ( Iliad 24.681) and the walls of Thebes ( Iliad 4.378), because defensive walls and the life-sustaining protection they provide are “sacred.”

58-59. mvp-comment-26-1 10.58–59 Ἰδομενῆος ὀπάων / Μηριόνης The relationship between Idomeneus and Meriones fits into an Indo-European mythical paradigm of the hero and his charioteer. In such relationships, the charioteer often loses his life, thereby saving the life of his more dominant other half. The concept of the opaōn is similar to that of the therapōn (defined by Gregory Nagy as ‘ritual substitute’), which is what Achilles calls Patroklos in Iliad 16.244. In that passage, Achilles prays that when Patroklos returns to battle he have the power to fight on his own, instead of as part of the closely linked fighting pair that Achilles and Patroklos normally form. Instead, however, Patroklos dies (at the hands of Apollo, Euphorbus, and Hektor), wearing Achilles’ armor and in many ways previewing Achilles’ own death, in some traditions at least, at the hands of Paris and Apollo. (On opaōn and its application to Meriones, we are indebted to an unpublished paper by Ellen Aitken. On the therapōn as a ‘ritual substitute’ for the hero, as Patroklos functions for Achilles, see Nagy 1979:33 and 292–293. On the relationship between Achilles’ and Patroklos’ death, see also Burgess 1997.) The night watch seems to be led by younger men in particular, like Meriones here: is there a suggestion that they can better endure the sleeplessness? See further on 10.259 for the association between young men like Meriones and ambush.

60. mvp-comment-27-1 10.60 βοὴν ἀγαθὸς See below on 10.283 for more on this epithet.

65. mvp-comment-28-1 10.65 ἀβροτάξομεν There are two different spellings of this verb (found only here in our Homeric texts) in the textual tradition: ἀβροτάξομεν and ἀμβροτάξομεν. Sources are nearly evenly divided between them. West (1997: 229) points out that the form ἀμβροτάξομεν “offers the unmetrical sequence ‒ ⏑ ‒, but the difficulty is resolved by going back to an ancient * hamṛtáxomen.” We might speculate, then, that the spelling without the mu came about because it seemed to solve the metrical difficulty by relying on a plosive + liquid exception to the rule that multiple consonants form a closed syllable (see West 1997: 220–221). In any case, ἀμβροτάξομεν belongs to the categories of older words West identifies that became unmetrical as their form evolved. They were preserved as part of the formulaic language even as these sound-changes occurred in the Greek language as a whole. The antiquity of this word could mean that concern about missing one another in the dark of night is a traditional idea, part of the poetics of night raids or nighttime spying missions.

73. mvp-comment-29-1 10.73 αὐτὰρ ὁ βῆ ῥ᾽ ἰέναι μετα See above on 10.32.

73. mvp-comment-29-2 10.73 ποιμένα λαῶν See above on 10.3.

75. mvp-comment-30-1 10.75 εὐνῇ ἔνι μαλακῇ· παρὰ δ᾽ ἔντεα ποικίλ᾽ ἔκειτο Nestor and Diomedes are described in the state in which they are found sleeping by the others, with the result that each is characterized as a warrior of a particular style. Nestor is an old man and sleeps on a soft bed, but his weapons are right beside him, which implies that he is ready for battle at a moment’s notice (see also 10.78–79). The battle gear that lies next to him is not the same as that he puts on to go out in 10.131ff. The shining helmet (10.76) would be inappropriate for a night mission (see below on 10.257). Rather, the armor serves to characterize Nestor as a warrior in his own right and give him distinction. Agamemnon here, as elsewhere in the Iliad, looks to Nestor first and foremost for strategy. At Iliad 7.325 and 9.84 he is Νέστωρ, οὗ καὶ πρόσθεν ἀρίστη φαίνετο βουλή (“Nestor, whose planning also before was manifestly the best”). Nestor orchestrates most of the events of Book 9, as he does here in Book 10. In Book 11, it is Nestor who sets in motion Patroklos’ fatal impersonation of Achilles. On Nestor’s role in the Iliad and in the larger epic tradition, see Frame 2009.

83. mvp-comment-31-1 10.83 ὀρφναίην See on 10.41 above.

84. mvp-comment-32-1 10.84 ἠέ τιν᾽ οὐρήων διζήμενος, ἤ τιν᾽ ἑταίρων The idea that someone would be out at night looking for a mule ( τιν᾽ οὐρήων) seemed odd to Alexandrian scholars, as it might to us. The A scholia indicates that Aristarchus athetized the line because of that word, suggesting that it should be some form of κοῦρος, to indicate the young men of the guard. Instead of assuming a mistake by the poet (as the scholiast does) or by a scribe, another approach would be to see if there are any traditional associations with mules getting loose at night. There are no examples in surviving Homeric poetry, but there may well have been in the larger tradition. In any case, mules are used in a variety of contexts in the Iliad, by both the Trojans and the Achaeans. (See Iliad 1.50, 23.111 and 115, 24.716 for οὐρεύς; the word ἡμίονος is also used in this book at 10.352 and throughout the Iliad and Odyssey.)

85. mvp-comment-33-1 10.85 φθέγγεο, μὴ δ᾽ ἀκέων ἐπ᾽ ἒμ᾽ ἔρχεο See “The Poetics of Ambush” on the sensory aspects of the night. In 10.67, Agamemnon told Menelaos to call out ( φθέγγεο as here) wherever he went, which in the dark would serve both to wake up his comrades and let them know that he was their fellow Achaean and not an enemy. So here Nestor tells his visitor not to sneak up on him in the dark, but to call out to let him know who he is and why he is there. See also Iliad 10.139 and 24.170.

85. mvp-comment-33-2 10.85 χρεώ As each hero is roused from sleep the theme of the great need the Achaeans find themselves on this night is emphasized. We saw in 10.43 that Agamemnon speaks to Menelaos of their need for a “plan,” boulē, just as Nestor does in the opening of Iliad 9. Here, Nestor naturally asks what need has caused him to be woken in the middle of the night. In 10.118, he advises Agamemnon to wake up the Greek leaders, citing the “unbearable need” ( χρειὼ … ἀνεκτός) that has come upon them. Likewise in 10.142 Odysseus asks what need so great ( χρειὼ τόσον) has driven Agamemnon and Nestor to wake him. Nestor asks him not to reproach them, since the situation really is that dire: “Such sorrow has come upon the Achaeans” ( τοῖον γὰρ ἄχος βεβίηκεν Ἀχαιούς, 10.145). In 10.172, we find χρεώ invoked by Nestor once again, in much the same language as at 10.142: “An especially great need has come upon the Achaeans” ( μάλα μεγάλη χρειὼ βεβίηκεν Ἀχαιούς). This theme runs throughout Books 9–11, as Robert Rabel (1991) has demonstrated. Rabel argues that each of these three books has a similar tripartite structure consisting of recognition of need, journey, and return and report.