Page:On translating Homer (1905).djvu/158

 by the later poets. Buttmann has written an octavo volume (I have the English translation, containing 548 pages) to discuss 106 ill-explained Homeric words. Some of these Sophocles may have understood, though we do not; but even if so, they were not the less antiquated to him. If there has been any perfect traditional understanding of Homer, we should not need to deal with so many words by elaborate argument. On the face of the Iliad alone every learner must know how many difficult adjectives occur: I write down on the spur of the moment and without reference, κρήγυον, ἀργὸς, ἀδινὸς, ἄητος, αἴητος, νώροψ, ἦνοψ, εἰλίποδες, ἕλιξ, ἑλικῶπες, ἔλλοπες, μέροπες, ἠλίβατος, ἠλέκτωρ, αἰγίλιψ, σιγαλόεις, ἰόμωρος, ἐγχεσίμωρος, πέπονες, ἠθεῖος. If Mr Arnold thought himself wiser than all the world of Greek scholars, he would not appeal to them, but would surely enlighten us all: he would tell me, for instance, what ἔλλοπες means, which Liddell and Scott do not pretend to understand; or ἠθεῖος, of which they give three different explanations. But he does not write as claiming an independent opinion, when he flatly opposes me and sets me down; he does but use surreptitiously the name of the 'living scholar' against me.

But I have only begun to describe the marked chasm often separating Homer's dialect from everything Attic. It has a