Chapter 16, The Trojan War
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♠ Od 24.115-19 Homer, Odyssey
Dost thou not remember when I came thither to your house with godlike Menelaus to urge Odysseus to go with us to Ilios on the benched ships? A full month it took us to cross all the wide sea, for hardly could we win to our will Odysseus, the sacker of cities.” Greek Text
♠ Proklos, Kypria PEG – Poetae Epici Graeci 1, p. 40, ed. A. Bernabé. Leipzig 1987.
♠ Lik 815-19 – Lykophron, Alexandra
O wretched one! how much better had it been for thee to remain in thy homeland driving oxen, and to harness still the working stallion ass to the yoke, frenzied with feigned pretence of madness, than to suffer the experience of such woes! Greek Text
♠ Oik 30 – Loukianos, Peri tou Oikou (De Domo, On the Hall)
‘Then we have Odysseus, seeking by feigned madness to avoid joining the expedition of the Atreidae, whose messengers have already appeared to summon him. Nothing could be more convincing than his plough-chariot, his ill-assorted team, and his apparent unconsciousness of all that is going forward. But his paternal feeling betrays him. Palamedes, penetrating his secret, seizes upon Telemachus, and threatens him with drawn sword. If the other can act madness, he can act anger. The father in Odysseus is revealed: he is frightened into sanity, and throws aside the mask. Greek Text
♠ Fab 95 – Hyginus, Fabulae
ULYSSES: When Agamemnon and Menelaus, son of Atreus, were assembling the leaders who had pledged themselves to attack Troy, they came to the island of Ithaca to Ulysses, son of Laertes. He had been warned by an oracle that if he went to Troy he would return home alone and in need, with his comrades lost, after twenty years. And so when he learned that spokesmen would come to him, he put on a cap, pretending madness, and yoked a horse and an ox to the plow. Palamedes felt he was pretending when he saw this, and taking his son Telemachus from the cradle, put him in front of the plow with the words: “Give up your pretense and come and join the allies.” Then Ulysses promised that he would come; from that time he was hostile to Palamedes. Latin Text
♠ ApE 3.7 – Apollodoros, Epitome
But he, not wishing to go to the war, feigned madness. However, Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved his madness to be fictitious; and when Ulysses pretended to rave, Palamedes followed him, and snatching Telemachus from Penelope’s bosom, drew his sword as if he would kill him. And in his fear for the child Ulysses confessed that his madness was pretended, and he went to the war. Greek Text
♠ Σ Aen 2.81 – Servius, Scholia at Vergil, Aeneid – Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Carmina commentarii: Aeneis, ed G. Thilo and H. Hagen 1 pt.1, pp. 230-31. Leipzig 1881.
♠ Σ Lyk 384 – Scholia to Lykophron, Alexandra – Lykophronis Alexandra 2, p. 144, ed. E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Σ Lyk 815 – Scholia to Lykophron, Alexandra – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 257-62, ed. E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Little Iliad fr 24 PEG – Poetae Epici Graeci 1, p. 82, ed. A. Bernabé. Leipzig 1987.
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, January 2023
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