Note 154 — Chapter XX · STATE OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS AS EXHIBITED IN GRECIAN LEGEND.
Reading edition
Iliad, xxii. 371. οὐδ᾽ ἄρα οἵ τις ἀνούτητί γε παρέστη. Argument of Iliad. Minor. ap. Düntzer, Epp. Fragm. p. 17; Virgil, Æneid, vi. 520.
Both Agamemnôn and the Oiliad Ajax cut off the heads of slain warriors, and send them rolling like a ball or like a mortar among the crowd of warriors (Iliad, xi. 147; xiii. 102).
The ethical maxim preached by Odysseus in the Odyssey, not to utter boastful shouts over a slain enemy (Οὐκ ὁσίη, κταμένοισιν ἐπ᾽ ἀνδράσιν εὐχετάασθαι, xxii. 412), is abundantly violated in the Iliad.