And this striking picture has been thus translated by a recent and celebrated scholar :
‘Foot on foot, and horse on horse :
While from the plain thick clouds of dast arose
Beneath the armèd hoofs of clatt'ring steeds.’
This it will be readily perceived is an error. The passage, literally rendered, ought to read something like the following : ‘Foot on foot and horse on horse, they perished forcibly while flying; and under them the dust arose from the plain, and the loud-sounding (crushing or thundering) feet of the horses raised it.’
The word is ἐρίγδουποι. Another translator of the Iliad renders this passage :
‘Horse trod by horse lay foaming on the plain.
From the dry fields thick clouds of dust arise,
Shade the black host, and intercept the skies ;
The brass-hoof'd steeds tumultuous plunge and bound,
And the thick thunder beats the labouring ground.’
In another place (Book viii., lines 44-5) Bourgelat, Cuming, and others, found their opinion in favour of the Greeks having shod their horses at this early period, on the fact that Homer speaks of Jove's horses as
‘The brazen-footed steeds
Of swiftest flight, with manes of flowing gold.’
The translation of χαλχόποδ’ ῖππω is correct, and is rendered so by Chapman, an old versifier :
‘This said, his brasse-hou'd (brass-hoof'd) winged horse
He did to chariot binde.’
The ‘brass-hoof’ was undoubtedly used by Homer in a metaphorical sense to denote firmness and solidity, not
