Verse 136 — W. Leaf's commentary on Homer's Iliad 1 0

It seems natural to take ὅπως ἀντάξιον ἔσται in the sense ‘be sure that the recompense is adequate’; but this construction, though found in Herod. and Attic, is not Homeric; and the clause ἄρσαντες κατὰ θυμόν should come in the apodosis rather than the protasis. We may take ἀλλ̓ (135), in connexion with what precedes, as ‘Very well, if they will give me a prize, such that the recompense is fair (I will do so).’ Bayfield ingeniously suggests that ἄρσαντες κατὰ θυμόν is itself the apodosis, the verb διδόντων being supplied from the protasis, let them give it to meet my wish. The idiom by which a verb common to two clauses is expressed in one only is not rare in later Greek (Kühner ii. p. 1079); but clearness requires that the two clauses should be distinctly separated, by particles or otherwise, which is not the case here. Nor does the idiom recur in H. with the doubtful exception of 9.46 (q.v.). But there is no doubt that this gives the best sense.