Another similar case is that of the famous line about Sisyphus' stone bounding down hill in a string of dactyls, Od. xi. 598, it runs:—
αὖτις ἔπειτα πέδονδε κυλίνδετο λᾶας ἀναιδής.
"The cruel stone came bounding down again on to the plain." I believe this to be nothing but an unconscious adaptation from the one dactylic line that I can remember in the Iliad, I mean:—
ἀμφοτέρω δὲ τένοντε καὶ ἴστέα λᾶας ἀναιδὴς
ἄχρις ἀπηλοίησεν.
Il. IV 521, 522.
"The cruel stone shattered the bones of the neck, tendons and all." Granted (which is very doubtful) that there may be an accommodation of sound to sense in the Odyssean line, I contend that the suggestion came from the Iliadic line.
I would gladly go through the whole Iliad calling attention to the use the writer of the Odyssey has made of it, but to do this would require hardly less than a book to itself. I will therefore ask the reader to accept my statement that no one Book in the Iliad shows any marked difference from the others as regards the use that has been made of it, and will limit myself to those Books that have been most generally declared to be later additions—I mean Book X. and Book XVIII.—for I consider that I have already sufficiently shown the writer of the Odyssey to have known Books I., XXIV., and the Catalogues in Book II. It may be well, however, to include Book XI. in my examination, for this is one of the most undoubted, and it will be interesting to note that the writer of the Odyssey has both the most doubted and undoubted Books equally at her fingers' ends. I shall only call attention to passages that do not occur more than once in the Iliad, and will omit the very numerous ones that may be considered as common form.
In Il. X. 141, 142 we find:—
τίφθ' οὔτω;.....
Νύκτα δι' ἀμβροσίην, and in Od. ix. 403, 404.
τίπτε τόσον.....
Νύκτα δι' ἀμβροσίην.
In Il. X. 142, ὅτι δὴ χρείω τόσον ἴκει; Il. Od. ii. 28, τίνα χρειὼ τόσον ἵκει.