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[653] In spite of this elaborate panegyric the Rhodians are not again mentioned in H. Tlepolemos enters only to be killed in 5.628 ff. His connexion with Rhodes is not there alluded to. It is impossible to suppose that a Dorian colony was ever admitted by tradition to the Trojan war; but the triple division so characteristic of the Dorians is pointedly alluded to in 668. It is possible, of course, that the prae-Dorian Rhodians had their share in the early history of Greece, and that the Dorians only recolonized an island already Greek. The intention here may be to give the Dorian hero an earlier possession of the island, and bring him there not by the Dorian invasion but by a private quarrel; but the author manages to betray himself by the word “τριχθά”. Bergk suggests that the high praise of the Rhodians points to the time of their naval supremacy, perhaps about 900 B.C. The legend of Tlepolemos is given in Pindar O. vii.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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