Footnotes for Book XVII: 
1.  In the chase, the spoils of the prey, the hide and head of the
   animal, belonged to the one who gave the first wound.  So in
   war—­the one who first pierced an enemy slain in battle, was
   entitled to his armor.

2. [The expediency and utility of prayer, Homer misses no opportunity
   of enforcing.  Cold and comfortless as the religious creed of the
   heathens was, they were piously attentive to its dictates, and to a
   degree that may serve as a reproof to many professed believers of
   revelation.  The allegorical history of prayer, given us in the 9th
   Book of the Iliad from the lips of Phoenix, the speech of
   Antilochus in the 23d, in which he ascribes the ill success of
   Eumelus in the chariot race to his neglect of prayer, and that of
   Pisistratus in the 3d book of the Odyssey, where speaking of the
   newly-arrived Telemachus, he says;

                     For I deem
     Him wont to pray; since all of every land
     Need succor from the Gods;

are so many proofs of the truth of this remark; to which a curious
reader might easily add a multitude.]—­TR.

3. [There is no word in our language expressive of loud sound at all
   comparable in effect to the Greek Bo-o-osin.  I have therefore
   endeavored by the juxta-position of two words similar in sound, to
   palliate in some degree defect which it was not in my power to
   cure.]—­TR.

4. [Or collar-bone.]

5. [The proper meaning of {epioasomeno}—­is not simply looking on,
   but providing against.  And thus their ignorance of the death of
   Patroclus is accounted for.  They were ordered by Nestor to a post
   in which they should have little to do themselves, except to
   superintend others, and were consequently too remote from Patroclus
   to see him fall, or even to hear that he had fallen.—­See
   Villoisson.]—­TR.

6.  This is one of the similes of Homer which illustrates the manners
   and customs of his age.  The mode of preparing hides for use is
   particularly described.  They were first softened with oil, and then
   were stretched every direction by the hands of men, so that the
   moisture might be removed and the oil might penetrate them. 
   Considered in the single point of comparison intended, it gives a
   lively picture of the struggle on all sides to get possession of
   the body.—­FELTON.

7.  This is the proper imperfect of the verb chide, though modern
   usage has substituted chid, a word of mean and awkward sound, in
   the place of it.