Homeric Questions and On the Cave of the Nymphs

A Reading the beginning of the Litai Prayers, they were thus situated:

"As they held the guards, but the Achaeans,
A divine panic seized, the companion of chilling fear.
With unbearable grief all the best were struck,
As when two winds stir the fishy sea,
The North Wind and the West Wind, which blow from Thrace,
B > coming suddenly. Together the black wave
Rises. Much seaweed the sea cast out aside.
Thus was the spirit torn within the breasts of the Achaeans."

Reading these, you were puzzled how Homer, being precise regarding similes, now seems to take a simile of two winds for no purpose. For if it were for the sake of amplification, behold Γ the four, as in other places:

"Together the East and South fell, and the tempestuous West,
And the North Wind, sky-born, rolling a great wave."

He solves the puzzle himself, as Apollonius, son of Molon, also illustrated. For having made the Achaeans distressed by two affections. By fear, concerning which he says Δ "a divine panic seized," and by grief, in which he adds "with unbearable grief all the best were struck."

For they fear the future. But they carry the past heavily. Appropriately, he compares them to the sea stirred by two winds. "Divine panic seized." It signifies not the fear that came upon them due to cowardice, but by the will E of the gods. As he said elsewhere: "You will know if even by divine will you will not escape the war, or by the worthlessness of men." This is by divine will and not by innate vice. And "divine" thespesion is an epithet for other things; for there is "divine wealth," and "divine panic." Here, "worthlessness" kakotēs will be from the common source. You will know whether by divine worthlessness or by the worthlessness of men. Panic phyza is...