Thomas W. Allen, E. E. Sikes, Commentary on the Homeric Hymns

[400] δελφῖνι ἐοικώς: stories of animals guiding people to a new town or country are very common; see Frazer's exhaustive note on Paus.x. 6. 2.For Apollo's connexion with the dolphin see on 495.

402, 403. The difficulty in these two lines is so great that Gemoll may be pardoned for giving up the passage as hopeless. We have first to decide between “οὔ τις . . . ἐπεφράσατο” of M and and “ὅς τις . . . ἐπιφράσσαιτο” of other MSS. The objection to the reading of M is that it is hard to understand how the sailors could have failed to see the dolphin, which lay on the deck; in fact lines 415 f. distinctly state the contrary. This seems to dispose of Matthiae's “ἐπεφράσατ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἐνόησε”, apart from the graphical difficulty of that emendation. We must therefore accept “ὅς τις ἐπιφράσσαιτο νοῆσαι”, which can mean “whoever thought to observe the dolphin.” “ἐπιφράζεσθαι” takes an infinitive, Od. 5.183 “ ἐπεφράσθης ἀγορεῦσαι”. With this reading it would be just possible to dispense with the theory of a lacuna; we might understand “whoever observed him, him he threw down, and shook the ship.” The dolphin would upset any one who approached him. But “πάντοσ᾽ ἀνασσείασκε” will hardly bear this interpretation. The verb seems to mean “shake up” or “shake to and fro,” and the object must be the ship or the “δοῦρα”. Hermann's lacuna may therefore be accepted, the sense being “whoever saw the dolphin [tried to throw it overboard, but the monster] made [the ship] rock all ways”; e.g. we may supply a verse like “ἐκβάλλειν ἔθελεν δελφῖν̓, ὁ δὲ νῆα μέλαιναν”.

ἀΝασσείασκε is an anomalous form, but may be defended by Il. 8.272 “ κρύπτασκε, Ο 23 ῥίπτασκον, θ 374 ῥίπτασκε”.

405, 406. The sailors were at first too much afraid to stop the ship, as they afterwards attempted to do (414). Hence “ἔλυον” is right in both lines. The repetition of the verb, to which Baumeister objects, is not more offensive than that of “νῆα, νηός”. Baumeister's “ἔλκον” would give a wrong sense, “hoist sail,” cf. Od. 2.426 “, ο” 291; the sails were already set. “ἕλκειν” could not mean “change sail,” as he explains.