‘To’ and not ‘on’ is the essential characteristic of the Homeric ἐπὶ with the accusative. Accordingly, where ἐπὶ is so used with the words δεξιὰ or ἀριστερὰ, we may often understand an original position of the person or thing intended, generally opposite to the point or quarter expressed. In such a case as εὗρεν ... μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ we should join ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ with the subject of εὗρεν, and not with its object. Not A found B on the left, but A (coming) towards the left found B (there). Again, in Il. xiii. 675, νηῶν ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ should, I submit, be construed _towards_ the left, or in the direction of the left. Now, while there is not a single passage in Homer that refuses to bear a construction founded on these principles, an examination of a variety of passages will, I believe, supply us with instances to show, that there is no other consistent mode of rendering the phrases ἀστράπτειν ἐπιδέξια; ἐέργειν ἐπ’ ἀριστερά; οἰνοχόειν, αἰτεῖν, δεικνύναι, ἐνδέξια; ἀριστερὸς ὄρνις, δεξιὸν ἐρώδιον, and others. And although in some of these phrases the idea of motion is actually included, while the motion of omens was the original groundwork of them all, yet, as frequently happens, the effect remains when the cause has disappeared. A bird called δεξιὸς is one moving ἐπὶ δεξιά; and this, according to the law of omens, is _usually_ a bird from the left moving towards the right. And thus, by analogy, a star ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ is a star on the right not moving but looking towards the left. Once more, when we recollect that ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ habitually or very frequently means on the right as well as moving towards the left, it is not difficult to conceive so easy and simple a modification of this sense as brings it to being on the right, while also looking, instead of moving, towards the left. Lightning, which had appeared on the right, would I apprehend be ἀστραπὴ ἐπ’ ἀριστερά: Ἀρκτὸς ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ would be ‘Arctus on the right;’ and the introduction of the word ἔχειν cannot surely reverse the signification. In later Greek, the expressions ἐνδέξια and ἐπιδέξια, with ἐπαριστερὰ, which seems to be the counterpart of both, the preposition ἐπὶ sometimes being divided from and sometimes united with its case, appear to be equivalent to our English phrases ‘on the right,’ and ‘on the left.’ But not so in Homer. ~_Illustrated from Il._ ii. 353. _Od._ xxi. 141.~ Let us now examine various places of the poems, where ἐνδέξια and ἐπὶ δεξιὰ (single or combined) cannot mean on the right, but may be rendered either (1) from the left, or (2) towards the right. Thus we have, Il. ii. 353, ἀστράπτων ἐπιδέξι’, ἐναίσιμα σήματα φαίνων.