A line in the Greek Catalogue will enable us to carry the question still further. In Il. ii. 517, after the two Bœotian contingents, come the Phocians: and the Poet says, ver. 526, Βοιωτῶν δ’ ἔμπλην ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ θωρήσσοντο. I see that this is translated even by Voss ‘on the left.’ Now is not this contrary to all likelihood? Was not all propitious movement with Homer from left to right? Has not this been proved by the cases of the Immortals, the Omens, the Cupbearer, the Beggar, and the Herald? Is it likely, or is it even conceivable, that Homer should depart from this principle in his order of the army? Surely the meaning is this: Having fixed for himself geographically the order of his contingents, he has likewise to state their order of array upon the field; and accordingly by this line he informs us, that the Phocians, who were the second of the races he mentions, stood ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ of the Bœotians: he of course means us to understand that the Abantes, the third race, were ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ of the Locrians, and so on through the whole: or in other words, that he informs us he does not forget to follow, amidst the multitudinous detail of the Catalogue, the established, the religious, and the propitious order of enumeration, namely, the order which begins from the left, and moves towards the right. Thus we must in this place translate ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ ‘towards, that is, looking towards the left of the Bœotians;’ or ‘looking to the Bœotians on their left,’ i. e. of the Phocians; the Phocians being, whichever construction we adopt, on the right, actually on the right, not the left of the Bœotians. The real force of the expression probably is this: that the Bœotians, having taken their ground, the Phocians came up and took theirs next to them on their right. ~_Application to Od._ v. 277.~ Now this case is precisely in point for Od. v. 277: because θωρήσσεσθαι is not properly a verb of motion: and in all likelihood it may be relied on independently of further details from Homer, because it brings the matter to an easy test, through the certainty which we may well entertain, that Homer would have the order of his army begin from left to right, like every other duly and auspiciously constituted order. There is, however, another interpretation proposed as follows: they, the Phocians, took ground next (ἔμπλην) to the Bœotians on the left, i. e. of the army; the two together, as it were, forming its left wing. To this construction there seem to be conclusive objections: 1. Why should Homer tell us that the Bœotians and Phocians together constituted a division of the army, when he tells us nothing similar respecting any of the twenty-six contingents that remain? Neither of these races were particularly distinguished either politically or in arms.