Compare the opening lines of B, and 24.677 ff., Od. 15.7. The inappropriateness of the lines here is more marked than in B, for they contradict not only what precedes but what follows; see 26. As a matter of fact none of the principal chiefs of the Achaians can have had more than a snatch of sleep during this portentous night. The lines 1-2 are in short used as a merely formal tag. *panaxaiw=n: see 2.404.
