James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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Ὁμήρῳ. For this Ξ and a few other MSS read παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ. Schneider successfully defends Ὁμήρῳ by Arist. Pol. Θ 5. 1339^{b} 7 οὐ γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς αὐτὸς ᾁδει καὶ κιθαρίζει τοῖς ποιηταῖς. The line is addressed by Diomede to Sthenelus in Il. IV 412.

τὰ τούτων ἐχόμενα. The two verses which Plato here quotes do not follow τέττα, σιωπῇ κτλ., and do not even occur together in our Homer. ἴσαν— Ἀχαιοί is from Il. III 8 (οἱ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἴσαν σιγῇ μένεα πνείοντες Ἀχαιοί), σιγῇ—σημάντορας from IV 431. Some editors bracket the first verse, but (as Hartman points out) it is not likely that a scribe should have interpolated a line from Il. III before one from Il. IV. Plato may be guilty of ‘contamination,’ or the lines may really have occurred together in his text of Homer. J. and C. suggest that Plato perhaps did not mean the lines to be connected. The objection to this view is that σιγῇ (as in our text of Homer, though there it is in a different place) goes best with ἴσαν, and that ἴσαν μένεα πνείοντες Ἀχαιοί is not by itself an illustration of obedience to rulers, and therefore would not be relevant here. See on the whole subject of Platonic quotations from Homer, Howes in Harvard Studies etc. VI pp. 153—237, with whose conclusions (p. 210) I heartily agree.

οἰνοβαρὲς κτλ. Achilles to Aga memnon in Il. I 225. The point of this illustration is not in the abusive epithets, but in the insubordination which they and the rest of the speech (τὰ τούτων ἑξῆς) express.