ποικίλῃ
The leopard skin is further described as poikilos, which in this case has meaning for its physical qualities: the spotted pattern makes it “intricate.” But, as we saw with the wide semantic range of pukinos, which joins many concepts that might seem quite disparate at first to us, so also in the case of poikilos there is another important meaning here. As Detienne and Vernant (1974/1978) have shown, there is an association of this word with mētis and with trickery (“la ruse”). In this way, too, the leopard skin in particular shares common associations with ambush. For more on mētis and ambush, see above on 10.19 and below on 10.43–44.