The epithet arkhe-kakoi ‘beginning the evil’ at I.05.063 describes the ships in the previous verse, at I.05.062. These ships, as we have seen, were sailed by Paris=Alexandros for the abduction of Helen. The ominous tone of the epithet, and its positioning in the verse immediately following the mention of the ships, is comparable to the ominous tone of the epithet oulomenē ‘accursed’ at I.01.02 in the verse immediately following the mention of the mēnis ‘anger’ of Achilles in the previous verse, at I.01.01, which is the beginning of the Iliad. Even the meaning of the epithet arkhe-kakoi ‘beginning the evil’ at I.05.063 indicates in its own right the beginning of an epic, though of course this beginning does not correspond to the beginning of the Iliad as we have it. Another point of comparison is the epithet dourateos ‘wooden’ at O.08.493, which is a verse that immediately follows the mention of the hippos ‘horse’ in the previous verse, at O.08.492. Here again we see an ominous mention: this wooden horse, the Trojan Horse, is the marker of yet another potential beginning of an epic narration.