A word, phrase, or image that returns several times throughout the work, tied to a character or an idea, and gains meaning with each return.
In the Iliad
just as is the generation of leaves, so is that of men. The leaves, some the wind pours to the ground, others the flourishing forest brings forth when the season of spring arrives; so is the generation of men: one is born, another ends.
The image of the leaves returns later in Apollo's speech, which calls men "like leaves." Linked together, the two passages make the leaf the emblem of human brevity, seen from below by Glaucus and from above by the god.
Book VI: Hector and Andromache, Glaucus
and that he return my body home, so that the Trojans and the Trojan wives may give me, once dead, the portion of fire.
Book VII: The Duel of Hector and Ajax, Hector
and then the Father stretched out the golden balance; in it he set two Keres, the fates of death that strikes down, one for the horse-taming Trojans and one for the Achaeans in bronze tunics; he took it at the middle and lifted it: the fated day of the Achaeans tipped downward.
Book VIII: The Battle Interrupted, the narrator
Now indeed I end my wrath, and it is not right for me to stay forever enraged without respite;
Book XIX: The End of Wrath, Achilles
wretched mortals, who, like leaves, now blaze in full vigor, eating the fruit of the earth, now wither lifeless.
Book XXI: Achilles and the River, Apollo
and he drew up the two Keres of the death that brings lasting grief, Achilles' and Hector's, horse-tamer; he lifted it holding it at the middle: the fated day of Hector tipped downward, he went to Hades, and Phoebus Apollo left him.
Book XXII: The Death of Hector, the narrator
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