Clavis Libri

Literary device

Repetition

Returning to the same word, phrase, or construction, at the start of successive verses or sentences (anaphora) or throughout the text, to give rhythm, emphasis, or insistence.

In the Iliad

not good is the rule of many; let there be one chief, one king, to whom the son of Cronus, of crooked counsels, gave the scepter and the laws, so that he may decide for them.

The construction "one chief, one king" repeats "one" to hammer home the idea of single command. The insistence sounds like a slogan and gives the speech the firmness of an order, in contrast with the "rule of many" that he condemns.

Book II: The Dream and the Catalog of the Ships, Odysseus

for this I know well, in mind and heart: the day will come when sacred Ilion will be destroyed, and Priam, and the people of Priam, the good spearman.
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Book VI: Hector and Andromache, Hector

she spoke, and unfastened from her breast the embroidered belt, of many colors, where all the charms were made: in it was love, in it desire, in it the intimate conversation, the seduction that steals the wits even of one who thinks with firmness.
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Book XIV: Zeus's Deception, the narrator

On it he made the earth, on it the sky, on it the sea, and the untiring sun and the full moon, and on it all the stars with which the sky is crowned.
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Book XVIII: Achilles' Shield, the narrator

But, friend, die you too; why do you lament so? Patroclus died too, who was far better than you.
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Book XXI: Achilles and the River, Achilles

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