Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Iliad 1.3-5 (tr. William Wyatt):

...and sent down to Hades so many valiant souls
of warriors, and made the men themselves to be the spoil for dogs
and birds of every kind...

πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι...

5 πᾶσι codd.: δαῖτα Zenodotus

Homer, Iliad Book One. Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by Simon Pulleyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 121:

Athenaeus (I 12F) tells us that Zenodotus read δαῖτα for πᾶσι in line 5. The fact that all the MSS read πᾶσι does not guarantee its authenticity, because they all date from a much later period, and if πᾶσι is a corruption, it could have got into the tradition quite early. The reading δαῖτα is very attractive because two passages in tragedy that appear to be modelled on these lines also contain the word δαῖτα (Eur. Hec. 1077, Ion 505-6). That Aesch. Suppl. 801 has ὄρνισι δεῖπνον also suggests that the author was familiar with a text which had δαῖτα, not πᾶσι. If we read δαῖτα with τεῦχε, we have a striking image of a banquet being prepared for the birds. There has been some discussion as to whether δαίς in the Iliad ever refers to animals eating. At 24.43. we hear of a lion who εἶσ᾿ ἐπὶ μῆλα βροτῶν, ἵνα δαῖτα λάβῃσιν. As punctuated here, δαῖτα must refer to the lion's dinner. However, our papyri and MSS contain very little by way of punctuation marks, so that the choice is often left to the reader. If the comma were placed before βροτῶν, then δαῖτα would refer to the humans. The line can be taken either way. It is none the less worth noting that the almost synonymous word δεῖπνον is used of horses at 2.383. But even if Homer did not normally use δαίς when speaking of animals, it is still possible that he intended its use at 1.5 as a striking metaphor. The reading δαῖτα provides us with a noun to balance ἑλώρια, instead of the insipid adjective πᾶσι, so that the overall phrase has a chiastic shape (ABBA), 'carrion for the dogs, for the birds a meal'. An even more powerful objection to πᾶσι is that not all birds eat carrion.

Emily Wilson in her translation adopted the reading δαῖτα:

...and sent so many noble souls of heroes
to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs,
a banquet for the birds...

In addition to the parallels cited by Pulleyn, see R. Renehan, "New Evidence for the Variant in Iliad 1.5," American Journal of Philology 100.4 (Winter, 1979) 473-474.

From Christopher Brown:

I have long thought that δαῖτα is preferable to πᾶσι. It is worth noting that in the Gesamtkommentar Latacz supports Zenodotus' text. In fact, it is one of the few places where his translation is at variance with the version of West's Teubner that is printed opposite it ("… und sie selbst zum Fraße werden ließ für Hunde / und für Vögel zum Bankett …").

[....]

Zenodotus has often been judged to be 'subjective' on issues of text (see M. van der Valk, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad [Leiden 1964] 2.66-68; K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur Textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von Ephesos [Berlin and New York 1977] 42 with n. 22; West is also dismissive, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad [Munich and Leipzig 2001] 173), but that doesn't mean that he was always wrong.