The Iliad's big swoon: a case of innovation within the epic tradition?

In book 5 of the Iliad Sarpedon suffers so greatly from a wound that his Psi upsilon Chi eta leaves him'. Rather than dying, however, Sarpedon lives to fight another day. This paper investigates the phrase tau Omicron nu delta epsilon lambda Iota tau tau epsilon Psi upsilon Chi eta in extant archaic Greek poetry to gain a sense of its traditional referentiality and better assess the meaning of Sarpedon's swoon. Finding that all other instances of the Psi upsilon Chi eta leaving the body signify death, it suggests that the Iliad exploits a traditional unit of utterance to flag up the importance of Sarpedon to this version of the Troy story.