Any suggestions about this form? Monro seems to say that it is a scribal error and that a F ind should be read instead.
Chantraine calls the syntax of this line douteuse, noting that the correct Homeric form would be μαχεοίατο. West reads μαχεοίατ’ (a conjecture of Bentley) but reports that several papyri and a 9th c. codex containing D scholia (which he writes contains a number of good readings as against the consensus of the medieval mss.) read fut. μαχέονται. “Scribal error” is too crude a term in the context of the complicated transmission of the Homeric poems.