II. ETHNOLOGY. (continued 7)

SECT. IX. On the Homeric title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

Difference between Epithets and Titles.

Both in modern society, and in the forms of modern language, the distinction is a familiar one, which separates between descriptive affixes or epithets, and titles properly so called.

A descriptive affix, be it substantive, like Δαναοὶ αἰχμηταὶ, or adjective, like Δαναοὶ φιλοπτόλεμοι, describes a quality, and challenges from the reader, like any other phrase conveying an idea, assent to the justice of its description. These descriptive affixes have a tendency, from repeated use, to grow into formulæ, and then at length they approximate to the nature of titles.

But a title is quite a different thing from a descriptive affix. A title is the current coin of language, which is intended to pass from mouth to mouth without examination. It is like a pronoun, having for its office simply to indicate, or to stand for, a particular person. It is the index of a rank or office, a thing determinate in its nature, like an unit of number: and it has no relation, when once fixed as a title, to personal character, though in its origin it may have been founded on the real or presumed existence of personal qualities. Like a descriptive affix, a title may be either adjective, as ‘most noble,’ or substantive, as ‘marquis.’

Titles evidently presume a certain progress in the organization of political society; while descriptive epithets must be used, in order to meet the purposes of human speech, even in its first stages.

This degree of progress must have been attained in the time of Homer; for the use of titles in the poems, as well as of descriptive epithets, can be clearly made out.

Among the descriptive epithets of Homer we find, of substantives, ἡγεμόνες, ἀριστῆες, and also βασιλεῖς, ἀοιδοί. Of adjectives, applied to classes, σκηπτοῦχοι (βασιλῆες), ὑπερμενέες (βασιλῆες), θεῖοι (ἀοιδοί): and applied to persons, ἐχεφρὼν Πηνελόπεια, Τηλέμαχος πεπνυμένος, πολύμητις Ὀδύσσευς: and many more.

In modern phraseology, duke, earl, baron, knight, esquire, are titles: nobles, clergy, freeholders, burgesses, are descriptive phrases. Of a descriptive epithet or affix which has grown to be a title, we may find instances among those just cited; knight (knecht) meant originally a servant, then a person performing particular service to the king; and esquire (scudiero, écuyer) meant a person who bore the arms of a knight, particularly his shield. In process of time these became titles. Again, words may hang doubtfully upon the confine between title and epithet; as the much criticised expressions of the English Common Prayer Book, ‘(our) most religious and gracious (king).’

We find in Homer that the word βασιλεὺς, a king, had already begun to pass from the function of a mere descriptive word towards that of a title; for, though rarely, he attaches it to the names of individuals, besides freely using it without them; and it is an usual note of titles properly so called, that they can, even if substantives, either be combined with the name of the person, or, in addressing them, substituted for it. In the Iliad we find Ἀλεξάνδρῳ βασιλῆι, and in the Odyssey Ἔχετον βασιλῆα. Again, we find βασίλεια used in the Odyssey in the vocative[764], which in like manner marks it as a title.

The word ἄναξ, again, in Homer, which must on no account be confounded with βασιλεὺς[765], is commonly a descriptive epithet, nearly equivalent to our word lord, and, like it, having an extraordinary elasticity of sense; for as a person may now be lord, so he might then be ἄναξ, of a kingdom, a people, a field, a mine, a slave, a horse, or a dog. Instances are countless. Sometimes the meaning is lord, or master, relatively to a particular object, as of the horses of Nestor,

Sometimes it means in the abstract a class of persons,

where the ἀνάκτων παῖδες nearly corresponds with our ‘children of the higher orders,’ i.e. the masters of slaves.

On the other hand, in reference to the immortals, ἄναξ is sometimes a title: as in Il. xvi. 233,

Examples of titles.

There are, however, in Homer various words which are undoubtedly and uniformly titular. Such are in particular the adjectives Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς, which are very nearly equivalent in power to the phrase ‘Royal Highness’ of the present day. They commonly accompany the name of the individual, or of the class, to which they belong: and they are confined, with one single exception, in the Iliad, to persons of the highest known rank, that of βασιλεὺς or king. The exception is Phœnix, who is in one place addressed by Achilles as γέραιε Διοτρεφές. But Achilles says this χαριζόμενος, when petting and coaxing the old man, and therefore the instance does not destroy the force of the general rule.

In one place we have ὁ Διογενὴς[768] used for Achilles in the third person without his name: which still more strikingly marks the word as a title. Also Διοτρεφὴς is not unfrequently used in the vocative, without, as well as with, the name of the person to whom it is addressed. It may possibly be worth notice, that these words, Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς, are never applied to Agamemnon, as if they had, again like the phrase ‘Royal Highness,’ a limit upwards as well as downwards, and were not applicable to the supreme head of the nation. There is indeed one passage where Agamemnon is addressed as Διοτρεφὴς, but it is in the universally suspected[769] νεκυΐα of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey. Plainly this fact cannot be referred to metrical considerations, even as to Διοτρεφὴς, because either in the genitive, or in the vocative, it would easily have been made available: especially in the latter inflexion, for Agamemnon is addressed vocatively some five and twenty times in the poems. I admit that Ulysses may allude to him in the line,

But the phrase here is more abstract than personal: it is perhaps as we should say, ‘our royal master.’

The word βασιλεὺς may have borne originally a merely descriptive character. But it has only partial traces of that character still adhering to it, as it is used in the Iliad. The chief note of such a sense, that I can find, is, that it is used in the comparative and superlative to distinguish the Pelopid house from the other kings. Agamemnon is βασιλεύτατος, Il. ix. 69, and Menelaus is evidently intended in the βασιλεύτερος of Il. x. 239; where Diomed is bidden to choose the best man, irrespectively of rank, and not to tie himself to the βασιλεύτερος.

As the Odyssey represents a period of political disorganization, brought about by the long absence of the chiefs, it is not surprising that we find the word βασιλεὺς, and its proper epithet Διοτρεφὴς, used in this poem with greater laxity. The βασιλῆες and the Διοτρεφεῖς[771], are here not the kings but the aristocracy of Scheria, and of the dominions of Ulysses: and it is a compliment paid to Telemachus by Theoclymenus, when he says[772],

Yet even here the special and official sense of βασιλεὺς remains: no one is ever called individually a βασιλεὺς unless he is on the throne, though Antinous is said to resemble one of the king-class,

And the same Antinous sarcastically expresses his hope, that Jupiter will not make Telemachus βασιλεὺς in Ithaca, notwithstanding his right of succession by birth[774]. If βασιλεὺς only indicated a certain station, Telemachus without doubt was βασιλεὺς already.

The sense proper to it in Homer is that in which, for some thousands of years, it appears to have maintained a world-wide celebrity.

Common interpretations of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

And now as respects the constructions which have been put upon the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. It is not noticed by Heyne or by Crusius. Of the translators I have already spoken. As regards the Lexicographers, Scott and Liddell say ‘Agamemnon as general-in-chief is specially ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, while Orsilochos is called ἄναξ ἄνδρεσσιν in Il. v. 546;’ but the phrase is πολέεσσ’ ἄνδρεσσιν ἄνακτα, which I take to be simply equivalent to ἀνάσσοντα, and to have no relation to a phrase or formula.

Damm[775] says it indicates supreme dignity united with military command.

Again; Mure[776] remarks, that in common with ποιμὴν λαῶν and κρείων, ‘it denotes the office of any king or chieftain, but more particularly that of a supreme ruler or commander.’

That these explanations are entirely beside the mark, I am convinced after a somewhat minute consideration.

In answer to Damm, I would observe that the phrase was applied to Æneas, who was a commander, but not a sovereign: it was applied to Anchises, who was a sovereign, but not a commander; it was applied to Eumelus, who was neither a sovereign, nor a warrior of any note, and who commanded no more than eleven ships.

It does not then depend upon the highest degree either of military or of civil elevation.

Nor does it in all cases attach to divine descent, even though that descent be from Jupiter; nor even if it be immediate or next to immediate: as among the living, Sarpedon the son of Jupiter has it not, neither has Polypœtes his grandson (Il. ii. 740). So, among the dead, it is not given either to Hercules or to Rhadamanthus[777], sons of Jupiter. If, as is probable, reputed extraction from Jupiter in all cases attached to it, it was a remote and not a near extraction, and thus the title was the ornament of an antique lineage; certainly divine descent was not the immediate qualification for the particular dignity.

I do not dispute, that an idea of divine descent attaches generally and immediately to sovereigns as such, at least in the Iliad. But this is represented by the words Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς, as they bear witness by their etymology, and not by ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Indeed we seem to find the word Διοτρεφὴς used for heaven-born, without reference to political power, in that line of the Odyssey (v. 378), where Neptune applies it to the Phæacians:

But of those Homeric titles which are specifically Greek, by far the most remarkable is the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

Particulars of its use.

It is used by the Poet fifty-two times: fifty times in the Iliad, twice only in the Odyssey.

It is applied forty-six times to Agamemnon, and six times to five other persons, once for each in four cases, and twice in one. The persons are,

Eumelus, a living Greek.

Augeias,dead Greeks.

Euphetes,

Anchises,living Trojans.

Æneas,

It appears and perishes with Homer, not being found in the writings of any other Greek author.

It is never used in any of the cases, except the nominative: never separated from the proper name of the person to whom it is applied, except once (Il. i. 7), and then only by the particle τε: it always precedes the name except in that single passage: it always ends with the first half of the fifth foot of the verse, except in that same passage: and again, the word ἄναξ is never separated from the word ἀνδρῶν, except once in the Odyssey by the word δέ.

It is applied to no person whose name does not begin with a vowel, and to no person whose name is not of the metrical value necessary to enable it to form the last foot and a half of the hexameter: as, Agamemnon, of two short syllables and two long ones; Euphetes, three long ones; Eumelus, two long and one short. Circumstances, these last, which, if they stood alone, would raise a presumption that the use of it was determined by metrical considerations only.

That metrical considerations had some degree of influence on the use of phrases in Homer, we may sufficiently judge, by observing that while Homer uses the name of Achæans four times for that of Argeians once, he uses the forms Ἀχαίοισι and Ἀχαίοισιν but twelve times, whereas he uses Ἀργείοισι and Ἀργείοισιν more than sixty times.

But we may observe that no metrical considerations could have prevented Homer from applying the phrase to Diomedes, Polypœtes, or others, whose names differ from that of Agamemnon only in having a consonant at the beginning of them: and yet he has not done this: the names of all his six ἄνακτες ἀνδρῶν begin with a vowel. Thus as he restrains himself beyond what metre requires, he may have had some reason other than metre to govern his use of the title.

The question is, whether there are, evidently or probably, other conditions of substance, which, besides these of sound, meet in the persons designated by the title, and which enable us to trace and fix its purport?

With reference to Mure’s explanation I observe, that it does not appear to take account of the difference between descriptive words in general, and titles, as applicable to Homer; but rather to assume that the Homeric phrases are simply of the former class.

It is plain that the word κρείων is a term of that class only: which, pro tanto, is indicated by its relationship to the established and ordinary epithet of comparison κρείσσων. It clearly describes the class of those, who bore single-handed rule, in the address to Jupiter, ὕπατε κρειόντων[778]; and it answers to the epithet princely in Il. xxiv. 538.

Lower than Βασιλεὺς, which corresponds to the rank implied by our term ‘majesty,’ and less wide in sense than ἄναξ, which corresponds very nearly with ‘lord,’ it is generally the equivalent as to rank of prince or princely, according to the English sense of the terms; but it is in Homer always a descriptive word only, and never a title. Accordingly it is found in the later Greek writers, when both ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and even ποιμὴν λαῶν have disappeared.

The ποιμὴν λαῶν of Homer.

The phrase ποιμὴν λαῶν is more largely used than κρείων, and with more appearance of approximation to that substantive character, and susceptibility of individual application, which belongs to a title. Thus in

the βασιλῆες are the members of the Greek βουλὴ, and ποιμὴν λαῶν means Agamemnon. Like κρείων, it was applicable to those who held secondary sovereignties, the feudatories, so to speak, of the principal chiefs: as for instance, we find among the secondary commanders of the Pylian division,

It reaches down to persons, of whom we know and can infer nothing, but that they may probably have held small fiefs (so to call them) with derivative sovereignty of some kind, such as were, among the Trojans[781], Bienor, Hypeiron, Apisaon, Hypsenor: and it is also applied to the sons of the greater chiefs, for example, Thrasymedes and Agenor[782], as well as to the chiefs themselves, including Agamemnon. It is likewise given to Ægisthus, when he was, de facto, in possession of the throne of Agamemnon[783]. It is therefore applicable to the idea of political rule in the very widest sense, differing however from ἄναξ in so far that, while it is assigned to personages of smaller note politically, it is confined to the expression of that kind of superiority, and has nothing whatever to do with property.

I find it, on the whole, impossible to detect in this phrase any thing of a definite character, except that it expresses political rule at large, and expresses it under the form of a figure adapted to the early and patriarchal state of society. I hesitate then to call it with confidence a title, because the class to which it applies is somewhat indeterminate, and therefore it is wanting in specific meaning: yet it may partake somewhat of that character. We must, however, distinguish broadly between the element of subordination to Agamemnon, such as we see it in Nestor and Diomed, and that of the class to which the lower ποιμένες λαῶν belonged. These were as widely separated as the great feudatories of mediæval France, from the petty lords who so much abounded in this island.

In its form, the phrase bears an external, rather than a real resemblance to ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. For ποίμην figuratively used expresses no more than the office of a ruler in his political relation to his subjects; while ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is much more peculiar in character, since ἄναξ exhibits the idea of master as well as ruler, and he is not merely ἄναξ of a people, but ἄναξ of individual men, in respect to something appertaining to man as such, of which he is the possessor or usufructuary. The ποιμὴν λαῶν expresses a relation, which implies that political society is already formed, for λαὸς means a body united in that form.

Again, we are scarcely entitled to presume that ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν denotes the office of ‘any king or chieftain,’ when, though it is used in some fifty passages, it is only applied to six persons: nor is it less hazardous to say that it means especially the office of a supreme ruler or commander, when out of these six persons only one at all answers to that description, and when at least three are persons of insignificant power, as well as individually obscure.

Once more, it is the manner of Homer, where he applies an epithet or phrase characteristically to one of his greater personages, to give them the exclusive use of it, such as the ποδωκὴς δῖος for Achilles, κορυθαίολος for Hector, πολύμητις and πολυτλὰς δῖος for Ulysses. For example, κορυθαίολος is used thirty-eight times for Hector, never for any other hero: though it is used once for Mars, in Il. xx. 38. It would be strange if he departed from this usage in the case before us. But if ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν be a mere phrase of description, as Mure supposes, he does depart from it in the strangest manner; for while he applies it forty-six times to Agamemnon, he likewise gives it to the very insignificant Eumelus. If it be a phrase simply serving the purpose, as an epithet would, of denoting the great political position of Agamemnon, how can its force be more utterly shattered than by bestowing it not only upon Eumelus, who does nothing except drive a chariot, but upon Euphetes, who is mentioned but once in the poems of Homer, without any epithet or circumstance whatever except this to distinguish him, and who is named nowhere else at all? If it describes a ruler as supreme among rulers, why is it thus debasingly, as well as loosely, applied? But if it describes a ruler generally, then why is it employed so restrictedly? The actual mode and conditions of its use require us to examine whether it does not in fact cover some specific idea, derived from a form of society which, even in the days of Homer, had become, or, at the least, was becoming obsolete; perhaps already in some part a monument of the past, and cutting across, rather than fitting into, the arrangements and usages of his time.

Ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν has a specific meaning.

The peculiar formula ‘lord of men’ appears well adapted to mark the period of transition from the patriarchal to the political construction of society; in the family, sovereignty and the possession of property are united, and the βασιλεὺς naturally follows after and grows out of the ἄναξ. Authority is here clothed in a form more extended than that of a mere family connection, yet the idea of it remains indeterminate: there is no distinct formation of class; superiors are not yet viewed under the formal political notion of kings, nor (as in λαὸς) have men yet come to conceive of themselves as subjects. There are human beings with a superior: but there is no society with a head. In that state of things, power, if less secure and rooted, was more absolute: witness the projected sacrifice by Abraham of his son Isaac.

To sum up, however, what we have said upon the other phrases, it appears that we have in Homer four words commonly used to express the ruling office, from the highest form of that office downwards: they are,

1. βασιλεὺς, the most limited: confined in the Iliad to those who both were practically supreme, and ruled over considerable territory, or else were of primary importance from personal prowess or other qualities.

2. κρείων, the next; embracing the very highest, but descending to secondary princes, though commonly confined to the more considerable.

3. ποιμὴν λαῶν, which, also capable of application to the highest, yet, as expressing political dominion in the widest form, embraces the subordinate, derivative, and petty principalities even of persons who do not appear to have been in any sense independent sovereigns.

4. More varied in its application than any of these, perhaps older, and related to the time when the only known form of sovereignty implied indeterminate, and so far absolute powers of disposal, the word ἄναξ involves the double idea of political authority and of ownership; it accompanies them both, like our word lord, when they separate, and it adheres to each of them in all its forms.

I admit that the construction which it is now proposed to put upon ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν has not, so far as I am aware, been heretofore propounded; and that this is, pro tanto, a presumption against it. But in lieu of pro tanto, I would in this case crave to write pro tantillo; for it seems to be the fact, that, as only of late has Ethnology been systematically studied, so only of late have the text and diction of Homer been subjected to minute investigation; and it is reasonable to expect, that the further application of critical attention to it may yet disclose to our view much, which has heretofore been unsuspected. It is the more allowable to proceed upon this view in the case of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, because so few readers of Homer appear even to have observed that it is ever applied to any person besides Agamemnon, and therefore the common opinion rests upon an inaccurate impression as to the elementary facts. My purpose, accordingly, may more justly be described as an attempt to open a new question, than as an attack upon a critical verdict regularly delivered.

Let us now proceed to examine what the facts really are respecting the use of the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν in Homer.

Persons to whom it is applied.

It is applied to Agamemnon in the following passages:

Il. i. 7, 172, 442, 506. ii. 402, 434, 441, 612. iii. 81, 267, 455. iv. 148, 255, 336. v. 38. vi. 33. vii. 162, 314. viii. 278. ix. 96, 114, 163, 672, 677, 697. x. 64, 86, 103, 119, 233. xi. 99, 254. xiv. 64, 103, 134. xviii. 111. xix. 51, 76, 146, 172, 184, 199. xxiii. 161, 895. Od. viii. 77. xi. 396.

It is also applied to

Anchises, Il. v. 268. Æneas, Il. v. 311. Augeias, Il. xi. 701, 739. Euphetes, Il. xv. 532. Eumelus, Il. xxiii. 288.

Now although, as we have seen, the term is in fact employed only with names nearly akin to one another in point of metrical value, yet the Poet has given us the most distinct evidence that the employment of it was not a mere metrical expedient to assist him in the use of names otherwise unmanageable. This we learn in the two following forms:

1. The name Eumelus is one of those to which he applies the phrase: but the metrical conjunction of it with this name is by no means particularly convenient, for out of five places in which Homer mentions Eumelus in the nominative case, he only once gives him his title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Again, it is evident that he has no preference for the end of the verse as a place for the name of Eumelus; for he places it elsewhere, at the beginning, and in τὴν Εὔμηλος ὄπυιε (Il. ii. 714. Od. iv. 798), on the only two occasions when he uses the nominative without a title annexed. He only puts it at the end of the verse in order to couple it with ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and with κρείων (Il. xxiii. 288, 354). So far then from being a metrical convenience, this phrase rather forces him out of his way in order to introduce it. So it is with Æneas. Homer uses his name very many times, but never once places it at the end of a verse, except in the single case in which he attaches it to the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Again, then, the phrase compels him to adopt a position which he is uniformly careful to avoid elsewhere for Æneas, and this in little short of forty instances.

Persons to whom it might have been applied.

2. Besides the names to which Homer applies the phrase, he employs a great number of names, of persons having high or the very highest rank, which possess exactly the same metrical value as one or another of the six names above quoted; but yet to none of these does he at any time give the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Of such names I have observed the following: and I exclude from the list the merely local characters of the Odyssey, and all persons in inferior station.

(1) Of the same metrical value with Eumelus:

Patroclus. Pheidippus. Euneus. Eudorus. Euphemus. Ægisthus. Admetus. Amphius. Euphorbus.

And of the dead,

Isandros. Adrestus.

(2) Of the same metrical value with Augeias, Euphetes, Æneas, Anchises:

Antenor. Sarpedon. Pyræchmes. Hercules (Heracles). Eurystheus.

(3) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon:

Diomedes. Polypœtes. Megapenthes. Thrasymedes. Eteoneus. Agapenor. Euphenor. Prothoenor. Hyperenor.

(4) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon, except having the last syllable short:

Menelaus. Echepolus. Melanippus. Polydorus.

And of the dead,

Rhadamanthus. Meleagros.

Here are thirty-five names as susceptible of conjunction with the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν as the six to which he attaches it. How comes it to be attached, significant as it is primâ facie, to the six, and never to the thirty-five? Did it come and go by accident, or had Homer a meaning in it?

Moreover, I would by no means be understood to admit, that metrical obstacles would have sufficed to prevent Homer from applying almost any title to almost any name: such were the resources of his genius and his ear, and such the freedom that the youthful elasticity of the language secured to him.

It must be remembered too that he has given us an instance (in Il. i. 7) of a second site, so to speak, for ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν in the Greek hexameter, which would have enabled him at once to combine it with all such proper names as come within the compass of a dactyl and trochee, or a spondee and trochee. Such as Πουλυδάμας γὰρ ... Καὶ Πρίαμος μὲν ... Καὶ γὰρ Τευκρὸς ... Θησεὺς αὐτὸς ... Δάρδανος αὐτὸς .... And even without altering its usual position in the verse, by a break of it, or a cæsura, which is not unfrequent with him, he might have given us (for example) ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν γὰρ Ἐρεχθεύς. Or he might by tmesis, more liberally used, have further widened the field for its employment.

Or again, he would have been free, by the rules of his own usage, to have said in the vocative, ἀνδρῶν ἄνα.

Homer’s reverence for this title.

His abstinence from inflexion absolutely, and from tmesis almost entirely, in the use of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, I think deserves remark. We might be struck, even in another author, by finding a word fifty-six times in the nominative singular, and never in any other form: but in Homer these slight circumstances have a value and significance, which in ordinary cases it would be more dangerous to assign to them. It seems to me possible, that this restraint in the use of the name, which always assigns to it the most commanding place in the sentence, was not unconnected with a sense of reverence towards it. I think that if we were to examine the correspondence, for example, between British Ministers and their Sovereign, we might find that the phrase ‘Your Majesty’ was placed, under a sort of natural and unconscious bias, by the writers, in the nominative case, in a proportional number of instances far exceeding that which the pronoun ‘you’ would supply in an ordinary letter.

It is difficult to define this delicate and subtle sentiment: but it may perhaps be illustrated by the feeling on which is founded the prevailing usage of addressing among ourselves the very highest ranks, and in some languages all persons of consideration, in the third rather than the second person. And again, it is the same description of sentiment, which, when carried into the sphere of religion, has led Dante invariably to forbear, when he introduces the name ‘Cristo’ at the close of a verse, from placing any other word in rhyme with it, so that he makes it its own echo (so to speak), and repeats it thrice, in no less than four passages, to meet the full demand of his metre[784].

Or again, as Homer appears to have possessed a fineness of ear which is not only wonderful, but by us in some part inappreciable, it may be that he attached an importance, which we cannot measure, to preserving a perfect uniformity in this dignified and sonorous title, as a means of producing popular impression, not less than of satisfying his own taste.

Other instances might be given from Homer, bearing upon the case.

Ἐνοσίχθων is used forty times, and only once out of the nominative, though metrical reasons could not hamper the poet with respect to any of the cases of this noun. Διογενὴς is used in the nominative and vocative only. Κύδιστος is used sixteen times, and in the vocative alone. The feminine form however is found in the nominative, but only in two passages (one of them with a rival reading) applied to Minerva. Εὐρυκρείων is found twelve times, and only in the nominative.

Perhaps again the rarity and slightness of his use of tmesis may be accounted for, not by euphony alone, but by the circumstance that these two words had grown by titular use almost into one.

The fact that the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν should have disappeared with Homer himself, while his heroes were incessantly sung by later poets, of itself raises a presumption that it belonged to a state of things which, when after a wide interval the race of his successors began, had wholly ceased to exist.

That stage of society, in the closing stages of which Homer lived, and which we know through him alone of classical authors, was the patriarchal stage in its last phasis. By the patriarchal stage of society, I mean the stage in which rights on the one hand, and powers and duties on the other, were still indeterminate, and were gradually passing from the state of nebula into that of body. Now, if the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν belonged to it, without doubt it must at the outset have exhibited its unvarying characteristic, the union of sovereign political power not only with hereditary descent, but with a reference to some original stock as an object of deep veneration, if not to a relationship of blood more or less remote between the royal family and their subjects, or to the dominant race among them.

Its relation to Patriarchal Chieftaincy.

The chieftaincies of the Celtic tribes in our own island, such as they existed until within only one century back, afford us a partial analogy. The primary idea is that of the headship of an extended family, sometimes approximating to the character of a nation; sometimes more limited, so that many of such families or tribes may be regarded as belonging to the same nation. One marked characteristic of these chieftaincies is that the preeminence and power, which they attached to birth, is separable from, though capable of union with, sovereignty strictly so called, that is, an absolute political supremacy, and subsists in its main particulars even after the division; neither does it become ambiguous or indefinite, where the field for its exercise is a narrow one. The splendour of the name increases with the range of dominion, but its integrity subsists even in the most contracted sphere, so long as the organization on which it is dependent remains.

It is at least conceivable, that the Greek and the Celtic chieftaincies thus far agree. They differ in this, that the Hellenes, whenever we hear of them, appear more or less clearly as the subjugators of some race in prior occupancy of the soil, and as the masters of slaves: so that, while the relation of the Highland Chief to his clan was elevated and softened by union in blood, a Greek chieftaincy rather affected the relation between the head of the tribe and, not the whole, but only a privileged part, of the community.

The fundamental idea of this chieftainship would lie in the possession of the powers of government, patriarchally organized, by lineal descent, and traced up to the point which was the recognised fountain-head of the traditions of the race.

Where the idea of succession by primogeniture was well defined, there probably would be but one line in existence at a time that could hold the title for any one race. But there might be cases where the rule of primogeniture was unknown, or not consistently applied, or where the fact of elder descent was contested, or where common descent from some one acknowledged race and period might confer the title on a variety of families, situated at remote points from one another, in each of which it might afterwards be confined to the lineal heir. In such cases there would be a plurality of lines, all running up into the stem of a common ancestor, and all bearing in their own separate successions the title of chieftainships.

Again, among these chieftains one might be politically supreme over the rest within a given country. Such were the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles, in Scotland, who claimed to be kings as well as chieftains: and such in Ireland were the Kevanaghs, O’Ruarcs, and O’Briens.

If therefore I am right in interpreting the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν to mean properly (together with something more) Chieftain, in a sense including the main elements of Celtic chieftaincy, or Patriarch, (but the latter phrase is less applicable from its conventional connection with advanced age), then it need excite no surprise if we find an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν on each side, and not in the supreme command. At the same time, though there are vast differences in power between one Homeric ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν and another, they are all, so far as we see, strictly in the position of princes ordinarily independent within their dominions, though owning, it might be, the prerogatives of a qualified political supremacy lodged in other hands.

Case of Agamemnon.

Mode of its use for Agamemnon.

It is very worthy of remark, that Homer scarcely ever describes Agamemnon by personal epithets. In a few passages (I see seven noticed) he uses the word δῖος in connection with the name: but this is one of the least specific among the Homeric epithets for individuals, and is employed not only for Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, Nestor, and others, but for a crowd of inferior personages, so that, as a word of the most general purport, it has little or no defining or individualizing power. It means preeminence in some particular kind, among a class, and it is applicable to any class; to Agamemnon greatest among sovereigns, and to Eumæus worthiest among swineherds. A few times Homer calls him ἥρως, a word which he also applies to the entire Greek army (Il. ii. 110). In all other places, (I omit, of course, the invectives of Achilles,) he is characterised only by words taken from his position or descent. The principal of these are Ἀτρείδης, which he enjoys in common with Menelaus: κρείων, applied to him and to various other chiefs: ποιμὴν λαῶν, yet more largely and loosely used: εὐρυκρείων, which is exclusively his own among men, and which is the epithet used by Homer as properly descriptive of his wide-reaching sway. It is also applied to Neptune among the immortals, because vastness was with Homer a principal feature of the θάλασσα, his domain. Lastly, Agamemnon is ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, which, as I hold, describes his position by birth as the head or chieftain of the Achæans properly so called.

There are two remarkable passages, which are evidently intended to supply the key-note, as it were, for our conception of the material power of Agamemnon: the first, Il. ii. 108, respecting the sceptre: the second, in the Catalogue, Il. ii. 576-80: in both of these he is called κρείων, in neither ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. This fact entirely accords with the supposition that neither a determinate form of political power, nor military command, is the vital idea of the phrase.

On the other hand, although the Poet does not seem to connect this phrase with imperial power, yet that he intended to use it as one highly characteristic, we may at once deem probable from his having employed it in that remarkable passage[785] with which the poem begins, and which so succinctly, yet so broadly opens the subject of it. For here he has taken the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν out of its usual, and elsewhere its only place in the verse, and has subjoined it, contrary in this likewise to his uniform practice elsewhere, to the name of the person described by it. The line is

Evidently this is done for greater emphasis: as ‘great Alexander’ is less emphatic than ‘Alexander the Great,’ and ‘king Darius’ than ‘Darius the king.’ It may be admitted that the epithet δῖος, used in this place for Achilles, is not one of the most characteristic: but Achilles had already been described (in v. i.) by that distinguished patronymic which formed his chief glory[786], as it connected him, through his father and his grandfather, with Jupiter.

All these presumptions drawn from the case of Agamemnon converge upon a point: they tend to show, that ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν means preeminence indeed, but yet a particular kind of preeminence; and one distinct from, and more specific than, the general idea of sovereignty.

Extraction and station of Agamemnon.

The so-called genealogy of Agamemnon differs from every other one given by Homer in this, that it does not describe the descent in a right line. For as Thyestes, one of his three predecessors on the Pelopid throne was the father of Ægisthus, who was the contemporary, but yet not the brother of Agamemnon, he must without doubt have been brother to Atreus, Agamemnon’s father. It is in fact not a genealogy simply, but rather a succession in dignities. The dignity of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν may have combined with that of the political supremacy to lead Homer into this unusual course. If, as I suppose, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν required the double derivation both of lineage and of sovereignty, this was the way, and the only way, in which Homer could attain his end. And his having pursued this method seems to imply that such was his end.

I cannot therefore under the conditions of the definition given above, explain the application of the phrase to Agamemnon by mere reference to his political supremacy. It will be necessary to prove, either by direct or by presumptive evidence, his lineal connection with the primitive Grecian or Hellenic stock, the trunk of the tree from which other Achæan families were branches and offshoots only.

I propose to do this by showing,

First, that no appreciable value is to be attached to the notions which represent him as the grandson of an Asiatic immigrant; while even if this descent could be made good, we should not on that account be justified in at once proceeding to deny that the Pelopids were of pure Hellenic blood.

Secondly, that he was not merely at the moment the political head of Greece, but that he was also the hereditary chief of the Achæans, then the ruling tribe of the country.

Thirdly, that this Achæan tribe was in all likelihood derived from Thessaly, where it was especially rooted and distinguished: as Thessaly was itself fed from the Helli of the mountains, and constituted the secondary and immediate source from whence the Hellenic races successively issued, and spread themselves over the peninsula.

I do not pretend to carry the proof of a patriarchal position or lineal chieftaincy in the case of Agamemnon further. We do not know what was the strictly original royal stock of the Hellenic tribes. The current tradition of Hellen and his sons would be very convenient, but it is too obviously accommodated to after-times, and too flatly at variance with the earliest, that is to say with the Homeric accounts, to be in the slightest degree trustworthy as an historic basis. We may take the Hesiodic tradition as affording evidence of the belief that there was a primitive royal stock, and that the ruling families had been derived from it, since within these limits it does not contradict Homer; but we can justly build upon it nothing further. Undoubtedly the very employment of the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, if the proposed construction of it can be made good, will greatly fortify this belief. But this can only be made good in a presumptive manner: as by showing that the phrase was only given in ruling families: and only in the representative lines of ruling families: and only in families which ruled over tribes of the dominant race; and which had so ruled from time immemorial—that is to say, they must be families of which it cannot be shown that at any time they had acquired their position in their own tribe. If a first ancestor, apparently the channel of the title, is indicated, he must be one from whom history begins: there must be nothing before him, nothing to show that he or his line had ever been less than what he came to be. Lastly, the tribes, over which the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν rules, must be in visible or presumable connection locally with the original seat or cradle of the nation; and it will be a further confirmation of the argument if, as we ascend the lineal lines, we find in them a tendency to converge towards an unity of origin, which we shall find poetically expressed as the divine parentage of Jupiter, and thus covered with the golden clouds of a remote antiquity, that not even the sun can pierce[787]. Perhaps we may even find reason to suppose it likely that descent from Jupiter was an essential qualification for the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

Arguments against his Hellenic descent.

First, then, let us deal with the negative or adverse presumptions, which would go to prove that Agamemnon was not Hellenic at all.

It may be urged,

1. That we see, even from Homer, that Pelops was a recent hero, only two generations before the Troica, so that Agamemnon has no antiquity to boast of.

2. That, according to extraneous tradition, there is no connection between Agamemnon and the Hellic stock: as Pelops is reputed to be the son of Tantalus, and Tantalus the king of Phrygia.

To the first I answer, that the list of names in Il. ii. 101-8, is not simply a genealogy, for it includes Thyestes, who is not in the right line; but it is a succession of kings on a common throne, and can only therefore begin with Pelops, as the first who sat upon that throne.

But, further, even if it were a genealogy, yet Homer seems usually to begin his genealogies not with the first known ancestor of a person, but with the first ancestor of his who settled in the place where he exercises power. Thus Nestor, though we acquire indirectly a knowledge of his earlier descent through the Νεκυΐα, has no genealogy beyond Neleus his father, because he was the ancestor that migrated into Peloponnesus, or, at least, that first acquired the Pylian throne, by marriage into a prior, and perhaps a Pelasgian house[788]. Ulysses has none beyond Arceisius; and it is plain, from the records of the earlier dynasty in Ithaca, that there could have been no king of that house before him. Dardanus and Minos, heads of genealogies, were also the founders of sovereignties. Again, Portheus is given us as the head of the Œneid line in Ætolia: and we have found it probable that he was the first of his race[789] who migrated into that country. The same considerations, in all likelihood, hold good with regard to Pelops.

Now with respect to the second objection.

We are to remember that Homer has nowhere asserted the connection between Pelops and Tantalus, or between Tantalus and Phrygia.

But not even the latter connection, and far less the former, would disprove the title of Agamemnon to represent lineally the character of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. For, as we have seen, that title subsisted in the line of Dardanus, and the causes which planted it there might also have planted it in Phrygia; which is not irrationally supposed to have been the line of march for the Hellic race in its original movement westwards[790]. Moreover, Phrygia is not a name confined to Asia.

Connection of Tantalus with the Greeks.

There are, however, many indirect Homeric indications, as well as much extra-Homeric tradition, which tend to connect Pelops both with Tantalus and with Greece.

First, even if Tantalus were known to Homer as the father of Pelops, he could not have been named in the tradition of Il. ii. 101-8, unless he had occupied, like Pelops, the throne to which Agamemnon succeeded.

From the appearance of Tantalus in the Νεκυΐα, it is probable that Homer regarded him as Greek, either by birth or by what we may call naturalization. This he might be in the Poet’s view, if the traditions concerning him, without assigning to him Greek birth or even residence, made him the father of one who became a great Greek sovereign. If, for instance, we take the name of Æolus; it is the source of some of the most famous Greek houses, yet Homer never mentions it, except in the patronymic, and gives us no means of absolutely attaching it to any part of Greece. Æolus may have been known only as the father of Greeks. So Minos was not of Greek birth; but was naturalized, and therefore appears in the Νεκυΐα as the judge of the nether world. All the other personages, without exception, who are introduced there, are apparently Greek: Sisyphus, Hercules, Tityus, Theseus, Pirithous, from clear marks of residence: even Orion, since he is made the hero of a scene in Delos[791], appears, whatever his origin, to have been already Hellenized by tradition. Nor is it easy to avoid the same assumption with respect to Tantalus.

Again, we may be quite sure, that Tantalus was a person of the highest rank and position. None others seem to have been distinguished by an express notice of their fate after death. Orion was the object of the passion of Aurora (Od. v. 121). Tityus was an offender so lofty, that he became the occasion of a voyage of Rhadamanthus himself to deal with his crime[792]. Sisyphus was, as we have found reason to believe[793], of the most exalted stock.

The punishment of Tantalus in the nether world is probably, as in other cases, the reflection of a previous catastrophe, certainly of a previous character, upon earth. The nature of his punishment is a perpetual temptation, of irresistible force, presented to the appetites of hunger and thirst, while the gratification of it is wholly and perpetually denied. This shews that his offence on earth must have been some form of πλεονεξία, of greediness, presumption, or ambition. It is therefore not unlikely that by restless attempts at acquisition, he may have convulsed his dominions, and caused his son to migrate.

Now this supposed vein of character in Tantalus would thoroughly accord with that of the Pelopid line. He is punished for covetousness or acquisitiveness. His son gains a kingdom through Mercury, who is the god of increase by fair means or foul. His grandson Thyestes gathers wealth (πολύαρς, Il. ii. 106): his great-grandson Agamemnon is deeply marked by the avarice everywhere glanced at in the Iliad: and finally we have the reckless and guilty cravings of the ambition of Ægisthus.

We are by no means without reasons from the poems for placing Tantalus, as the later tradition places him, among the heroes of the stock of Jupiter. One ground is afforded us by the text of the Eleventh Odyssey for supposing that he was, I do not say a son, but at least a descendant of Jupiter. It is this; that apparently all the heroes, to whom we are thus introduced, were at least of divine extraction. They are, besides Tantalus, as follows:—

1. Minos, who was a son of Jupiter. (Od. xi. 568.)

2. Orion: he was of divine extraction according to the later tradition. In Homer he has no parentage, but he had at least attained to divine honours, inasmuch as he was translated into a star. (Od. v. 274 et alibi.)

3. Tityus, son of Γαῖα. (Od. xi. 596, and vii. 324.)

4. Sisyphus, son of Æolus; therefore descended from Jupiter.

5. Hercules, son of Jupiter (ibid. 620.)

But I rely specially upon the passages towards the end, where these are all called ἄνδρες ἥρωες, and where Ulysses says he might have seen others, namely, Θήσεα Πειρίθοόν τε, θεῶν ἐρικύδεα τέκνα, illustrious children of the gods: as if to be a child of the gods were a condition of appearing in this august, though mournful, company.

Hereas, a Megarian author of uncertain age, is quoted by Plutarch[794] as having declared that the last cited verse was among the interpolations of Pisistratus. But Hereas was as likely to be wrong in this statement, through Megarian antipathy, as Pisistratus to have interpolated the verse in favour of Athenian vanity. The internal evidence is, I think, in its favour. For the phrase θεῶν ἐρικύδεα τέκνα is, according to the view here given, really characteristic. It is, at the same time, characteristic through the medium of an idea which, though it can be deduced fairly from the text, is not obvious upon its surface; namely the idea that all the heroes of the Νεκυΐα were divine. The verse is therefore supported by something in the nature of a spontaneous or undesigned coincidence.

The post-Homeric tradition makes Niobe the daughter of Tantalus; and, if this be so, then we may derive from her very high position a further support to the presumption that Tantalus was of the race of Jupiter, as also to the hypothesis of his personal connection with Greece. For that the tradition of Niobe is Greek we see, from its being cited by Achilles; and that she was a sovereign is clearly implied by the combined effect of various circumstances. The first is her being compared by Achilles with Priam. The second, that the vaunt of an inferior person would hardly have been noticed by the direct intervention of the gods. The third is the singular extent and dignity of that intervention: Apollo slays the sons, Diana the daughters; Jupiter converts the people to stone; the Immortals at large bury the dead. The fourth is the use of the term λαοὺς, which means plainly the subjects of the kingdom where Niobe was queen.

We cannot now carry farther the presumptions that Tantalus was the descendant of Jupiter, and Agamemnon of Tantalus: but if, in considering the cases of the other members of his class, we shall sufficiently shew that they were all descended in common repute from Jupiter, we shall then perhaps be warranted in relying more decidedly upon the connection, which is suggested by the text in the case of Agamemnon through his presumed ancestor Tantalus.

It is difficult to find more than slight traces of the seat of the power of Tantalus from Homer.

He mentions a mountain called Sipylus[795], near the Achelous, and thus near the principal passage from Northern and Middle into Southern Greece. Here it is that he places the mourning Niobe. But Pausanias places the tomb of Pelops on the summit of Mount Sipylus, meaning, apparently, the hill of that name in Lydia[796]. Again, the Phryges, over whom the later tradition reports him to have reigned, are also made known to us as a Thracian people[797]: a designation quite capable of embracing any of the hill tribes in the neighbourhood of Thessaly. We have another sign of the extension of this name in the Phrygians of Attica, mentioned by Thucydides (ii. 22): and the Phrygian alphabet is closely akin to that of Greece.

Strabo, however, observes, that the state of these traditions is so greatly confused, so as to make them scarcely tractable for the purposes of history[798].

Place of Pelops in Greek history.

The connection of Pelops with Southern Greece is well supported by the ancient name of Peloponnesus. No notice of this name is found in Homer; but we need not be surprised, if Pelops was the first of his race in that part of the country, at finding him sparely recognised by the Poet: it is the uniform manner of the poet with strangers or novi homines.

The Homeric notices of Pelops are not more liberal than of Tantalus. 1. We find him called πλήξιππος[799] in such a way as shows that something connected with the driving of a chariot must have been attached either to the known habits, or to some great crisis of his life, or to both. In either mode, it agrees with the common tradition, according to which, by success in the chariot race, he won the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of king Œnomaus, and therewith the throne of Pisa. We have another fact from Homer which tends to support this tradition, namely, that in the earliest youth of Nestor there were, as we have seen, public games, which included chariot-races, in Elis.

2. The common tradition is also further supported by the passage in the Second Iliad, which gives us the line of Pelopid sovereigns. For we are there told that Vulcan wrought the Pelopid sceptre for Jupiter: that Jupiter gave it to Mercury, and Mercury to Pelops the horse-driver, who handed it on to Atreus and the rest. From this statement two things clearly appear. First, that the throne of Pelops was gained either by craft, or at least by enterprise, of his own. Secondly, that it was a new power which he erected, and that he was not merely the transferee of the power of the Perseid line.

Nor is it difficult to discern wherein the novelty consisted. This sceptre carried the right of paramount lordship over all Greece—

whereas the Perseids had been local sovereigns, though probably the first in rank and power among their contemporaries of Continental Greece.

Now this sovereignty, thus extended, was plainly an Achæan sovereignty. For we have seen that, contemporaneously with its erection, Homer drops the marked and exclusive use of the word Ἀργεῖοι for the inhabitants of that quarter, and calls them by preference Ἀχαιοὶ, the older name falling into the shade. Thus, then, the Achæans rose with the house of Pelops: and this being the case, we can the better understand why it was that that house rose to so great an elevation. It was because the Achæan race had now acquired extension in the North and in the South of Greece, in Eastern and Western Peloponnesus, and because it usually predominated wheresoever it went. Thus the house of Pelops had an opportunity of gaining influence and power, which had not been enjoyed by the preceding dynasties, though they ruled from the same sovereign seat. They were families only: the Pelopids were chiefs of a race.

What we have thus seen from Homer, with respect to the high position attained by Pelops, is confirmed by the later tradition.

Pausanias notices the local traces of Tantalus, as well as of Pelops, in Elis. A harbour there bore the name of Tantalus[801]: and Pelops was worshipped in a sanctuary hard by the temple of Jupiter Olympius. It was on the right hand, in front of that temple, a very marked situation in all likelihood: and Pausanias says, that the Elians reverenced Pelops among heroes, like Jupiter among gods. It was probably on this account, and as a memorial of the worship from high places, that the θρόνος, or seat of Pelops, was, as he says, not only in Sipylus, but on the summit of the mountain.

Another tradition makes Pelops the original king of Pisa, the rival town to Elis, which at length succumbed to it. And a further tradition reports, that he became the son-in-law of Œnomaus, king of Pisa, by conquering him in the chariot-race: and together with this, that he restored the Olympian Games. Another tradition reports him to have come from Olenos in Achaia: and as the Dorians, with the Heraclids, came into Peloponnesus by that route, probably as the easiest, so, and for the same reason, may Pelops probably have done. Lastly, while Homer places Achæans in Ægina and in Mases, (of which the site is unknown,) Pausanias (b. ii. c. 34) states that nine islands (νησίδες) off the coast of Methana, which lies directly opposite Ægina, were in his time called the Islands of Pelops.

Before quitting the subject of Pelops, I would observe, that his worship in Olympia with such peculiar honours is connected with a tradition, that he raised the Olympian Games to a distinction which they had never before attained. Now if we view him as the principal chief who brought the Achæans into Peloponnesus, this tradition tends to support the view which has been taken in a former section of the relation between the Hellic race and the institution of public Games. Nor is there any thing more intrinsically probable, than that a chief from the great breeding region of Thessaly should have either founded the chariot or horse-races of Olympia, or should have raised them to an unprecedented celebrity, and secured for them the truly national position that they for so long a time maintained.

We have seen thus far,

1. That the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is employed by Homer as the chief distinction of Agamemnon.

2. That most probably Agamemnon was descended from Tantalus, as well as from Pelops, that the line was a line of sovereigns all along, and Tantalus in all likelihood a reputed descendant of Jupiter himself.

3. That the Achæans emerge in company with the Pelopids, from the cavern of pre-historic night, and that the Pelopids are therefore to be taken as in all likelihood the chief and senior house of the Achæan tribe.

But we have still to ask, whence came the Achæans themselves? and how are we to prove their connection with the Hellenic name and stock?

And first, as to Homeric evidence.

Achæans from Thessaly.

We have already seen, in considering Homer’s account of the contingent of Achilles, and also from Il. ix. 395, that the Achæan race appears to have been the dominant one in the proper and original Hellas of Thessaly: which appears to place it beyond doubt, that the Achæans were they who first carried with them extensively into Greece the Hellenic name, a name always following in the wake of the Achæan one, and in Homer extending to all Greece, unless we except that part which was the sovereign seat of Achæan power.

The first form of the name is with the Helli of Northern Thessaly: the second is developed into the Hellas proper of Southern Thessaly; we find the third in the more large and less determinate use of the word for Greece to the northward of the Isthmus. The name gains this extension apparently just during the period while the Achæans are moving southward, as the house of Ulysses to Ithaca, the house of Neleus, perhaps with an Achæan train, to Pylos, the Pelopids to Mycenæ and Sparta, Tydeus from Ætolia to Argos.

And again, we must observe this distinction. We see the Achæans come into the Peloponnesus, and we can, from the text of Homer, point out the time when they were not there. But we do not see them come into Thessaly from among the Helli of the mountains. We simply find their name prominent there; from which we must conclude, that Homer meant to point them out as the first representatives on an adequate scale of Hellas in that country.

All this is strongly confirmed by the later tradition as to the connection of Pelops with the Achæans of Thessaly, and by the clear historical proofs in our possession of the profound root which the Achæan name had taken there.

Strabo, in a passage where he chooses a particular tradition from among many, as peculiarly worthy of record, says[802],

Ἀχαιοὺς γὰρ τοὺς Φθιώτας φασὶ συγκατελθόντας Πέλοπι εἰς τὴν Πελοπόννησον, οἰκῆσαι τὴν Λακωνικὴν· τοσοῦτον δ’ ἀρετῇ διενεγκεῖν, ὥστε τὴν Πελοπόννησον, ἐκ πολλῶν ἤδη χρόνων Ἄργος λεγομένην, τότε Ἀχαϊκὸν Ἄργος λεχθῆναι.

Thus he at once asserts the connection of Pelops with the Achæans, and of the Achæans with Thessaly. He proceeds to say, that Laconia was considered to have a peculiar title to the name of Achaic Argos[803]; that some construed Od. iii. 251 as supporting it, and that the Achæans, driven by the Dorians out of Laconia, in their turn displaced an Ionian race from Achaia, and took possession of the district.

Herodotus[804], in treating of the Peloponnesus, describes the Arcadians and Cynurians as αὐτόχθονες, who had never changed their habitation; four other races, including the Dorians, as ἐπήλυδες, and the Achæans as having migrated about the Peloponnesus, but never left it. He does not explicitly place the Achæans in either class; and this tradition does not throw much light on the origin of the Achæans, which would seem not to have been within his knowledge, but only deals with matter subsequent to their entry into Peloponnesus.

Pausanias[805], again, would seem rather to draw the Thessalian Achæans from Peloponnesus than vice versa. He tells us that, after the death of Xuthus, Achæus went with an army from Ægialus, and established himself in Thessaly. But with Homer before us, we may boldly say, that there was no such person as either the Xuthus or the Achæus of the later tradition, and that there were, on the other hand, Achæans in Thessaly long before the time assigned to this Achæus, namely, the epoch when the race took refuge in Ægialus. This tradition, then, is late and worthless, and, even if it directly contradicted that of Strabo, which it does not, could not be put in competition with it.

The tradition which made Phthiotis in Southern Thessaly the cradle of the Achæan race, where it first grew into conscious life, seems to have been an undying one.

Duration of the name in Thessaly.

Here again history comes in to our aid. Throughout the historic times of Greece, and down to the era of Polybius, there were Achæans of Phthiotis. When, 205 years before Christ, Quintius, the Roman general, examined into the origin of the Greek cities, and made a classification of them[806], the Achæans of Phthiotis were declared to be Thessalians: and he appears to use the name for all Phthians, since he calls Phaxidas[807] an Achæan, seemingly for no other reason than that he was an inhabitant of Melitea, a city of Phthiotis.

I take it then to be sufficiently proved, that Agamemnon and his house were the proper heads of the Achæan race, which rose with them. The proof is doubled by the fact that they fell with it: for in the post-Homeric literature, all of which follows the Dorian conquest, the Achæan name has ceased to be a living name for the nation of the Greeks.

And as the Pelopids were the leaders of the Achæans, so I now assume it to be sufficiently shown from Homer, that the Achæans were in his time at the head of all the Hellenic families and tribes; of the Dorians, the Æolids, the Cephallenes, and whatever others came from the same stock, and were in fact, for their age, the proper type of Hellenism itself.

That most remarkable supremacy of Agamemnon over the Greek nation, which is so strongly marked on the page of Homer, and to the force of which Thucydides ascribes the wonderful movement of the Trojan war, left behind it a tradition which it was thought worth while by the ruling race of Dorians to appropriate, even after the shipwreck of the old political system.

Orestes came to the throne of Agamemnon, and Tisamenus to that of Orestes. He was cast out by the Heraclids with the Dorians, and they made Sparta the chief seat of their power. Thus established in the primacy of Greece, they held it, under the name of Ἡγεμονία, contested sometimes, but only after the lapse of several ages, by Athens: never absolutely taken away, until it passed, as Polybius says, unexpectedly, into the hands of the Thebans, in the fourth century before the Christian era.

Tisamenus and his Achæans went into Ægialus, and gave it their own name. But the imperial Spartans found it for their interest to put in their claim to the old Agamemnonian title. So, as Pausanias[808] informs us, even down to his day, the Tomb of Tisamenus was shown in Sparta, and hard by it the Lycurgian feast of Pheiditia was kept; with a tradition that their fathers, admonished by an oracle, had fetched the remains of the last Pelopid sovereign from Helice in Achæa. On the other hand, the Achæans, who in the time of Polybius[809] had not yet ceased to keep the image of their legendary ancestor Achæus, and whose claim to that image was recognised by the Roman general, likewise cherished a tradition that the family of Tisamenus had been continued, and had reigned among them down to the time of Ogygus[810], when their League was formed upon the basis of democratic institutions.

Dorians appropriate the Pelopid succession.

Now it is no more than we might expect, that the Achæans should, in their depressed fortunes, fondly cherish the recollections of their glory, by preserving and honouring the memory of the last of that race, who, through being their sovereigns, were also the heads of the Greek nation. But why did the Dorians exhibit an anxiety of a kind in their position so remarkable? Such a feeling could hardly have existed, had there not been a special character attaching to the Pelopid race, as possessed not only of an actual supremacy, but of some peculiar title by descent, to which it was worth the while of the Dorian sovereigns to lay claim, as a kind of heirs by adoption. We do not find that when the Pelopids came in with their Achæans, they had shown any corresponding solicitude to connect themselves with the memory of Danaids or of Perseids: on the contrary, Homer expressly disconnects the dynasties, by assigning to the Pelopids a new sceptre, fresh by the hands of Mercury from Jupiter. It seems to follow, that in all likelihood the Pelopids had something which neither Danaids nor Perseids possessed before them, and which the Dorians too did not hold at all, or did not hold by so clear a title: the honour, namely, not of Hellenic blood alone, but of being ruled by a family which represented an original and primitive sovereignty over the Hellenic nation, through its foremost, or Achæan tribe.

This is the more remarkable, because the Dorian sovereigns of Sparta claimed Hercules, and through him Jupiter, for their progenitor. But the patriarchal chieftaincy, though not more directly connected with a divine stock, had superadded to it that accumulation of dignity, which depends upon the unbroken transmission of power from the most remote historic origin: and Hercules was modern in comparison with those to whom some of the Hellenic families were able (as we have seen) to trace their ancestry.

Were we to give credit to the common tradition respecting Hellen and his sons, I admit that it would raise a new difficulty in the way of the construction, which I propose to attach to the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Instead of seeing Agamemnon invested with it because he is head of the Achæans, and highly favoured by a special, nay by an almost exclusive appropriation of it, because they are the foremost Hellenic tribe, we should have to own in them the youngest of all the branches from that stem, with Dorians, Æolians, and Ionians too, taking precedence of them: and we should have to look, and look in vain, for any trace or presumption whatever of his descent from that Achæus, whom the tradition feigns to have existed.

But with the acknowledgment of Homer’s historical authority, the credit of that tradition falls; as indeed it is etymologically self-convicted by the formation of its cardinal name Hellen.

The Achæan prominence in Homer rests on grounds sufficiently clear: over the Ionians, who appear to be not even an Hellenic race; over the Dorians, latent in the Pylian town of Dorion, or among the sister races of Crete, where they are as yet wholly undistinguished: over the Æolids, (for there are no Æolians,) because these are single shoots only, while the Achæans are a branch, a principal section of the Hellenic race; and also, as I think may be shown[811], because of all Hellenes they appear really to have had the most normal connection with the true fountain-head of their race.

Nowhere among the Dorians, and (of course, if the Ionians are Pelasgian,) nowhere among the Ionians, have we any trace of the name ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, or of the thing indicated by it. May not this be the reason that the Dorian kings of Sparta sought (so to speak) to serve themselves heirs to the house of Agamemnon?

I may observe in passing, as to the Ionians, that it has recently been held that they are not only Hellenic, but the oldest Hellenes: that they parted from the rest of the race in Asia, came into Greece by the islands, and were its great sea-faring race. This theory, ably as it has been supported, is but doubtfully agreeable to the positive or negative evidence of Homer: still it is not less fatal to the current tradition of Hellen and his family, than that which views the Ionians as more nearly connected with the Pelasgians[812].

Only among Achæans, Æolids, and Dardanians, do we find the patriarchal title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. The Dardan house fell with the Trojan war. The throne of Augeias had given way even before that great crisis. It is probable that the line of Euphetes was then no longer in existence; else we must have heard of it in the Catalogue, or during the action. The realm of Eumelus was remote and small, and if it had been wrecked in the convulsions of the period, it would leave nothing upon which the Dorians could lay hold as a point of junction with the past. But they had come into the very dominions of the family of Pelops, though with a transfer of the metropolis from Mycenæ to Sparta. Here was the true Greek Patriarchate, of which for purposes of policy they might well desire to become the ostensible representatives.

Spurious Tradition of the Hellenidæ.

The legend of the Hellenidæ might probably be meant to cooperate towards the same end. Its determinate form I have ventured to discard: but its spirit and intention have their importance in connection with the subject of the extraction of the Greeks. It affords early witness to the general belief in the derivation of the Greek races from Thessaly: and though it does not suffice of itself to prove that a Dorus or an Ion came from thence, yet it is of great importance as a testimony to their general connection with Thessaly, and it powerfully corroborates evidence such as Homer affords to that effect in the case of the Achæans. Nor are we entirely without Homeric evidence of a connection between the Dorians and the Achæans, and thus between the Dorians and Thessaly. For the Dorians are found in Crete together with the Achæans (Od. xix.), and in the dominions of Nestor peopled by Achæans we find the town called Δώριον, Il. ii. 594. As, however, the great Dorian mass came into Peloponnesus not under a family of Dorian rulers, but under Heraclids, their connection with the old Hellas was not maintained by any regal tradition, and hence perhaps the need of the legend of Hellen to revive the memory of it.

Let us now endeavour to gather together the threads of the argument.

It is plain that Agamemnon was not called ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν on account of his great monarchy; because other great monarchs want the title, and, again, other insignificant lords hold it.

Nor did he possess it on the ground of autochthonism: for the Achæans were immigrants into the Peloponnesus, and not autochthons, and they had been preceded by other races.

Neither was it borne by him on the ground of a divine descent more direct or more illustrious than that of others: for his divine descent would in that case at least have been specifically stated, instead of being left to remote and hazardous inference. Nor is the title borne by Achilles, who was the great grandson of Jupiter, or by Hercules or Minos, who were his sons.

If sovereignty and antiquity be connected with the title, they are not of themselves sufficient to confer it: and if divine descent be a condition of it, this must be joined with other conditions.

These negatives, established in the case of Agamemnon, leave room, I believe, for but one supposition; namely, that the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν must indicate chieftaincy, or in other words, the lineal headship, passing by seniority, of one among the ruling or royal houses, who represent the stem of a particular race, in his case the Achæan branch of the Hellenic family; and who govern, and have continuously governed, those of their own name or branch. Of these royal houses there might be many, allied together by common derivation, at the same or different epochs, from a common stem.

Summary of the Evidence.

In sum, the Homeric picture appears to be as follows.

First we have the remote and wintry Dodona of Thessaly, the most ancient and most awful seat of the religious worship of the Greeks; in connection with which Achilles invokes Jupiter for the success and safe return of Patroclus.

Around Dodona dwell the Selli or Helli. The special veneration paid to the place points it out as the oldest site of the national worship; and the possession of this oldest site again points out the tribe as the mother-tribe of that wonderful Greek race, whose fame is graven ineffaceably upon the rock with a pen of iron.

From among the Helli of the mountains, who nowhere appear among the contingents of the Greek army, must have proceeded the migratory bands who gave to the Thessalian plain the name of Hellas. Their descendants fix themselves as settlers there. Beguiled into civilization, they become Hellenes; they spread, by their inborn elastic energies, towards the south, and carry with them, only a little in their rear, the very title of their Hellenic origin, as well as their own peculiar name.

The ruling families of their septs or clans give each to its actual head, if not to its heir, the dignity of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and this title they carry forth with them to the southern provinces in which they plant themselves.

One of these ruling families, the head of the great sept of the Achæans, carries the right to this title in the case of Agamemnon: and inasmuch as it betokens what is both oldest and highest in descent and in civil authority in the whole group of the Hellenic tribes, it forms an appropriate and characteristic designation for their chief ruler and leader.

Having thus considered the case of Agamemnon, the great Achæan chieftain, in this view, we may proceed to the other cases of Anchises and Æneas, of Augeias, Euphetes, and Eumelus.

In none of these cases, however, have we the same right to assume in limine the character of chieftainship by known lineage from an Hellenic family, as in the case of the Achæans. The cases of Anchises and Æneas may indeed be treated on grounds of their own. In the other instances, we must inquire what ground Homer furnishes for especially connecting these persons with the headship of ruling families, and with Hellas or Thessaly.

This I shall do, subject to the general rule, that if in any particular case there can be found a special mark of connection with Thessaly or Hellas in or about a particular spot, it is thereupon to be inferred that in that particular place the connection was known and commemorated. If, for example, we find at a given point an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, reason binds us to presume that, as the local name might show the derivation from the first seat of the race, so by this title the lineal descent from a ruling family there was meant to be commemorated and marked.

The Cases of Anchises and Æneas.

But first for Anchises and Æneas.

Homer is the historian as well as the poet of Greece: but he is neither the poet nor the historian of Troy, further than as it was necessary for him to describe generally to the Greeks the race with whom they had been engaged in a death-struggle.

The strong resemblance between the two nations, and especially their partaking, to a certain extent, of a common lineage, seems to have constituted a difficulty in his way. Already in his time the sentiment of Greek nationality was strong. Whether he chiefly found or made it so, is nothing to the present purpose. This sentiment of nationality required to be circumscribed by a clear line, marking the extent of the Greek political organisation; and if it was unfavourable to the acknowledgment of relationship to any race beyond that line, especially was it so in the case of a race that the Greeks had conquered. Probably therefore the purpose of Homer required that he should instinctively as it were keep in special obscurity the notes of kindred between the two countries.

In the case of the Greeks, Homer has intelligibly pointed out the origin of the race among the hills of Northern Thessaly round the ancient Dodona, and near Olympus, its poetical counterpart, and the residence of Jupiter with his gorgeous train. Yet more clearly has he in the case of the Trojans enabled us to trace them to their fountain-head, again in the mountains, and beside the roots, of Ida, where they worshipped the Idæan Jove[813]. We have here the race without predecessors, residing in the very spot where they were planted by their divine progenitor, and coming down by a clear line of seven generations to the cousins Hector and Æneas.

Cases of Anchises and Æneas.

But although the conditions of chieftaincy are thus obviously fulfilled in the race of Dardanus, yet difficulty presents itself in a new form. Why is the term ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν applied to Anchises and to his son Æneas, but never to Priam, or to his son Hector, or to any of his family?

The answer to this question opens a curious chapter of Homeric history and speculation. In going through it I shall endeavour carefully to separate between positive statement, and interpretation or conjecture.

These facts then are on the face of the poem.

1. Anchises nowhere personally appears in it. And yet there was at Troy an assembly of δημογέροντες (Il. iii. 146-8). Of the persons there mentioned, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon were brothers of Priam; others, for example, Panthus and Antenor, were in the exercise of at the very least a subaltern sovereignty. They were present at Troy, while their sons fought in the Trojan ranks. The reason, therefore, of the absence of Anchises is not to be sought in his being represented by Æneas. Nor in the immunity of his dominions, through their being placed among the mountains, from war: for Æneas himself, before he came to Troy, had only been rescued by divine interposition from the hands of Achilles[814]. Why then does Anchises never appear? Either surely because of the high rank of his sovereignty, or because of some unexplained rivalry between the families.

Evidence as to Æneas.

2. It does not appear that Æneas took any part in the councils of the Trojans. But still he is always represented as a personage of the greatest importance. It is said of him, as of Hector, θεὸς δ’ ὡς τίετο δήμῳ[815]. Yet his character would seem to be wholly unmarked by any great or striking quality, such as we find in Sarpedon and in Polydamas. Something peculiar then in his birth and position must have been the cause of the importance attached to him, as it is not to be found in his personal qualities.

3. Accordingly, there are clear indications of a jealousy between Æneas himself and the Trojan royal family. In the great battle of B. x. 118, Deiphobus, wanting aid, goes to seek Æneas (459-61).

Now this aversion is wholly foreign to the character of Priam, which was genial and kindly: nor can it be accounted for by any thing in the very neutral character of Æneas. There is an opinion of some critics, that he and Anchises had given offence by advising the restoration of Helen. This, however, seems (B. iii. 159) to have been the general wish of the δημογέροντες, to whom it is expressly ascribed; and it is Antenor, who proposes it in the Assembly; why then should it not, if it existed, be mentioned by Homer in the case of Æneas and Anchises? Yet there is not the faintest reference to it. It would still, however, appear insufficient to account for the feeling imputed to Priam. Coupling it with the high position of Æneas, and the absence of Anchises, I cannot but think there is most probably a reference here to the headship of the family, which is designated by the term ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Nothing could be more natural than this jealousy between the recent and wealthy city of the plain on the one hand, and the ancient but comparatively poor city of the hills on the other, if the ruling family of Dardania claimed by seniority the chieftaincy of the race.

4. Another remarkable indication of the peculiar position of Æneas is afforded by the taunt of Achilles (Il. xx. 179-83),

‘But you will not get it,’ he proceeds, ‘for Priam has children of his own, and is no fool.’

To this taunt Æneas makes no reply, except by stating his genealogy, for which Achilles had not asked. Is not this very like justifying his expectation of the throne? or what other connecting link can be pointed out between the taunt of Achilles, and the genealogy given in answer to the challenge it conveyed?

5. While Ilion, the city of Priam, was later by several generations, probably having been founded in the reign of Ilus, Anchises reigned in Dardania, the original seat (Il. xx. 216) of the race. The fact of his sovereignty there seems to be indicated by our finding Æneas in command of the Dardanians, with two sons of Antenor, who probably served as his lieutenants (ii. 819-23): by the connection which that passage establishes between Anchises and the hill country, inhabited (Il. xx. 216) by the Dardanians; by the division of the royal line at the point where the Ilian name first appears (Il. xx. 231); and by a number of places showing the high position in the army which Æneas held, as head of the Dardanian force.

6. The rank of Æneas was without any rival or parallel in the Trojan army, except Hector. Though strictly speaking Dardanian, he is addressed as

His name is often combined with that of Hector, and when so combined frequently precedes it. Thus we have (vi. 75),

To this are subjoined, by Helenus, words which assign to Æneas a parity of command with Hector:

If it be thought that metrical considerations had to do with putting Æneas in these places as well as in xx. 240, before Hector, so they might have to do with placing Ilus before Assaracus in the genealogy.

It is asserted of him by Mars in the person of Acamas, Il. v. 467,

Lastly, we have the prophecy of Neptune that the sceptre of Dardanus should continue in the line of Anchises (Il. xx. 302-8).

And, as regards the application to Æneas of the title which properly belonged to Anchises, this seems to connect itself with the practice of the heroic age as to a devolution of sovereignty, either partial or total, by aged men upon their heirs. We seem to find another example of this in the case of Eumelus; and the instances of Achilles, and especially of Ulysses, are also in point.

7. As the character of Æneas does not account for the jealousy felt towards him, so neither does his conduct. He nowhere thwarts Hector by opposition, or tries him by advice that he is not inclined to take. Of this course of proceeding we have an instance; but it is in Polydamas. If, then, neither the character nor the conduct of Æneas supply the explanation, we must look for it in some claims that he was entitled to make in virtue of lineage, and that consequently attracted jealousy towards him.

8. Although it has been assumed that Priam was the head of the Trojan race and federation, this is not stated by Homer. In Il. xxiv. 544 it is only said that he excelled the other princes of that region, (1) in his wealth, and (2) in the number, or possibly it may mean the excellence of his sons. On the contrary, it is doubtful, by the mere words of the poem, whether Priam represented the senior or the junior line, and when we compare and draw inferences from the text, we may arrive at the conclusion that it was the junior line, quite as easily as at an opposite one; especially if we shall find, that the rights of seniority itself were less determinate in Troas, than in Greece.

In the genealogy of the Twentieth Book, we find no assistance towards elucidating this question, except in the precedence given to names. The three sons of Tros stand in the following order:

1. Ilus. 2. Assaracus. 3. Ganymedes.

Then (1) the fate of Ganymedes is described;

(2) the line of Ilus is traced down to Priam;

(3) that of Assaracus is traced to Anchises.

Here the line of Priam has precedence: but on the other hand, lastly, Æneas proceeds to state his own birth from Anchises, before that of Hector from Priam,

9. In the Fifth Iliad we learn, that Jupiter presented some horses of a particular breed to Tros, as a compensation for the loss of his son Ganymedes. Anchises brought his mares to them in the time of Laomedon without leave, and thus got possession of the breed. And it is in this place that Homer calls him ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν[818]. It may also be observed that this was the act of a young man; for Laomedon, on whom he played this trick, was one generation higher in the family tree. It is here shown undoubtedly that the horses of Tros, the common ancestor, descended to the line of Priam; which was the more wealthy and powerful, and occupied the plain country, where the horses fed in great numbers (xx. 221); but again, does it not seem as if this very proceeding of Anchises may have had reference to a rivalry between the two houses, and a claim on his part to the headship of the family? especially from the use in this very narrative of the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν for Anchises (v. 268), and shortly after for his heir Æneas (v. 311).

Summary of the Evidence.

To sum up the evidence. We find the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν applied to two persons only among the Trojans. Those two are a father advanced in years, and his heir apparent. The father is plainly enough the sovereign of Dardania, as well as descended from Dardanus; and Dardania, though secondary in power, was the original seat of the race. We cannot say positively whether Anchises represented the elder or the younger branch of the family: for precedence of name is sometimes given to one, and sometimes to the other line. But as Troy was powerful, and Dardania poor, we can understand the precedence of the Trojan line, even although it be supposed junior: whereas it seems difficult to account for the fact that the precedence is sometimes given to Æneas, or for the jealousy felt both towards him, and by him, except on the supposition that his family in its humbler circumstances either were the rightful representatives of Dardanus, whose sceptre, after the fall of Troy, Æneas and his sons were undoubtedly to transmit[819]; or at least were in a condition, whether by primogeniture in Assaracus, or whether by holding the original seat of the race, to make fair and plausible pretensions to the distinction.

It is important to bear in mind, that we have not the same clear assertion of the right of the elder branch to succeed to power in Asia, which the cases of Agamemnon, Protesilaus, Thrasymedes, and perhaps others, supply in Greece. On the contrary, we shall find Sarpedon first leader of the Lycians, though of a junior branch to Glaucus, and likewise representing only the female line. We shall also find great reason to question whether Hector, even if he was the heir expectant of the succession, was not, nevertheless, junior to Paris. This want of definiteness in the rule of succession is exactly what would bring it into dispute, and perhaps into prolonged dispute. And if the right of seniority was not fully acknowledged in Asia, this would at once explain, why Homer did not observe an uniform order in the genealogy: perhaps it might also explain his not being historically aware what that order was.

If this be so, the apparent anomaly of the application, on the Trojan side, to secondary persons only of the title so constantly given to the highest Greek, disappears, and becomes the consistent application of a rule. And Anchises with Æneas may then offer the most perfect model of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, as uniting with continued sovereignty not only known lineal descent from the first ancestor, and from Jupiter, but also the continued possession of the original seat.

It may however be asked, why, even if we allow that ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is among the Greeks a title of patriarchal chieftaincy, should we therefore assume that it had the same defined meaning among a people of different blood and institutions?

Let me briefly answer this question.

It is to the Helli that we have looked back as the most probable source of those ideas and institutions of clanship, which gave rise to the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. But the Helli were a mountain people, (for they were around the wintry Dodona,) and so were the Dardanians: and the institutions of highlanders in different parts, even at wide intervals of space and time, often present strong mutual resemblances. The limited means and pursuits of man in such a physical position check development, and tend to maintain uniformity.

The Dardan highlanders worshipped Jupiter on Ida, as the Helli worshipped him at Dodona. That it was the same Jupiter, we may infer with the greatest confidence, from the fact that Homer makes one formula of invocation common to his Trojans and his Greeks[820].

The bulk of the religion was nearly the same on both sides, as far as the principal deities were concerned.

Signs of kin between Trojans and Greeks.

As the first among the proofs of affinity in blood, I should be inclined to cite that very visit of Paris to Menelaus, which gave occasion to the war. We have no other instance recorded in Homer of a foreign prince, received as such in domestic hospitality by a Greek chieftain. Nor can we, inversely, find that Greek chieftains were similarly entertained by foreigners. We have indeed an account of gifts received by Menelaus in Egypt[821]; and we have the kindly reception by the Egyptian king and his people of the Pseudo-Ulysses as a suppliant[822]; and the similar entertainment of Ulysses, again as a suppliant, in Scheria. But these cases fall greatly short of the case of Paris. Again, Homer calls the Egyptians ἀλλόθροοι ἄνθρωποι[823]: and that phrase is an usual one with him, evidently representing a familiar idea. But he never calls the Trojans ἀλλόθροοι, nor speaks of them as having different manners or religion from the Greeks. The strongest word applied to them is ἀλλοδάπος[824]. But this word seems to mean simply ‘from another place,’ and does not convey the proper and full idea of a foreigner. For not only the Lycian Sarpedon is an ἀλλοδάπος to the Trojans, but Greek pirates are usually said to attack ἀλλοδάποι, whereas they evidently were wont to plunder those of their own nation, even down to the time of Thucydides: and above all Eumæus, disgusted and worn out with the profligate misdeeds of the Suitors, thinks of moving off ἄνδρας ἐς ἀλλοδάπους, together with his oxen (ἰόντ’ αὐτῇσι βόεσσιν), by which he could not have meant more than a short passage to the Greek continent[825]. On the whole, I think that all this permits the supposition that the Trojans were admitted to be a kindred, though they were not a Greek people.

But further, the poems are full of testimony to the affinities between the Trojans and the Greeks. It is true they also bear witness to considerable differences: but both nations had been settled in the plain country for several generations before the Trojan War; and, with the growth of agriculture and trade, arts and wealth, they might well have diverged from the close parallelism of a ruder age.

At this point, however, we must call to mind some matters, which have been more largely discussed already.

Among these resemblances of a general character it may be observed, that there evidently are Pelasgi on both sides of the great quarrel. The Πελασγοὶ of the Trojans are among the ἐπίκουροι (Il. ii. 840): the Πελασγοὶ of the Greeks appear as one of the Cretan races, distinct from the Dorians and Achæans, and probably as the first founders of those lowland settlements in Thessaly (ii. 681), over which the Hellenic and Achæan names seem principally to have prevailed. Thus the Pelasgian name forms a decided bond of union between the two races: though, from the Poet’s mentioning it on the Trojan, and suppressing it on the Greek side, we at once infer that the Pelasgian element was stronger and more palpable among the Trojans.