4. Epeans (of Dulichium &c.) under Meges, son of Phyleus, with Amphion,
and Drakios. The addition of the patronymic to Meges seems in this
place to mark his position; which is distinctly defined as the chief
one in the Catalogue, by his being mentioned there alone.
5. Phthians, under Medon and Podarces. These supplied two contingents,
numbered 17 and 19 respectively in the list just given; and they
constituted separate commands, though of the same race.
It will be remarked that the Poet enumerates the commanders of the
Athenians, Epeans, and Phthians; but not of the Locrians and Bœotians.
Obviously, in the case of the Locrians, the reason is, that Oilean
Ajax, a king and chief of the first rank, and a person familiar to us
in every page, was their leader. Such a person he never mixes on equal
terms with secondary commanders, or puts to secondary duties; and
the text immediately proceeds to tell us he was with the Telamonian
Ajax[23]. But why does it not name the Bœotian leader? Probably, we
may conjecture, because that force had no one commander in chief,
but were an aggregation of independent bodies, whom ties of blood or
neighbourhood drew together in the armament and in action.
[23] Il. xiii. 701-8.
Having thus endeavoured to mark the partial and small beginnings of
disorganization in the ancient form of government, let us now observe
the character of the particular spots where they are found. These
districts by no means represent, in their physical characteristics, the
average character of Greece. In the first place, they are both on the
highway of the movement between North and South. In the second, they
both are open and fertile countries; a distinction which, in certain
local positions, at certain stages of society, not only does not favour
the attainment of political power, but almost precludes its possession.
The Elis of Homer is marked by two epithets having a direct reference
to fertility of soil; it is ἱππόβοτος, horse-feeding, and it is also
εὐρύχορος, wide-spaced or open. Again, the twenty-nine towns assigned
in the Catalogue to the Bœotians far exceed in number those which
are named for any other division of Greece. We have other parallel
indications; such as the wealth of Orchomenos[24]; and of Orestius
with the variegated girdle. He dwelt in Hyle, one of the twenty-nine,
amidst other Bœotians who held a district of extreme fertility[25],
μάλα πίονα δῆμον ἔχοντες. Now when we find signs like these in Homer,
that Elis and Bœotia had been first subjected to revolution, not in the
shape of mere change of dynasty, but in the decomposition, so to speak,
of their ancient forms of monarchy, we must again call to mind that
Thucydides[26], when he tells us that the best lands underwent the most
frequent social changes by the successions of new inhabitants, names
Bœotia, and ‘most of Peloponnesus’ as examples of the kind of district
to which his remark applied.
[24] Il. ix. 381.
[25] Il. v. 707-10.
[26] Thuc. i. 2.
Upon the whole, the organization of the armament for Troy shows us the
ancient monarchical system intact in by far the greater part of Greece.
But when we come to the Odyssey, we find increasing signs of serious
changes; which doubtless were then preparing the way, by the overthrow
of old dynasties, for the great Dorian invasion. And it is here worth
while to remark a great difference. The mere supervention of one race
upon another, the change from a Pelasgian to an Hellenic character,
does not appear to have entailed alterations nearly so substantial in
the character and stability of Hellenic government, as did the Trojan
expedition; which, by depriving societies of their natural heads,
and of the fighting men of the population, left an open field to the
operation of disorganizing causes.
Strabo has a remarkable passage, though one in which he makes no
particular reference to Homer, on the subject of the invasions and
displacements of one race by another. These, he says[27], had indeed
been known before the Trojan war: but it was immediately upon the
close of the war, and then after that period, that they gained head:
μάλιστα μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὰ Τρωικὰ, καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα, τὰς ἐφόδους γένεσθαι
καὶ τὰς μεταναστάσεις συνέβη, τῶν τε βαρβάρων ἅμα καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὁρμῇ
τινὶ χρησαμένων πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀλλοτρίων κατάκτησιν. Of this the Odyssey
affords some curious indications.
[27] B. xii. 8, 4. p. 572.
~_Extended signs in the Odyssey._~
Among many alleged and some real shades of difference between the
poems, we may note two of a considerable political significance: the
word _King_ in the Odyssey has acquired a more lax signification, and
the word _Queen_, quite unknown to the Iliad, has come into free use.
~_Altered meaning of ‘King.’_~
It will be shown how strictly, in the Iliad, the term βασιλεὺς, with
its appropriate epithets, is limited to the very first persons of the
Greek armament. Now in the Odyssey there are but two States, with
the organization of which we have occasion to become in any degree
acquainted: one of them Scheria, the other Ithaca. Of the first we do
not see a great deal, and the force of the example is diminished by the
avowedly mythical or romantic character of the delineation: but the
fact is worthy of note, that in Scheria we find there are twelve kings
of the country, with Alcinous[28], the thirteenth, as their superior
and head. It is far more important and historically significant that,
in the limited and comparatively poor dominions of Ulysses, there are
now many kings. For Telemachus says[29],
[28] Od. viii. 391. vi. 54.
[29] Od. i. 394.
ἀλλ’ ἤτοι βασιλῆες Ἀχαιῶν εἰσὶ καὶ ἄλλοι
πολλοὶ ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ἰθάκῃ, νέοι ἠδὲ παλαιοί.
His meaning must be to refer to the number of nobles who were now
collected, from Cephallonia and the other dominions of Ulysses, into
that island. The observation is made by him in reply to the Suitor
Antinous, who had complained of his bold language, and hoped he never
would be king in Ithaca[30]:
[30] Ibid. 386.
μὴ σέ γ’ ἐν ἀμφιάλῳ Ἰθάκῃ βασιλῆα Κρονίων
ποιήσειεν, ὅ τοι γενεῇ πατρώϊόν ἐστιν.
It is, I think, clear, that in this place Antinous does not mean
merely, ‘I hope you will not become one of us,’ which might be said in
reference merely to the contingency of his assuming the controul of his
paternal estates, but that he refers to the sovereignty properly so
called: for Telemachus, after having said there are many βασιλῆες in
Ithaca, proceeds to say, ‘Let one of them be chosen’, or ‘one of these
may be chosen, to succeed Ulysses;’
τῶν κέν τις τόδ’ ἔχῃσιν, ἐπεὶ θάνε δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς.
‘but let me,’ he continues, ‘be master of my own house and property.’
Thus we have βασιλεὺς bearing two senses in the very same passage.
First, it means the noble, of whom there are many in the country, and
it is here evidently used in an improper sense; secondly, it means
the person who rules the whole of them, and it is here as evidently
employed in its original and proper signification. It seems very
doubtful, however, whether, even in the Odyssey, the relaxed sense
ever appears as a simple title in the singular number. The only signs
of it are these; Antinous is told that he is _like_ a king[31] in
appearance; and he is also expressly called βασιλεὺς in the strongly
and generally suspected νεκυΐα of the Twenty-fourth Book[32]. So
again, the kingly epithet Διοτρεφὴς is not used in the singular for
any one below the rank of a βασιλεὺς of the Iliad, except once, where,
in addressing Agelaus the Suitor, it is employed by Melanthius, the
goatherd, one of the subordinate adherents and parasites of that
party[33].
[31] Od. xvii. 416.
[32] Od. xxiv. 179.
[33] Od. xxii. 136.
This relaxation in the sense of βασιλεὺς, definite and limited as is
its application in the Iliad, is no inconsiderable note of change.
~_New name of Queen._~
Equally, or more remarkable, is the introduction in the Odyssey of the
words δέσποινα and βασίλεια, and the altered use of ἄνασσα.
1. δέσποινα is applied, Od. iii. 403, to the wife of Pisistratus, son
of Nestor; to Arete, queen of the Phæacians, Od. vii. 53, 347; to
Penelope, Od. xiv. 9, 127, 451; xv. 374, 7; xvii. 83; xxiii. 2.
2. ἄνασσα is applied in the Iliad, xiv. 326, to Ceres only; but in the
Odyssey, besides Minerva, in Od. iii. 380, Ulysses applies it twice
to Nausicaa, in Od. vi. 149, 175; apparently in some doubt whether
she is a divinity or a mortal. I would not however dwell strongly on
this distinction between the poems; for we seem to find substantially
the human use of the word ἄνασσα in the name of Agamemnon’s daughter,
Ἰφιάνασσα, which is used in Il. ix. 145.