[532] Hare and Thirlwall’s Niebuhr, vol. i. p. 65.
[533] Horæ Pelasg. ch. iv.
[534] Sechster Theil. Leipzig, 1838.
[535] Applied principally to the shoulder of animals by the Latins.
[536] The link of ideal connection is to be found in the sacrificial
office of the primitive _rex_.
[537] Scott and Liddell _in voc._
[538] Compare the Homeric derivation of Ὀδύσσευς from ὀδύσσομαι, Od.
xix. 407.
[539] Döderlein.
[540] Ennius.
[541] Perhaps connected with the Greek κεύθειν.
[542] Cæsar, b. iii. c. 96.
[543] Il. xx. 123.
[544] As in Æn. xii. 952.
[545] Buttmann’s Lexil. in voc. κελαινός.
[546] Compare sup. p. 237.
[547] Od. iii. 601-8. The names of Ctesippus and Elatus among the
Suitors are related to horses: but all the islands were not so rough as
Ithaca, and some of the nobles may, like Ulysses, have had pastures on
the continent. (Od. xiv. 100.)
[548] Sup. p. 256.
[549] Inf. sect. ix.
[550] Od. ii. 347. vii. 8. iv. 124.
[551] See Mure’s Hist. Lit. Greece, vol. ii. p. 86.
[552] Il. ii. 840-3.
[553] Il. xi. 303.
[554] See inf. sect. viii.
[555] Il. v. 705-7.
[556] Il. xvi. vv. 369, 393, 419, 422.
[557] Il. vi. 20-37.
[558] Il. xvi. 694.
[559] Il. v. 677, 8.
[560] Il. xx. 455-87.
[561] Inf. sect. x.
[562] See ‘Studies on Policy.’
[563] See Studies on ‘The Trojans.’
[564] Il. xiii. 685.
[565] Il. ii. 577.
[566] Herod. i. 56.
[567] See Studies on Religion, sect. 2.
[568] Hist. of Greece, vol. i. p. 137.
[569] Od. viii. 179.
[570] Hor. Od. i. 10. 1.
[571] Plutus 1162.
[572] Pyth. ii. 18. Nem. x. 98. Isthm. i 85.
[573] Od. viii. 493. xi. 592.
[574] Il. xxiii. 827.
[575] Il. xi. 699-702.
[576] Vid. inf. sect. viii.
[577] xxiii. 629.
[578] Il. ii. 642.
[579] Il. ix. 529-99.
[580] Il. iv. 399.
[581] Sup. pp. 167, 242, and see ‘The Outer Geography of the Odyssey.’
[582] Grote’s Hist. ii. 322.
[583] Paus. viii. 2. 1.
[584] Grote’s Hist. Greece, i. 160.
[585] Il. ii. 773.
[586] Il. ii. 597, 8.
[587] On Pelasgian music see Müller’s Dorians, i. p. 367 (transl.)
[588] Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, book vi. chap.
i.
[589] Il. vi. 428.
[590] Il. ix. 533.
[591] Od. vi. 102.
[592] See infra, Studies on Religion, sect. ii.
[593] Il. v. 62.
[594] Od. xv. 80.
[595] Od. xi. 506.
[596] Il. iii. 232.
[597] Od. xi. 322.
[598] Il. i. 269.
[599] Od. xix. 399, 413.
[600] Od. iii. 267. xxi. 16.
[601] Il. xi. 698-702. Od. vi. 364. xiv. 327.
[602] Il. xxiii. 629-43.
[603] Od. xiv. 222.
[604] Od. i. 1-3.
[605] Il. xv. 80.
[606] Il. vi. 242, 315.
[607] Paus. i. 14. 2.
[608] Herod. i. 56.
[609] Il. xvi. 235.
[610] Il. x. 537-9.
[611] Hes. Fragm. xviii.
[612] Thuc. iv. 78.
SECT. VIII.
_On the three greater Homeric appellatives._
_a._ Danaans. _b._ Argives. _c._ Achæans.
We now come to the great Homeric appellatives, Danaan, Argive, and
Achæan. As Thucydides has said (i. 3), Δαναοὺς δὲ ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι, καὶ
Ἀργείους, καὶ Ἀχαιοὺς ἀνακαλεῖ. Why has the great historian arranged
the three names in this order? It cannot be with reference to the
comparative frequency of their use: for the first is employed the
smallest number of times, and the third is by far the most frequent.
For the present let us postpone seeking after the cause; and simply
note it as probable, even if no more than probable, that there _is_ a
cause.
_Modes of formation for Names of Peoples._
Let me, by way of preface to the examination of these names, consider
the various ways in which, so far as we have the means of tracing them
(which is but to a limited extent), the names attached by Homer to the
inhabitants of particular countries are derived.
They appear to come either
1. From an eponymist directly, who is also an original founder, as
Δαρδανοὶ, Τρῶες, from Dardanus, and Tros, in relation to Dardania and
Troja respectively.
2. From the land they live in: and thus from an eponymist, if there has
originally been one for the territory.
For example, we find Ἰθακήσιοι from an island Ἰθακὴ, which again was
derived from Ἰθακός. In a case like this, when the appellation of
the people comes not directly, but mediately from the name-giver, a
territorial designation intervening, we can draw no inference as to
the oneness of race between them and him. Thus in the case before us,
Ἰθακήσιοι, though connected with Ἰθακὴ, has not as of necessity, any
connection whatever with Ἰθακὸς personally.
3. From the land they live in, as described by its most prominent
physical characteristic.
For example, the Thracians (Θρῇκες), must evidently be so called from
the roughness of the country, as a cognate word to τρῆχυς, which is
thus applied to Ithaca,
τρηχεῖ’, ἀλλ’ ἀγαθὴ κουρότροφος. Odyss. ix. 27.
Again, from Αἰγίαλος, the district afterwards called Achæa, we have,
in later Greek[613], the name Αἰγιαλεῖς for the inhabitants. This does
not occur in Homer, but we have what is equivalent to it in the name of
Αἰγιάλεια, who was wife of Diomed, and daughter of Adrastus, the former
king of Sicyon in Ægialus. This is an instance of the application of
the principle, not to the inhabitants at large, but to an individual
inhabitant.
4. The name of a population may be derived secondarily from that of
another population. Thus while we must derive Ἕλληνες from Ἕλλας, this
in its turn can only be drawn from the Ἕλλοι.
5. In the single case of the Athenians, we find the name of a
population derived from that of a deity.
6. It is presumable, though not certain, that entire populations took
their name from ruling individuals or races. It seems hardly possible
to explain, for example, the name Καδμεῖοι, which nowhere connects
itself with any of the foregoing sources of eponymism, otherwise than
by reference to an individual Cadmus, whom Homer mentions in Od. v. 333.
The idea prevails extensively, at least by sufferance, that these three
great names are in Homer mere synonyms, and have no reference to any
actual and historical differences, either existing when Homer wrote, or
known by him to have existed at a previous period.
This question it is proposed now to examine. I commence by making a
broad admission. It is this.
Upon the face of the poems, and on almost all ordinary occasions,
Homer seems at first sight to use, and he very frequently does use,
as equivalent and interchangeable, those three principal designations
which he applies to the Greeks in common.
_Homer’s use of them distinctive._
It is a very important question, however, whether Homer knew of and
observed any distinctions between these names. For if he did, then
these mere commonplace words, as they are taken to be, may involve in
them the germ of much early history.
In this investigation, we have the advantage of dealing in great
part, not with mere traditional assertion, but with facts. The use of
particular names, at particular epochs, for particular tribes, affords
(if the text can be trusted for genuineness) a class of evidence
analogous to that supplied by coins and inscriptions for history, or
that afforded by geological phænomena with respect to the formation of
the globe.
The poems of Homer, particularly the Iliad, abound in passages relating
to prior occurrences. These passages are not in general of a high
order of poetical beauty, as compared with the rest of the poem; they
often cause the action to hang rather heavily; many of them make
up the speeches of old men, whose natural leaning to loquacity it
appears that the Poet has, with his usual skill, made to minister
to the accomplishment of his own marked historic aims. But they are
repositories stored, we may almost say packed, with the most curious
and suggestive information.
Some of them may be without date: but the time is generally fixed
within limits sufficiently close, either by genealogies, or by the
period in the lives of the narrators, to which the tales belong. The
war of the Elians and Pylians in the Eleventh Book took place in the
boyhood of Nestor: probably from fifty to sixty years before the war
of Troy. The birth of Eurystheus, related in the Nineteenth Book, was
probably earlier still by ten or twenty years. The other legends fall
into the interval between these events and the _Troica_. Now if we can
trace a difference in the application by Homer of his appellatives,
either as to the times or the places, he may hereby conclusively,
though unconsciously, tell us a good deal about his view of the
succession, and the local distribution, of ruling races in Greece.
Such a rule of difference is easy to be traced.
For example. In the Catalogue[614] and elsewhere, if in the course of
the action he refers to the soldiers who proceeded from the country
afterwards called Bœotia, he calls them Βοιωτοί. But where Agamemnon
has, or rather makes, occasion to tell a story of the same people
acting in prior history, he calls them, not Βοιωτοὶ, but once Καδμεῖοι,
and once by the equivalent name Καδμειῶνες[615]. The tale is an account
of the mission of Tydeus from Thebes to Mycenæ, in company with
Polynices, which had occurred under the Pelopid dynasty.
In this story it appears, that Tydeus and Polynices, first obtained
a promise of the help they wanted; but that, after they had departed,
there was a change of resolution. Hence messengers were sent to
acquaint Tydeus, and apparently to recall the force. The expression is
(Il. iv. 384),
ἔνθ’ αὖτ’ ἀγγελίην ἐπὶ Τύῃ στεῖλαν Ἀχαιοί.
An allusion to this occurrence is again put into the mouth of Minerva
in Il. v. 800-7. The resemblance in the names used is so precise as
to be almost _precisian_. Again, the Mycenians are named once, and
named as Ἀχαιοί. Again, the Thebans are named twice, and once it is as
Καδμεῖοι, once as Καδμείωνες.
_Proofs of the distinctive use._
These two instances fortify one another to such a degree by their
concurrence, that, as I would submit, they would, even if they stood
alone, amount to a demonstration that Homer had regard to the times
and circumstances under which the several races prevailed, in those
passages of his work which refer to particular incidents of prior
history, personal and local. But there is no lack of other evidence.
First, we have other pieces of prior history, which affect the same
portion of Greece. The first of these probably preceded the _Troica_
by only two, or, at the utmost, two and a half generations. It is the
account of the birth of Eurystheus, given by Agamemnon himself in the
Nineteenth Book. The scene of it is described as Ἄργος Ἀχαιïκόν. He
calls it indeed by the name, which it still bore at the time when he
spoke, and which was understood by the hearers, for it remained the
same country as it had been in former times. But the same people, who
in the time of Tydeus, living under the Pelopids, were Ἀχαιοὶ, in
the time of Eurystheus, and therefore before the predominance of the
Pelopids, are described as Ἀργεῖοι. In Il. xix. 122, Juno thus speaks
of the birth of Eurystheus
ἤδη ἀνὴρ γέγον’ ἐσθλὸς, ὃς Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάξει.
And again, v. 124, the same term is used.
Again, it appears from the Sixth Iliad that Prœtus, who expelled
Bellerophon about the same time, was king of the Ἀργεῖοι (Il. vi. 158);
ὅς ῥ’ ἐκ δήμου ἔλασσεν, ἐπεὶ πολὺ φέρτερος ἦεν
Ἀργείων.
According to extra-Homeric tradition, Prœtus was the brother of
Eurystheus. According to Homer, his power extends over Ephyre, and over
the Argives: and as Æolid dynasties were then ruling in the west, it
is the country afterwards called the Argos of the Achæans, within some
part of which he must have ruled. But in telling both the story of
Prœtus, and the story of Eurystheus, with reference to the same side of
Peloponnesus, and entirely out of connection with one another, the text
of Homer, true to itself, calls the subjects of each at that period,
only by the name Ἀργεῖοι, never Δαναοὶ or Ἀχαιοί.
Thus, one generation before the _Troica_ he calls people Achæans, and
calls them by that name only, whom one or two generations earlier he
describes, and repeatedly and uniformly describes, as having been
Argives. There can hardly be stronger circumstantial evidence of the
fact, that to each term he attached its own special meaning.
And yet it is not simply that Homer has made the Argive the more
ancient, and the Achæan the more recent, name. On the contrary, he uses
both the one and the other with marked respect to place as well as to
time. For at the great Argive epoch he has Achæans: and at the great
Achæan epoch, that of the poems, he has Argive associations, and a
local Argive designation, still remaining.
In the Eleventh Book, Nestor detains Patroclus with a speech of
great length. In the beginning of this harangue, he refers to the
circumstances of the moment, and, having ended his preface, he travels
back to his own early youth, indeed almost his childhood, to give the
story of a war, or foray, between the Epeans and the Pylians. When
he has ended this tale, he returns to the actual position of affairs
before Troy.
In the narrative of this raid[616], he commonly terms the one side
Epeans, and the other Pylians. But he once calls the Epeans, who were
inhabitants of Elis, Elians. This is natural enough: for as the Elian
name afterwards (and so soon as in the time of Homer) prevailed in
that race and country, it might very well have been already beginning
to come into use. But he also calls the Pylians Achæans; and he uses
the name distinctively, for it is where he is speaking of them as the
conquering party[617]. For this there is clearly no corresponding
reason. It is equally clear that Homer does not call the Pylians
Ἀχαιοὶ, simply in the sense of being Greeks, for then the name would
not have been distinctive: the enemy too would have been included with
them, which would turn the passage into nonsense. Homer, then, (there
is no other alternative) means to say that the Pylians were, in some
particular sense, of the Achæan race.
This is the more worthy of remark, when we look to the preamble and
peroration of the speech. For in both of these, which refer to the
whole body of the Greeks and to the Trojan epoch, he employs his usual
names, and calls them both Danaans (Δαναῶν οὐ κήδεται, v. 665, also
vid. 797), and Argives (Ἀργείων ἀέκητι, v. 667): finally Achæans (υἷες
Ἀχαιῶν, 800).
Thus then he calls the Pylians Achæans at the time of the Argive
predominance: for this local war could hardly have been more than ten
or twenty years after the birth of Eurystheus, and must therefore have
been before, or else during his reign; that is to say, at a time when
his own subjects are called Ἀργεῖοι.
Again. Homer uses the word Ἀργεῖος in the feminine singular fifteen
times. Twice it is with reference to Juno. Of course this application
of the term is figurative. But though it be figurative, the figure
is evidently founded on her close and intimate relation, not to the
Greeks at large only, but to the Argive name; and to the persons, but
more particularly to the place, that was so specially associated with
it[618].
In all the other thirteen places, the epithet is joined with the name
of Helen. Does it for her mean simply Greek, or something special and
beyond this? Now if it meant simply Greek, it would be strange that
she is never called, I will not say Δαναὴ, because the Danaan name has
no singular use in Homer, but certainly Ἀχαιὴ or Ἀχαίïς. Especially as
the word Ἀχαιὸς is used as an epithet, be it remembered, many times
oftener, than is Ἀργεῖος: and it alone is used to describe the women of
Greece generally.
Again, if the epithet Argive, as applied to Helen, meant simply Greek,
it might be suitable enough in the mouth of a Trojan speaking among
Trojans, but it would have been weak and unmeaning, and therefore most
unlike Homer, in the mouth of a Greek or a friend of Greeks; or when,
as in the Odyssey[619], Helen is no longer among strangers, but at
home. Yet it is used in the following passages among others, (1) by
Juno to Minerva, Il. ii. 161, (2) by Minerva to Ulysses, Il. ii. 177;
and here in a near juxtaposition with the Achæan appellative, which
goes far to prove of itself that Ἀργείη has a meaning more specific
than merely Greek. The passage is,
Ἀργείην Ἑλένην, ἧς εἵνεκα πολλοὶ Ἀχαιῶν
ἐν Τροίῃ ἀπόλοντο.
I doubt whether Homer ever places in such proximity the two epithets
with the same meaning for each[620]. The tautology would be gross, if
Achæan and Argeian each meant neither more nor less than Greek: but if
Ἀργείη have the local sense, nothing awkward remains. (3) It is used by
Agamemnon, Il. iii. 458, in addressing the Trojans; (4) Il. iv. 174, in
addressing Menelaus; (5) Il. ix. 140, in addressing the Greek Council.
It seems quite clear, from even this enumeration, that Ἀργείη, as
applied to Helen, must mean something different from the mere fact that
she belonged to the Greek nation at large.
Nor is it difficult to find a meaning. Homer indeed leaves us but
narrow information as to the extraction of Helen. He calls her
sometimes εὐπατέρεια[621], and many times Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα[622]. In the
Third Iliad he shows her to be the sister of Castor and Pollux, and
in the Eleventh Odyssey he shows them to be the children of Tyndareus
and Leda[623]. Who Tyndareus was we do not know from him. But the
common tradition, which makes him a sovereign in Eastern Peloponnesus,
is thoroughly accordant with the slight notices in Homer. For, as
we see from the cases of Eurystheus and Prœtus, it was in Eastern
Peloponnesus that the Argive power and name prevailed; and Helen, the
daughter of Tyndareus is, as we have also seen, characteristically
with him the Argive Helen. Thus then it may now be lawful to say, we
are supplied with a meaning for the name which makes it especially
appropriate in the mouth of Agamemnon, the head of the Pelopids. For
they were the race who, coming in at the head of the Achæans, had from
the West overpowered and superseded the Argive power of the East,
while they also held as heirs to it by marriage: and if a royal Argive
house at the epoch of the war survived only in Helen and her sister
Clytemnestra, she in part at least represented its title, and, as a
lawful wife of Menelaus, added to his throne whatever authority the
name and rights of her race were capable of conferring.
Having, I trust, seen enough to justify the belief that some at least
of these names in the mind of Homer had a definite as well as a more
general meaning, let us now, taking them in succession, proceed to
examine what that meaning is.
_The Danaans of Homer._
Among the three great Homeric appellatives, let us direct our attention
first to the one, which is presumably the oldest. The word Δαναοὶ, from
the comparative paucity of the signs and indications connected with it,
evidently answers to this description.
We will take first the Homeric, and then the later, evidence respecting
it. Of the former, the greater number of particulars are negative.
Indeed we have but two positive notes to dwell upon; both of these,
however, are of great importance.
1. The Danaan name is with Homer a standing appellation of the Greeks.
I think, however, it can be shown that it never means the Greek nation,
but always the Greek armament or soldiery.
It is used in the Iliad one hundred and forty-seven times. The name
Ἀργεῖοι is employed oftener, namely, one hundred and seventy-seven
times in the plural, besides eleven times in the singular as a personal
epithet: and Ἀχαιοὶ much more frequently still.
_His epithets for the three designations._
If we observe the shadings, attached to these words respectively by
means of the epithets which Homer annexes to them, we shall find they
establish perceptible distinctions.
The epithets of Δαναοὶ are exclusively military epithets:
1. ἥρωες.
2. θεράποντες Ἄρηος.
3. φιλοπτόλεμοι.
4. αἰχμηταί.
5. ἀσπισταί.
6. ἴφθιμοι.
7. ταχύπωλοι.
The epithets of Ἀργεῖοι are as follows:
1. ἰόμωροι, Il. iv. 242. xiv. 479.
2. ἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι, Il. xiv. 479.
3. θωρηκτοί, Il. xxi. 429.
4. φιλοπτόλεμοι, Il. xix. 269.
5. ἐλεγχέες, Il. iv. 242.
Upon these we may observe, first, that they are few in number;
secondly, that they are used with extreme rarity; being only applied
in four passages altogether, whereas the word Δαναοὶ has epithets in
twenty-two. Thirdly, this word only twice in the whole of the poems
has a military epithet attached to it. For I must follow those, who do
not translate ἰόμωροι as corresponding with ἐγχεσίμωροι: (1) because
the Greeks were not archers, (2) because the derivation from ἴα,
‘the voice,’ giving the sense of braggart, harmonises exactly with
the accompanying phrase ἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι: as well as (3) for the
presumptive, but in Homer by no means conclusive, reason, that ἴον in
composition is long.
The epithets of Ἀχαιοὶ are numerous, highly varied, and of very
frequent use. They are these:
1. ἀπειλητῆρες.
2. μάχης ἀκόρητοι.
3. ἀνάλκιδες.
4. δῖοι.
5. ἑλικῶπες.
6. εὐκνήμιδες.
7. ἥρωες.
8. καρηκομόωντες.
9. μεγάθυμοι.
10. μένεα πνείοντες.
11. χαλκοκνήμιδες.
12. χαλκοχίτωνες.
13. ὑπερκύδαντες.
14. ἀρηίφιλοι.
15. φιλοπτόλεμοι.
These epithets are used in nearly one hundred and thirty passages, and
they may be classified as comprising,
(1) One or two words of sarcastic reproach, very rarely used.
(2) Words descriptive of courage and spirit: such are μεγάθυμοι,
μένεα πνείοντες.
(3) Words indicating that disposition to brag, which is more or less
traceable in the military conduct of the Greeks, as well as glaringly
palpable among the Trojans.
(4) Words descriptive of personal beauty: ἑλικῶπες and καρηκομόωντες.
(5) The word δῖοι, which signifies generally the possession of some
kind of excellence.
(6) Words relating to well made and well finished armour: εὐκνήμιδες,
χαλκοκνήμιδες, χαλκοχίτωνες.
And of the epithets of the three appellatives respectively we may say,
(1) Those of Ἀχαιοὶ are highly diversified, extended, and elevated in
meaning: and are not suitable for soldiers exclusively.
(2) Those of Ἀργεῖοι are so slight and rare that they may be passed
over.
(3) Those of Δαναοὶ are most properly neither those of chiefs, nor of
a nation at large, but of a soldiery.
In the Odyssey the Danaan name is used thirteen times: but it never
signifies either the Greeks contemporary with the action of that
poem, or the Greek nation in its prior history: it is employed always
retrospectively, and always of the soldiery in the Trojan war.
It will be observed by readers of the poems, that Homer often brings
two of the three great appellatives, or even all the three, into
juxtaposition so near, as would be inconvenient upon the supposition
that they are purely synonymous. For instance, in Il. i. 71, we have
Ἀργεῖοι and Ἀχαιοὶ in the same line, and in Il. i. 90, 91, Δαναοὶ and
Ἀχαιοὶ in two successive lines. It is, I think, obvious, that this
inconvenience will be mitigated or removed, if it can be shown that
each of these three names, though they were most commonly applied
to mean the same body of persons, nevertheless had its own shade
of meaning. And we shall presently have to examine cases, where a
determination of this kind appears to be required by the sense[624].
All the rest of the Homeric evidence connected with the name Δαναοὶ is
of a negative character.
It is never used in the singular number, either as an adjective, or as
a substantive. Nor is it ever applied to women: a point not immaterial,
in connection with the question, whether with Homer it does not mean
the Greeks of the army exclusively. There is, again, nothing in his use
of it which associates it with a particular class of the army, either
the lower or the higher; but it appears to be essentially general,
comprehensive, and, I may add, likewise invariable in its meaning.
Still less should we expect to find it, nor do we find it, connected
with the inhabitants of any particular part of the country: it has
not, like the Cadmean or Cephallenian name, a local habitation within
Greece. Nor has it in itself any root, or any derivative, which would
associate it with any territory, as Αἰγιαλεῖς refers us to Αἰγίαλος, or
even as Ἄρκαδες is related to Ἀρκαδίη.
Its use in the Iliad is in exact harmony with that in the Odyssey: it
is never associated with the history of the Greeks or any part of them:
in short, there is no clear evidence of its existence or application
beyond the limits of the camp.