167, 226: which he never does for the two other names. In the same
manner he uses Δάρδανος ἄνηρ, Il. ii. 701. This form seems to indicate
the full and familiar establishment of a name; and the Dardanians had,
we know, been Dardanians for seven generations before the _Troica_ (Il.
xx. 215-40).
In the opening passage of the First Iliad, not less than in that
of the Odyssey, Homer has, as it is generally observed by critics,
intentionally given us a summary or ‘Argument’ of his poem. But I doubt
whether sufficient notice has been taken of the very effective manner
in which he has given force to his purpose, by taking care in that
passage to use the most characteristic words. Achilles is there the son
of Peleus, for his extraction, as on both sides divine, but especially
as on the father’s side from Jupiter, is the groundwork of his high
position in the poem. Agamemnon is likewise here introduced under the
title which establishes the same origin for him, and more than any
thing else enhances the dignity of his supremacy before men[694]. And
the Greeks too, if I am correct, are not without significancy here
introduced to us, as is right, under their highest and also their best
established designation, that of Achæans. Nor is it until they have
been five times called Achæans[695] that he introduces the Danaan
name[696] at all. The Argive name, as if the weakest, when it is first
employed, is placed in an awkward nearness to the title of Achæans,
perhaps by way of explanation:
ὃς μέγα πάντων
Ἀργείων κρατέει, καὶ οἱ πείθονται Ἀχαιοί[697].
Again the paramount force of the Achæan name may justly be inferred
from its being the only territorial name which had clearly grasped the
whole of Greece at the epoch of the _Troica_[698].
Turning now entirely to what indicates more or less of peculiar
character in the Achæans, I would observe, that the adjective δῖοι
appears to be the highest of all the national epithets employed by
Homer; and this he couples, as has been observed by Mure[699], (who
recognises a peculiar force in the term,) with the Achæan designation
alone among the three. He also applies it to the Pelasgi; for whom, as
we have found, he means it to be a highly honourable epithet. Probably
the Achæans are δῖοι because of preeminence, the Pelasgians because
of antiquity. To no other nation or tribe whatever does he apply this
epithet. His very chary use of it in the plural is a sign of its
possessing in his eyes some peculiar virtue.
_Signs of its leaning to the aristocracy._
Of its feminine forms one has been selected to convey the most biting
form of reproach to the army, in the speech of Thersites. Now it is
remarkable that in that speech, of which an inflated presumption is
the great mark, the Achæan name is used five times within nine lines,
and neither of the other names is used at all. I do not doubt that
the upstart and braggart uses this name only because it was the most
distinguished or aristocratic name, as an ill-bred person always takes
peculiar care to call himself a gentleman. And doubtless it is for the
same reason that he takes the feminine of Ἀχαιὸς, instead of using
Δανααὶ or Ἀργειαὶ for his interpretative epithet, when he wants to
sting the soldiery as ‘Greekesses and not Greeks.’
Somewhat similar evidence is supplied by the Homeric phrase υἷες
Ἀχαιῶν, which has nothing corresponding to it under the Danaan or
Argive names. This is an Homeric formula, and the form υἷες seems to
belong exclusively to the Achæan name. To the Greeks who always asked
the stranger who were his parents, this phrase would carry a peculiar
significance. What addressed them as the sons of honoured parents
would be to them the sharpest touchstone of honour or disgrace. And
what the patronymic was to the individual, this form of speech was to
the nation, an incentive under the form of an embellishment. It is a
principle that runs throughout Homer; it is every where μηδὲ γένος
πατέρων αἰσχύνεμεν. The poet could not say sons of Danaans, for their
forefathers were not Danaan: nor sons of Argeians, for this would
recall the ploughshare and not the sword: though the army are addressed
from time to time as ἥρωες Δαναοὶ, and ἥρωες Ἀχαιοὶ, they are never
ἥρωες Ἀργεῖοι. But to be sons of the Achæans was the great glory of the
race, even as to degenerate from being Achæan warriors into effeminacy
would have been its deepest reproach: and the fact that he calls a
mixed race sons of the Achæans is conversely a proof that the Achæan
element was the highest and most famous element in the compound of
their ancestry.
But, unless I am mistaken, we have many passages in Homer where the use
of the simple term Ἀχαιοὶ is shown from the context to have a special
and peculiar, sometimes perhaps even an exclusive reference to the
chiefs and leaders of the army. I think it may be shown that the word
has in fact three meanings:
1. That of a particular Greek race, which extended itself from point to
point, acquiring power everywhere as it spread, by inherent superiority.
2. That of the aristocracy of the country, which it naturally became by
virtue of such extension and assumption.
3. That of the whole nation, which takes the name from its prime part.
We have now to examine some passages in support of the second meaning:
and I know not why, but certainly these passages appear in the Iliad to
be most abundant near the opening of the poem.
Chryses solicits ‘all the Achæans and most the two Atridæ[700].’ All
the Achæans assent, except Agamemnon. Now the priest could not solicit
the army generally except in an assembly: and there is no mention of
one, indeed the reply of Agamemnon[701] is hardly such as would have
been given in one. It is likely, then, that those whom he addressed
were Agamemnon’s habitual and ordinary associates; in other words, the
chiefs.
When Calchas proceeds to invoke the vengeance of Apollo, which is to
fall upon the army at large, it is no longer the Ἀχαιοὶ of whom he
speaks, but his prayer is,
τισείαν Δαναοὶ ἐμὰ δάκρυα σοῖσι βέλεσσιν[702].
Although I do not concur with those, who find no element of real
freedom in the condition of the Greek masses, whether at home or in the
camp, yet it seems plain enough, from the nature of the case, that the
questions relating to the division of booty, as being necessarily an
executive affair, must have been decided by the chiefs. Now whenever
questions of this class are handled, we generally find such an office
ascribed to Ἀχαιοί. Agamemnon says[703], ‘Do not let me alone of
the Argeians go without a prize;’ and in conformity with this we
find Nestor stimulating the host at large with the expectation of
booty[704]. But Achilles replies to Agamemnon, ‘that the _Achæans_ have
it not in their power to compensate him there and then, for they have
no common stock:’ but ‘when Troy is taken, then we the Achæans will
repay you three and four fold[705].’ The same subject is again touched
in i. 135, 162, 392. ii. 227: and both times with reference to the
Ἀχαιοὶ as the distributors of the spoil. In Il. ii. 255 it is allotted
by the ἥρωες Δαναοί.
In the same way we find a decided leaning to the use of the word
Ἀχαιοὶ, when reference is made to other governing duties.
For instance, in the adjuration of Achilles by the staff or sceptre.
‘It has been stripped of leaf and bark, and now the υἷες Ἀχαιῶν,
who are intrusted by Jupiter with sovereign functions, bear it in
hand[706].’ It is hardly possible here to construe the phrase without
limiting it to the chiefs.
I have referred to the passage where Homer introduces the word Ἀργεῖοι
for the first time, under the shadow, as it were, of Ἀχαιοί. Now, if we
examine that passage, we shall perceive that unless there be some shade
whatever of difference in the meaning, the words are tautological, an
imputation which Homer never merits. But if we admit in the Achæan
name a certain bias towards the nobles of the army, then the sense and
expressions are alike appropriate. ‘I fear the resentment of him, who
mightily lords it over (all) the Greeks, and to whom even the Achæans
(or chiefs) submit themselves[707].’
Again the phrase Ἀχαιὸς ἄνηρ[708], twice used by Homer, and both times
in the mouth of Priam from the Trojan wall, both times also refers
to noble and chieftainlike figures, which his eye, keen for beauty,
discerns among the crowd. The second case is particularly worthy of
notice:
τίς τ’ ἄρ’ ὅδ’ ἄλλος Ἀχαιὸς ἀνὴρ ἤυς τε μέγας τε,
ἔξοχος Ἀργείων κεφάλην ἠδ’ εὔρεας ὤμους;
Of which the effect seems to be expressed in these words:
Who is th’ Achæan Chieftain
So beautiful and tall?
His shoulders broad surmount the crowd,
His head outtops them all.
Here again, if Achæan and Argeian be synonymous, the use of the latter
word is in the highest degree insipid, but if the reference be to
the chief, excelling in height the mass of the soldiery, a perfect
propriety is maintained.
I need not extend these illustrations to other passages, such as Il.
ii. 80, 346. ix. 670. And, on the other hand, it is easy to point to
passages where the force of the Achæan and Argeian names is obviously
identical, such as Il. ix. 521: or again where Achæan and Danaan must
agree, as in Il. ix. 641, 2. The most frequent use of the Achæan name
is, I believe, for the nation, and not the race or class: yet a number
of passages remain to show the native bias and primitive meaning of the
word.
I will however point out two more places, one in each poem, where
that shading of the sense, for which I contend, will either greatly
facilitate the rendering of the text, or even may be called requisite
in order to attain a tolerable construction.
1. It deserves particular notice, that Homer sometimes places the words
in very close proximity, as in the following passage;
νηῶν ἐπ’ ἀρίστερα δηιόωντο
λαοὶ ὑπ’ Ἀργείων· τάχα δ’ ἂν καὶ κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν
ἔπλετο· τοῖος γὰρ Γαιήοχος Ἐννοσίγαιος
ὤτρυν’ Ἀργείους·
This is in Il. xiii. 676-8, and Δαναῶν follows in 680. The nearness of
the words, and the place of Ἀχαιοὶ, between the twice used Ἀργεῖοι, is
highly insipid and un-Homeric, if they are pure equivalents. But now it
seems by no means impossible, that the Poet may in this passage have in
view a distinction between the leaders and the mass. He may have meant
to say, ‘Hector had not yet learned that his men were suffering havock
on the left from the Greek troops. But so it was; and the chiefs might
now perhaps have won fame, such was the might with which Neptune urged
on their forces,’ but that, &c.
2. It is difficult, except upon the supposition of a different shade of
meaning in these appellatives, to construe at all such a passage as
ἐξερέεινεν ἕκαστα,
Ἴλιον, Ἀργείων τε νέας, καὶ νόστον Ἀχαιῶν[709].
Here the juxtaposition of the words, if they are synonymous, becomes
absolutely intolerable. But the sense runs easily and naturally, if we
render it ‘he inquired (of me) all about (the fall of) Troy, and the
fleet (or armament) of the Greeks, and the adventures of the chiefs
while on their way home.’
The Odyssey, however, appears to offer a larger contribution towards
our means of comprehending the Homeric use of Ἀχαιοὶ, than can be
supplied by the mere citation of particular passages.
_Its application within Ithaca._
There is considerable evidence of a division of races in Ithaca: and
also of the application of the Achæan name to the aristocracy of the
country.
The length of time during which Ulysses had been absent, will account
for much disorganization in his dominions: and their lying chiefly in
separate insular possessions would tend to aggravate the evil. Still
not only Nestor, Idomeneus[710], Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, but also
Menelaus, who was absent almost as long as Ulysses himself, appear
to have resumed their respective thrones without difficulty; so that
we are led to suppose there must have been much peculiarity in the
case of Ithaca. Part of this we may find in the fact, that the family
of Ulysses may but recently have attained to power, and that the
consolidation of races was imperfect. Besides his force of character,
he had accumulated[711] great wealth, following in the footsteps of his
father Laertes, who was both a conqueror and an economist[712]. His
power, thus depending on what was personal to himself, could not but be
shaken to its very base by his departure, and by his long detention in
foreign parts.
So far as we can learn from the text of Homer, the family of Ulysses
had come, like the other Hellic families, from the north: and it had
only reigned in Ithaca at most for two generations. His extraction is
not stated further back than his paternal grandfather Arceisius[713].
But his connections all appear to be in the north. His maternal
grandfather, Autolycus[714], lived by Parnesus, or Parnassus, in
Phocis, near to Delphi. And his wife’s father, Icarius, had a daughter
Iphthime, who was married to Eumelus[715], heir-apparent of Pheræ in
the south of Thessaly: a circumstance which affords a presumption of
proximity in their dominions. Thus it is probable that Laertes may have
married in Thessaly; and, as we have no mention of the sovereignty of
Arceisius, it is highly probable that Laertes was the first, either to
acquire the Ithacan throne, or at least to hold it for any length of
time.
The fountain near the city, which supplied it with water, and which
probably marks its foundation, was constructed, as we are told, by
Ithacus, Neritus, and Polyctor[716].
The first must have been the Eponymist of the island: the second of its
principal mountain[717].
Peisander, called ἄναξ and Πολυκτορίδης[718], is one of four principal
Suitors, whose gifts to Penelope are specifically mentioned in the
Eighteenth Odyssey. Thus he would appear to have been most probably
nephew to the Eponymist of the island. Sometimes indeed the patronymic
is derived from a grandfather, or even, as in the case of Priam
(Δαρδανίδης, Il. xxiv. 629, 631), from a remote ancestor; but then he
must apparently be a founder, or one of the highest fame. But Peisander
at the least may have been the son of Polyctor; and he was probably
the representative of the family, which had been displaced from the
Sovereignty by the house of Laertes. He afterwards appears among the
leaders in the struggle of the Suitors with Ulysses[719].
The names applied to the subjects of Ulysses in the Odyssey are three:
Κεφαλλῆνες, Ἰθακήσιοι, and Ἀχαιοί. In accordance with its use in the
Iliad, the first of these, which is but four times[720] used, appears
to be a name of the whole people of the state; and, judging from what
we have seen of the force of the word, it implies that the Hellenic
element was dominant. The difference in the use of the other two is
very marked.
In the first place, the Suitors are commonly called Ἀχαιοὶ[721], never
Ἰθακήσιοι, nor ever Δαναοὶ or Ἀργεῖοι. Either, being the aristocracy,
they were an Achæan race; or else, without all being of Achæan race,
they were called Achæan, because they were the aristocracy. Of that
class they are stated to have constituted the whole[722].
The more probable of these two suppositions is, that they were by no
means exclusively of Achæan blood, but took the name from their birth
and station. It is most natural to suppose that the displaced family
of Peisander, and probably others, were not Achæan, but belonged to an
older stock. This stock may have been Hellenic; for, as we know, there
were Hellenic, and in particular Æolid, families in Greece long before
we hear of the Achæans there.
The house of Ulysses still indeed had friends in the island, like
Mentor, like Noemon, son of Phronius, (or the class represented by
these names, if they be typical only,) or like Peiræus, who took charge
of Theoclymenus at the request of Telemachus[723]. But the bulk of
the people were neutral, or else unfriendly. The best that Telemachus
can say is, that the _whole_ people is not hostile[724]. And in the
last Book, whilst more than one half the Assembly take up arms against
Ulysses the rest simply[725] remain neutral: so that he has no one to
rely upon but his father, his son, and a mere handful of dependents.
While the Achæan name is thus exclusively applied to the Suitors, and
apparently to them because they formed the aristocracy, the people,
when assembled, are invariably addressed as Ἰθακήσιοι. It is said
indeed, that the Achæans[726] were summoned by the heralds to the
Assembly of the Second Book: but it seems to have been customary
to send a special summons only to principal persons, as we find in
Scheria[727]; though all classes were expected to attend, and did
attend.
I do not, however, venture to treat it as certain, that the word Ἀχαιοὶ
is not applied to the population of Ithaca generally. When Euripides
addresses the Assembly, and incites the people to revenge the death of
the Suitors, we are told that οἶκτος δ’ ἕλε πάντας Ἀχαιούς. This may
mean the aristocratic party in the Assembly, as we know that there were
two sections very differently minded. At any rate, if the whole people
be meant, it is by the rarest possible exception. The name is applied,
as we should expect, to the soldiers who sailed with Ulysses to Troy:
but within Ithaca it seems clear that the name properly denotes the
nobles. And upon the whole it seems most probable, that these Ἀχαιοὶ,
in the Twenty-third Book, are the party of the Suitors, with reference
rather to their position in society than their extraction: while the
minority, who do not join in the movement against Ulysses, are probably
the old population of the island, who have no cause of quarrel to make
them take up arms against him, and yet no such tie with him, either
of race or of ancient subordination, as to induce them to move in his
favour.
Ithaca was ill fitted for tillage, or for feeding anything but sheep
and goats. And Ithacus, its eponymist, being a very modern personage,
it seems highly probable that, whether Achæan or not, he and his race
were Hellenic, and gave to the population that peculiar name of
Cephallenes, under which Laertes describes them as his subjects. But
there were probably anterior inhabitants of the old Pelasgian stock,
submerged beneath two Hellenic immigrations, caring little which of
their lords was uppermost, and forming the supine minority of the final
Assembly.
The use of the Achæan name in Ithaca, in broad separation from the
Ithacesian, must then prove either its connection with a race, or its
bias towards a class, and may prove both. But quitting the latter as
sufficiently demonstrated, I now proceed to trace the local use of the
Achæan name.
And, first of all, we find it locally used in the North; in that
Thessaly, where the name of Hellas came into being, and from whence it
extended itself to the Southward; therefore in the closest connection
with the Hellic stem.
We are told in the Catalogue, with respect to the division under
Achilles, after the names of the districts and places from which they
came,
Μυρμίδονες δὲ καλεῦντο, καὶ Ἕλληνες, καὶ Ἀχαιοί[728].
Now we find throughout the Iliad, that the local or divisional name
of this body is unchanging: the troops of Achilles are uniformly
denominated Myrmidons. Therefore Homer does not mean that one part were
Myrmidons, another Hellenes, another Achæans, but that the three names
attached to the whole body, of course in different respects. They were
then Myrmidons, whatever the source of that name may have been, by
common designation. They were Hellenes, because inhabitants of Hellas,
of the territory from whence the influence and range of that name
had already begun to radiate, more properly and eminently therefore
Hellenes, than others who had not so positively acquired the name,
though they may have been included in the Πανέλληνες. And manifestly
they could only be called Ἀχαιοὶ, because known to be under leaders of
the pure Achæan stock, who were entitled to carry the name in their own
right, instead of bearing it only in a derivative sense, and because
it had spread all over Greece. Of this peculiar and eminent Achæanism
in the Peleid stock, we have, I think, two other signs from the poems:
one in the possible meaning of the love of Juno, which we have seen
extended to Achilles in an equal degree with Agamemnon; the other
in the marriage of Hermione to Neoptolemus, which was founded upon
a promise given by Menelaus her father while before Troy. Doubtless
the eminent services of Neoptolemus might be the sole ground of this
promise: but it may also have had to do with kin, as some special
relation, of neighbourhood or otherwise, appears commonly to accompany
these matrimonial connections. In conformity with this passage, the
name Ἀχαίιδες is applied by Achilles in the Ninth Book to the women of
Hellas and Phthia.
_Local uses of the Achæan name._
It is wonderfully illustrative of the perspicacity and accuracy of
Homer, to find that in this very spot, which he has so especially
marked with the Achæan name, it continued to subsist as a local
appellation, and to subsist here almost exclusively, all through the
historic ages of Greece. On this subject we shall have further occasion
to touch.
2. Of the five races who inhabited Crete at the time of the _Troica_,
one was Achæan[729]:
ἐν μὲν Ἀχαιοὶ
ἐν δ’ Ἐτεοκρῆτες μεγαλήτορες, ἐν δὲ Κύδωνες,
Δωριέες τε τριχάïκες, δῖοί τε Πελασγοί.
The presence of an Achæan tribe in Crete may have been due to its
constant intercourse with Eastern Peloponnesus[730], where the Achæans
had for some time been dominant: or to those relations with Thessaly,
to which the name of Deucalion in Homer bears probable witness. In any
case, the passage clearly establishes the local virtue of the name.
It also exhibits to us Achæans as distinct from Dorians, and shows us
that there were a variety of branches, known to Homer, of the Hellenic
tree. And the enumeration of the Achæan and Pelasgian races with others
in this place, compared with the uniform description in the Iliad of
the whole force of Idomeneus as Cretan, shows us how careful Homer was
to avoid such confusion as the juxtaposition of Achæans and Pelasgians
would have caused with reference to the main ethnical division in the
Iliad.
3. In the Pylian raid of the Eleventh Book, Nestor carefully
distinguishes between the parties, as Epeans, also called Elians, on
the one side, and Pylians, also called Achæans, on the other[731]. This
raid took place in his early youth, perhaps forty or fifty years before
the _Troica_, and within the Achæan epoch. And as he withholds the
Achæan name from the other party, they plainly were not Achæan in the
limited sense. And yet they were Hellenic: for, among other Hellenic
signs, Augeas, the king of the Epeans, was an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Thus again
we have Achæan fixed as a subdivision, though probably the principal
subdivision, of the Hellenic race.
4. A fourth case, in which the Achæan name appears clearly to have a
limited signification, is in a second passage of the Greek Catalogue,
where a part of the forces of Diomed are described as those,
οἵ τ’ ἔχον Αἰγίνην, Μάσητά τε, κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν[732].
Although Mases has been taken to be a town, yet its junction here
with Ægina perhaps rather points to it as an island. It appears to be
admitted that its site is unknown. And an extra-Homeric tradition[733]
reports, that the small islands off the Trœzenian coast were called
after Pelops. It is impossible not to observe the correspondence
between this tradition, and the indirect traditions afforded us by
Homer’s language in this verse. For in the Catalogue he seems carefully
to avoid repeating the general Greek appellatives in connection with
the inhabitants of particular places, and to give them local and
special names only. It follows irresistibly, that therefore he must
be understood here to speak of the distinct race and local name of
Achæans: to which race and name would naturally belong any settlers
brought by Pelops into Southern Greece.
And, as Homer does not discontinue altogether the application of the
Argeian name to the inhabitants of Argolis, he probably in this place
means to distinguish Achæans not only from other Greek races, but even
from other subjects of Tydeus and of Diomed, who would most properly be
called Argeians.