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
Ἀτρείδης τε, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
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--
πολλῇσιν νήσοισι καὶ Ἄργεϊ παντὶ ἀνάσσειν[800]--
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.