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.
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).
τὸν δ’ ὕστατον εὗρεν ὁμίλου
ἐστάοτ’· αἰεὶ γὰρ Πριάμῳ ἐπεμήνιε δίῳ
οὕνεκ’ ἀρ’, ἔσθλον ἔοντα μετ’ ἀνδράσιν, οὔτι τίεσκεν.
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),
ἦ σέ γε θυμὸς ἐμοὶ μαχέσασθαι ἀνώγει
ἐλπόμενον Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξειν ἱπποδάμοισιν
τιμῆς τῆς Πριάμου;
‘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
Αἰνεία, Τρώων βουλήφορε·
His name is often combined with that of Hector, and when so combined
frequently precedes it. Thus we have (vi. 75),
εἰ μὴ ἄρ’ Αἰνείᾳ τε καὶ Ἕκτορι εἶπε κ.τ.λ.
To this are subjoined, by Helenus, words which assign to Æneas a parity
of command with Hector:
Αἰνεία τε καὶ Ἕκτορ, ἐπεὶ πόνος ὔμμι μάλιστα
Τρώων καὶ Λυκίων ἐγκέκλιται[816].
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,