Chapter II: Ethnology (15)

2. If Astyocheia, the mother of Tlepolemus, was also the Astyoche who bore to Mars Ascalaphus and Ialmenus (Il. ii. 513), then he was more likely to be Thessalian than Elian; for Mars, dwelling in Thrace, bordered upon Thessaly, but is not heard of in Southern Greece; and these princes ruled over the Minyeian Orchomenus, which is far from the Peloponnesus, but near Southern Thessaly.

3. Again, Nestor, in the Eleventh Book[868], where he sets forth the depression into which the Pylians had fallen, through the depredations of their neighbours the Elians, states that they had been unable to defend themselves against those ravages, because Hercules had devastated their country and slain their princes. Now he would hardly have said this, if the Elian Ephyre and its neighbourhood had likewise been devastated by Hercules, since his account would then have failed to explain the relative inferiority of the Pylians. But if it was not the Elian Ephyre, and since the situation of the Isthmus and its state make the passage inapplicable to the Corinthian Ephyre, then, still looking for some country known in connection with the exploits of Hercules, we must naturally take it to be the Ephyre of Thessaly, where the name Selleeis, as that of a neighbouring stream, would most naturally of all be looked for.

It is true that the geographers give us no record of a river Selleeis near the Thessalian Ephyre. But the fugitive character of the name Ephyre is manifest from the fact that, though there were several Ephyres in Homer’s time, none of them was of sufficient importance to furnish a military contingent worth naming. If by Ephyre was meant the first site of a new colony, that name might naturally disappear, not only with a removal to a more secure or convenient spot, but even perhaps on the growth of a mere group of inclosed buildings into a walled town. It is therefore no wonder if the site of many of these towns has been forgotten, or if the neighbouring streams in consequence cannot be identified.

_The site of his Ephyre._

There is a tradition, external to Homer, but not at variance with him, that the Astyocheia whom Hercules carried off was the daughter of Phylas; and if so, Phylas was of course lord of the Ephyre, from which she was carried off. If we assume the veracity of this tradition, we can determine the seat of the Ephyre of Astyocheia to have been in Thessaly. For the five commanders under Achilles were of course all drawn from that country. But among them is Eudorus, the son of Polymele and grandson of Phylas[869].

It may here be asked, by the way, why is not this Eudorus an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν? even his name is of the form to which the phrase is so well suited. The answer is that, though he was the son of Polymele, and the grandson of Phylas on the female side, his reputed father was Mercury, and he was therefore not descended in the male line from, and could not be called, the chieftain of a tribe.

If then Phylas was lord of the Thessalian Ephyre, and Euphetes was also lord of the Thessalian Ephyre, in what relation to one another are we to presume them to have stood as to time? There is here no appearance of discrepancy. Phyleus, as the father of Meges, was the ξεῖνος of Euphetes one generation before the Trojan war. Tlepolemus, contemporary of Meges, was by our supposition the grandson of Phylas. Phylas, lord of Ephyre, was therefore probably one generation earlier than Euphetes, and may have been his father.

Nor is it an objection to this reasoning, that Meges, son of Phyleus, was lord of Dulichium, and that we cannot suppose Phyleus to have been the ξεῖνος of one dwelling so far off as the Thessalian Ephyre. For first, Nestor the Pylian had fought in Thessaly. And next, Meges had been a fugitive from his father’s dwelling on account of a feud with him: which makes it even probable that he would remove to a distance, as we see that Tlepolemus went on a similar account from Thessaly, or at least from some part of Greece, to Rhodes.

If then Euphetes, who was an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, governed an Ephyre, and particularly if it was in Thessaly, the special seat of the Helli, we can have little difficulty in concluding that he bore the title as a patriarchal one, in right of his descent.

On the other hand, the Ephyre of Tlepolemus is certainly in the general opinion presumed to be the Ephyre of Elis. If this opinion be correct, it is still more easy to connect him with the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Augeias lives two generations before the Trojan war, rules in Ephyre, and is ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Euphetes is contemporary with the father of Meges, who fights in the war; and he is therefore one generation after Augeias, while he rules in the same place, and bears the same title. If then the Ephyre of Euphetes was Elian, it seems impossible to escape the presumption that Euphetes was the son of Augeias.

This view as to the Ephyre of Euphetes on the whole will more completely satisfy the Homeric text. For we find Meges in the Thirteenth Book fighting at the head of Epean troops[870]. But the troops he led to Troy were from Dulichium and the Echinades[871]. So we can only conclude one of two things. Either Meges commanded the Epeans of Elis in virtue of the connection of his family with that country; or he commanded Epeans, whom his father Phyleus had taken with him from Elis across the Corinthian gulf. Either way a relation between Elis and the family of Meges is made good, which tends to place Euphetes, as the friend of that family, in the Ephyre of Elis.

There is yet another supposition open. Homer has told us that Phyleus was Διὶ φίλος,--a distinction he very rarely confers,--and that he migrated, as he implies rather than asserts, from Elis, on account of a quarrel with his father:

ὃς πότε Δουλίχιόν δ’ ἀπενάσσατο πατρὶ χολωθείς.

He does not mention the cause; but this abrupt allusion to the father of Phyleus implies that he was a person of note. Strabo[872] may therefore only be filling up a void in Homer, when he tells us, of course from some tradition, that Augeias was the father of Phyleus.

If this were so, we have to ask, why is not Phyleus an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν? and who, upon this supposition, could Euphetes be?

As we must infer from the Catalogue that the Elian kingdom of Augeias was broken up at the epoch of the _Troica_, and as in consequence we do not find Polyxeinus, his grandson, called by the title in question, so neither need we expect it of Phyleus.

If Phyleus was the son of Augeias, Euphetes cannot have been sovereign of the Elian Ephyre, for they would in this case not have been ξεῖνοι, but brothers.

But he might still have been sovereign either of the Ephyre mentioned by Homer, μυχῷ Ἄργεος, which appears as Corinth in the Catalogue: or possibly of the Thesprotian Ephyre with which we become acquainted in Strabo.

If Euphetes represented, with the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, one of the old Hellic chieftaincies at either of those places, nothing could be more natural than that the tie of hostship should subsist between him and Phyleus, the son of another Hellic chieftain of the same class.

In any case, though the Homeric evidence is palpably incomplete, yet by connecting the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν with the highly characteristic local title of Ephyre, and the name of the river Selleeis, it unequivocally supports the interpretation of that title as one indicating an original and purely Hellic chieftaincy.

VI. _Case of Eumelus._

It now only remains to consider the case of Eumelus, the last of the six persons to whom Homer gives the peculiar title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

He is introduced to us in the Catalogue as the φίλος παῖς[873] (φίλος meaning probably either the eldest or only son) of Admetus, who is never mentioned except in the oblique cases, and to whom therefore, consistently with his usage, Homer never applies the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. He is in command of his father’s forces; and, as Pheræ is the city first named in this list, we may infer that this was his principal city.

In the first place I would remark, that we have for this Pheræ a sign of wealth, which has been already noticed, the excellence, namely, of its breed of horses. There is also abundant evidence of the wealth and importance of Pheræ in the historic times[874]. This mark then accords with the hypothesis, that it was probably one of the primitive lowland settlements made by the Hellic race in Thessaly. In fact, Pheræ stands relatively to Admetus, as Ephyre does relatively to Augeias, Euphetes, and the older Æolid, Sisyphus.

Through the medium of the name Pheræ we connect this family with Ἐφύρη, as its cognate name, and as the name which we have found, in the cases of Euphetes and Augeias, to be eminently characteristic of settlements under an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

Next it appears, that the father or ancestor of Admetus took his name from the place which he inhabited, and was called Pheres, for says the poet,

Ἵπποι μὲν μέγ’ ἄρισται ἔσαν Φηρητιάδαο,
τὰς Εὔμηλος ἔλαυνε[875].

The union between the names of the place and the person affords another sign of primitive settlement. Pheres was probably the founder of the town Φηραί.

Next, a passage in the Odyssey gives us an account of this Pheres[876]. He was the son of Cretheus, by Tyro:

τοὺς δ’ ἑτέρους Κρηθῆϊ τέκεν βασίλεια γυναικῶν,
Αἴσονά τ’ ἠδὲ Φέρητ’ Ἀμυθάονα τ’ ἱππιοχάρμην.

Now Cretheus was a son or descendant of Æolus:

Φῆ δὲ Κρηθῆος γυνὴ ἔμμεναι Αἰολίδαο[877].

And we have already seen the Æolids of Homer directly connected with the characteristic name of Ephyre in the person of Sisyphus (Il. vi. 152, 211). Outside the Homeric text, all tradition ascribes to the Æolians, not less than the Achæans, an Eteo-Hellenic origin. Again, we may observe, that among the Greek genealogies of Homer, the longest are those of the Æolids. From Æolus to Glaucus II, in the Sixth Iliad, are six generations: and here in like manner from Cretheus to Eumelus are four, which number will be increased to five or to six, according as we take Cretheus to be the son or the grandson of Æolus, or estimate the age of Eumelus. According to the Homeric force of the patronymic, he may be either. Eumelus, however, himself was, as we have seen, presumably not young at the time of the _Troica_; since he was wedded to Iphthime, the sister of Penelope, who must be taken to stand, with her husband Ulysses (Il. xxiii. 791), as above the average age of the army.

To sum up; it thus far appears,

1. That Eumelus was heir to Admetus, a reigning prince of Thessaly or Hellas.

2. That the capital of this prince bore testimony by its name to its primitive or Eteo-Hellenic character.

3. That Eumelus was a descendant in the male line from Æolus, of whose lineage several, according to Homer, seem to have possessed the character and borne the title of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

4. In virtue of his descent from Æolus, he is sprung from Jupiter.

To estimate fully the force of the evidence, it may be well to observe, that a great many Thessalian princes and leaders are noticed in the Catalogue besides Eumelus; to the last alone, however, the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is applied. But no one of the others bears any mark, personal or local, of the peculiar descent and social position to which this title appears to belong: although among them are found Podaleirius and Machaon, the sons of Asclepius; Polypœtes, the son of Pirithous, and grandson of Jupiter; Eurypylus, the distinguished warrior; Protesilaus and Philoctetes, each the subject of distinct historical notices.

Again, I would, from the case of Eumelus, illustrate the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν in another point of view.

He was descended by his mother Alcestis from Neptune. She was the daughter of Pelias, the son whom Tyro bore to the fabled ruler of the seas. This descent on the mother’s side is mentioned in the Catalogue, where a total silence is observed as to his paternal lineage from Æolus and Cretheus.

Εὔμηλος, τὸν ὑπ’ Ἀδμήτῳ τέκε δῖα γυναικῶν,
Ἄλκηστις, Πελίαο θυγατρῶν εἶδος ἀρίστη.

But it is plain that his descent from Jupiter by the father’s side was more worthy of notice than his descent from Neptune through the bastard Pelias. Yet Homer has nowhere taken notice of the descent from Jupiter, in the case of Eumelus, unless it is implied in the meaning of the term ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, though we know the descent as a fact: surely a strong proof that it is part of the meaning of the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and is a thing not only inseparable from it, but conveyed by it.

_The ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν descended from Jupiter._

With regard to the divine descent of the Homeric chieftains bearing this title, our direct evidence from the Poet stands as follows:

1. That the Dardan line springs originally from Jupiter.

2. That Tyro, being called εὐπατέρεια in common with Helen only, is evidently meant to be described as sprung from that deity.

3. That Bellerophon, also an Æolid, is also θεοῦ γόνος, therefore himself a descendant of Jupiter.

4. And if so, then Eumelus, who was Æolid too, falls within the same description.

5. Augeias in like manner attains to the same honour by the Homeric presumptions which make him an Æolid, as well as by all extra-Homeric tradition.

6. With regard to Euphetes and Agamemnon, we have no direct evidence. But we have seen strong reason to suppose, that Euphetes was himself an Æolid: and no inconsiderable presumption that Tantalus was according to Homer what the later tradition makes him, a son of Jupiter, and that Agamemnon was descended from Tantalus.

Perhaps also, without venturing to attach any conclusive weight to such a sign, we may interpret the annexation of Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς to Hellic kingship, as a sign that the earliest Hellic kingship, being also that which conveyed the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, was always associated with divine descent.

Among those who bear the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, we find no case of a descent from Jupiter reputed to be recent. The two lines in which the title is most clearly transmitted, those of Æolus and of Dardanus, are among the oldest genealogies in Homer. That of Agamemnon, apparently the shortest, interposes at the least four generations between Jupiter and him.

The line of Dardanus is apparently by one generation longer than any of the others belonging to an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. But nothing can be more natural: for any settlement, made by the Helli on the Hellespont during their eastward movement, would naturally precede by some time their descent from Olympus and the Thracian hills into Thessaly; so that the earlier date of the primary ancestor is a witness for, rather than against the relationship.

It cannot, however, be too carefully borne in mind, that the divine descent of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν from Jupiter is widely different from that of the more recent heroes, like Sarpedon or Hercules. We may suppose that in such cases as these the divine parent either screens the result of unlawful love, or perhaps indicates the sudden rise into eminence of a family previously obscure: with the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν the case is quite distinct. The poetical meaning here is, that backward there lay nothing of family history beyond the ancestor from whom he claimed descent, whether it were Dardanus, or Æolus, or Tantalus: as if aiming at the effect legitimately produced by those words in the Gospel of St. Luke, with which the upward line of the genealogy given by him closes; ‘which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God[878].’ And the historic basis of the allegory may probably be this, that the person indicated was one of some ruling house, who, with his followers or kindred, separated from the migratory race of Helli as it swept westward along the hills, and founded a stable settlement, and a society more or less organized in orders and employments, in which his name became the symbol at once of sovereign rank, of the national point of origin, and of affinity in blood with a ruling race.

_Four notes of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν._

To conclude then: the notes of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν in Homer, probable or demonstrative, are these:

1. He must be born of Jupiter _ab antiquo_.

2. He must hold a sovereignty, either paramount or secondary, and either in whole, or, like Æneas, by devolution in part, over some given place or tribe.

3. His family must have held this sovereignty continuously from the time of the primary ancestor.

4. He must be the head of a ruling tribe or house of the original Hellenic stock: and must be connected with marks of the presence of Hellenic settlement. These marks may, as in the case of Agamemnon, be supplied by a race or tribe: or they may be territorial, such as those afforded by the name of the river Selleeis, and more especially by the name Ephyre, and the family of cognate words.

Now each of the six persons, to whom alone Homer gives the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, partakes, by evidence either demonstrative or probable, of every one of these notes.

_Negative proofs._

Among negative evidences that the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν conveys a peculiar sense, we may place the following:

1. The position of Priam in Troas, where he was the greatest man of North-western Asia, Il. xxiv. 543-6, and of Hector, or else Paris, as his heir, were such as called for the highest epithets of dignity. He had even a regular court of γέροντες, of whom it seems plain, that some at least, such as Antenor, were invested with some kind of sovereignty. Yet none of the Ilian family are called by the name of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

2. Alcinous in the Odyssey affords another example of a lord over lords, who does not belong to the historical Greek stem, and who therefore is not called ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. The example may appear weak, because of the divine descent of the Phæacians. But if this phrase had, like κρείων, been one of merely general ornament, why should it not have been applied to him as κρείων is, or to his brother Rhexenor, or his father Nausithous? If the divine descent of the Phæacians from Neptune renders the phrase inapplicable to them, this is of itself a proof of its very specific nature.

3. Again; it may be asked why Glaucus was not an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, as he was descended from an Æolid sovereign. The answer is, he was no longer the chieftain of any Hellenic clan. His grandfather Bellerophon had migrated simply as an individual fugitive into a South-Asian country, of which the people had no immediate ties of race with him; and, while apart from his original tribe, he could not inherit a title as its head.

4. Sarpedon was under the same disqualification as Glaucus his brother king. Besides this, he was not descended in the male line from Æolus, but only through his mother Hippodamia.

5. Again, among the Greeks. Why, it may be asked, was not Peleus, or why was not Achilles an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν? Here was a throne above thrones: for Patroclus was not only an ἄναξ, but was called Διογενὴς, which implies sovereignty; therefore Menœtius his father was the same: but Menœtius was in attendance at the court of Peleus. Phœnix again was tutor to that chief, though he ruled over the Dolopians by the gift of Peleus, as he tells us,

καί μ’ ἀφνειὸν ἔθηκε, πολὺν δέ μοι ὤπασε λαὸν,
ναῖον δ’ ἐσχατίην Φθίης, Δολόπεσσιν ἀνάσσων[879].

Besides that he occupied a great position, and was of the highest descent, I think it is clear from the Catalogue that the Myrmidons, over whom Peleus reigned, were Achæans, and therefore a strictly Hellic race.

And again, the character of Achilles makes it quite clear that his family were from the Hellic stock. For it is in him that Homer has chosen to exhibit the prime and foremost pattern of the whole Greek nation: and he could surely never have chosen for such a purpose any family of foreign, or of doubtful blood.

It is not however in every Hellic race or family, but only among the known representatives by descent of the principal or senior branches, that we are justified in expecting to find the patriarchal title. And still less do we know whether the Myrmidons, even though Hellic and Achæan, were a principal tribe of that stock.

The evidence as to the descent of Achilles may throw further light upon this part of the subject.

In those cases where a long line of ancestry purported to begin with Jupiter, as, for instance, the Trojan genealogy, it is doubtless natural to treat this as a sort of necessary introduction to a period, beyond which the memory of man, unaided as it was, did not run.

But when we find the paternity of a person contemporary with the Trojan war, or of some near ancestor of his, referred to Jupiter, the most proper interpretation of this legendary statement seems to be, that they were, so to speak, _novi homines_, who having come suddenly into the blaze of celebrity, and living among a nation accustomed to ask of every passing stranger who were his parents, yet having no parents to quote, or none worth quoting, gilded their origin by claiming some great deity for their father. I do not speak now of the distinct and yet cognate case, where a similar pretext was used to shield illegitimacy: as for example, not to travel from the line before us, in the instance of the son of Polydora[880], sister to Achilles himself. But the same principle applies to both: divine progenitorship was used to keep from view something that it was desirable to hide, whether this were the shame of a noble maiden, or the undistinguished ancestry of a great house or hero. Such a hero perhaps, according to this rule, was Hercules: such a house more clearly was that of the Æacids; for Æacus, grandfather of Achilles, was son of Jupiter[881]. He did not therefore represent a patriarchal family, and could not bear the title.

According to extra-Homeric tradition, the Myrmidons fled from Ægina to Thessaly under Peleus[882].

6. Further examples may be taken from the Pelopid family. The Menelaus of the Iliad belongs to the highest order: he is more kingly than the other kings[883]. In the Odyssey he desires to transplant Ulysses to a portion of his dominions (Od. iv. 174). And Ægisthus actually occupies for years, during the exile of Orestes, the Pelopid throne: the name of either Menelaus or Ægisthus is of the metrical value most convenient for union with the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν: but neither the one nor the other was the representative of the great Achæan house of Pelops, and accordingly neither the one nor the other receives the title.

7. Diomed is a Greek of the very highest descent: of him alone, among the kings before Troy, we may confidently say, that he was himself a hero, had a hero for his father, a hero for his uncle, and a hero for his grandfather. Œneus, Tydeus, Meleager, are three names not easily to be matched in early Greek story. They were likewise near the stock, as we may probably infer from the name of the founder of the race, Portheus, the Destroyer. He was father of Œneus and also of Ἄγριος the Rude, and Μέλας the Swarthy, all names indicating that the first stage of arrival within the precinct of civilization had not yet been passed. He commanded, too, one of the largest contingents: yet neither he nor his uncle Meleager, the Achilles of his day, is ever called ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

The reason doubtless is that, in the case of the Œneid family, there is no connection with a leading Greek ancestry. They are neither Æolid nor Pelopid; and they stand in no relation to the characteristic names of Ephyre and the Selleeis.

8. Let me notice, lastly, the case of Nestor. He had been a warrior of the first class. His rich dominions supplied a contingent of ninety ships to the war; larger even than that of Diomed, or of any chief whatever, except Agamemnon, who had one hundred. His father, Neleus, was of great fame. He had actually more influence in council than any other chief, and always took the lead there. He was descended from Neptune, who indeed was but his grandfather: while his grandmother, Tyro, was probably, as we have found, a granddaughter of Æolus.

But he could not be ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, because not in lineal male descent from the primary ancestor Æolus: nor was he the tribal head of the Hellenic race among which he ruled, which was an Achæan one (Il. xi. 759), since the Achæans owned the Pelopids for their chiefs. Also his father Neleus, apparently the younger twin, had migrated from the North, leaving Pelias the elder, as is probable, in possession. Thus Nestor presents none of the four notes of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Yet this title attached to an insignificant relative, Eumelus, his first cousin once removed, doubtless because he possessed them.

_Persons with the notes yet without the title._

It is certainly true that there are a few cases where Homer has _not_ applied the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν to particular persons, to whom he might have given it consistently with the suppositions, as to its meaning, of which I have attempted to show the truth. They are, in one word, the ancestors of the persons to whom he has actually given the title. But all of these, such as Pelops and his line, Dardanus with his line as far as Tros, and the earlier descendants of Æolus, are persons mentioned in the poems for the most part but once, and rarely more than twice or thrice. Now, as Homer mentions frequently without the prefix, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, those to whom on other occasions he gives it, we are not entitled to require its application to all persons capable of bearing it, whom he mentions but once.

And again, if I am right in holding that this was strictly a title attaching to lineage, then it was wholly needless, when he had designated a particular person, as an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, to grace his predecessors also with the title, because, as a matter of course, inasmuch as they were his predecessors, it attached to them. No historic aim then was involved, and no purpose would have been gained if Admetus, for example, had been mentioned with this title as well as his son Eumelus.

But, I confess, it appears to me to afford no small confirmation to the arguments and the conclusions of these pages, when we remember that not only do the four rules for the sense of the phrase suit, as far as we can tell, all the six persons to whom it is applied, but that there is absolutely no other living person named in the poems, whom they would not effectually exclude, with the insignificant exceptions, first of Admetus, who has just been mentioned, and next of Orestes. In the Iliad, Orestes is only named in one single passage (twice repeated), of the Ninth Book[884]. In the Odyssey he is named several times, but the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is less suitable to the political state of Greece as it appears in this poem, and also to the subject. It never appears, except retrospectively.

A few words may perhaps be due to the case of Polyxeinus, grandson of Augeias, who, it is just possible, though unlikely, may have retained the position of his grandfather. It is just possible, because we are not assured of the contrary; but most unlikely, because Augeias appears as lord of the Epeans, Polyxeinus only as commanding a division of them. Again, Polyxeinus is only once mentioned. It is also evident that the loss of his grandfather’s throne, by a revolution in Elis, might naturally put an end to the application of the title in his particular case, by a process exactly the same with that to which its general and final extinction, now so speedily to arrive, was due.

It might indeed be of some interest to inquire why it is that, when Homer makes no practical or effective use of the phrase for any one except Agamemnon, he has notwithstanding been careful to register, as it were, a title to it on behalf of five other persons? Nor can I doubt that the just answer would be, that he did this because, with his historic aims, he may have deemed it a matter of national interest to record a title of such peculiar and primitive significance.

_Its disappearance with Homer._

But of all the negative arguments that tend to show ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν not to have been a merely vague title, there is none on which I dwell with more confidence than its total disappearance with the Homeric age. For it was not so with the other less peculiar forms, βασιλεὺς, ἄναξ, and κρείων. Although they were supplanted in actual use by the term τυραννὸς, which became for the Greeks the type of supreme power in the hands of a single person, yet the idea of them was traditionally retained. Accordingly, even the name βασιλεὺς was applied by Greek writers to contemporary kings out of Greece, and to the old bygone Greek monarchies: and Thucydides has given it to them as a class, where he describes the πατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι[885]. But the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, the most specific of them all, disappears even from retrospective use: and the inference is, that its proper meaning had ceased to be represented in the institutions either of Greece or of the known world beyond the Greek borders; that it had passed away with the archaic system, of which it was the peculiar token.

Even independently of direct testimony, we might be assured that the patriarchal and highland constitution of society could not very long survive the multiplication of settlements in the plains. For the wealth, which these settlements created through the increased efficiency of labour, the greater bounty of the earth, and the augmented means of communication and exchange, could not but bring with it at once new temptations, and new sources of disturbance; whereas the art of controlling these evils was but painfully and slowly, and most incompletely learned. Among highland tribes, there might be war and pillage with a view to immediate wants: but stored wealth could not be stolen, where, except in its simplest forms, it did not exist: and men do not overturn hereditary power, or drag society into revolutions, without an object.

But the Catalogue, as well as other parts of the Homeric poems, show us how the causes thus indicated had already worked. Of the Greek States comprised in that invaluable enumeration, some were, as is plainly asserted or implied, monarchically governed: for example, the Mycenians, the Spartans, the Pylians, the Myrmidons, the Arcadians, the Eubœans[886], and the Ætolians. We may reasonably infer the same with regard to the followers of those great chiefs, who are treated as Βασιλεῖς in the body of the poems: the Salaminians and Locrians, each under their Ajax, the Cephallenians under Ulysses, the Cretans, or else a portion of them, under Idomeneus, the Argives under Diomed. In each of these cases, either there is but a single leader, or, as in the two last, the text makes it obvious that the chief first named is supreme in rank. We may probably infer that monarchy prevailed in all the instances, including the Athenians, when only a single general appears. The expression δῆμος, applied to Athens, is perfectly compatible with kingship in Homer. But there remain six cases, where there are a plurality of leaders, apparently on an equal footing. These are the cases of

1. The Bœotians.

2. The people of Aspledon and the Minyeian Orchomenus; who are in fact a second Bœotian contingent.

3. The Phocians.

4. The Elians or Epeans: who differ from the others in being formally distributed into four divisions, under four leaders, and who are therefore strictly acephalous.

5. The Nisurians, &c.

6. The people of Tricce, Ithome, and Œchalia, under the sons of Asclepius.

It is observable with respect to the four first of these, that they were all in the comparatively open, and rich country; liable, therefore, to the influences which, as Thucydides observes[887], made Bœotia, Thessaly, and most of Peloponnesus peculiarly liable to revolutions; and whence doubtless it is, that Homer has been led to tell us that Amphion and Zethus built walls for Thebes, because they could not hold it without them.

With respect to the Nisurians, in stating that they were under Pheidippus and Antiphus, Homer adds that these were (Il. ii. 679)

Θεσσαλοῦ υἷε δύω Ἡρακλείδαο ἄνακτος.

On which we may observe

1. That the power divided between them had apparently been monarchical in the preceding generation.

2. That the name of their father points to his having been born in Thessaly[888], which from its richness was peculiarly open to revolutions.

3. That he was the son of Hercules, with whose name disturbance and convulsion are so much associated.

In the case of the sons of Asclepius, there is the same presumption that they divided a power which had been monarchical: and although the epithet κλωμακόεσσα given to Ithome, the site of which is unknown[889], may suggest rough and broken ground, yet the territory is within the limits of Thessaly[890], and on the river Peneus. Tricce was known in the historic times; and it is mentioned in Homer with the epithet ἱππόβοτος, indicating fertility.

_Signs of political disorganisation._

Here, then, and particularly in the Bœotian and Elian cases, we have considerable signs of the weakening and gradual breaking up of the old highland institutions: I distinguish between those two and the rest, because where the division is only between two brothers, it may have implied little deviation from the monarchical form. Still that little might be the first stage of a deviation which was soon to grow indefinitely large.

There are other signs to the same effect, both in the Iliad, and to a greater extent in the Odyssey.

For example: the dynasty of the Œneids had disappeared among the Ætolians[891]: the dynasty of the Æolids, and the name Ephyre, from Corinth[892]: Polyxeinus, the grandson of Augeias, an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, is not described as an ἄναξ, or lord, at all: Hercules had laid waste the cities about Ephyre, and the cities about Pylos[893]: Tlepolemus, at war with his Heraclid relations, had been driven to emigrate to Rhodes: and all this since the family of the Perseids had disappeared before the Pelopids.

The changes observable in the Odyssey are such as connect themselves with a species of deluge, which had apparently overspread the face of the political society of Greece. They would merit a full examination, in connection with a view of the relation of that poem to the Iliad. Here it need only be observed, that the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν appears nowhere in the action of the Odyssey: the phrase is used but twice, and then only with reference to the dead Agamemnon: and that the partial disappearance of the word from the later work of Homer evidently accompanies a great approach towards disorganisation of the old order of things and ideas in the political state of Greece.

_Summary of the whole._

I may now collect the results, as far as they are related to the present subject, of our whole ethnological inquiry.

1. From the Homeric text, the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν appears not to have belonged to political preeminence or power, or to personal heroism, or to the distinction of wealth, or to divine descent as such; but to the archaic form of sovereignty which united it continuously with the headship in blood of a ruling family or clan, inhabiting the country which was the reputed cradle of the nation, or able to trace lineally its derivation from that country. A tradition of original descent from Jupiter attached in all cases essentially to the possession of the title.

2. In each of the six instances where Homer employs it, he appears to do so in strict conformity with the rules thus indicated.

3. The immediate cradle of those Greek races, which possessed this primitive title and descent, was Thessaly; and of Thessaly Hellas was either a synonym, or a part.

4. The origin of the races thus ruling Hellas is to be sought among the Helli, who dwelt in the mountains around Dodona, apparently with those institutions which have ever been characteristic of mountaineers; and who represent, more faithfully than the inhabitants of lowlands, the earliest type of human society, cast at a time when its relationship to the family was still palpable and near.

5. The resemblances of the Helli and the Dardans afford, together with the probabilities of the case, strong evidence of their having some common affinity to the same branch of the great stem, from which a large part of Europe was peopled with its ruling race.

6. Finally, we may with reasonable grounds conjecture, that the patriarchal system denoted by the patriarchal chieftaincies, which had been shaken before the Trojan war, was further and violently disturbed by it, and by its direct and indirect political consequences; and that this system had vanished before the line of the post-Homeric Greek poets, to be reckoned from Hesiod, had begun. Thus, the basis of the title being removed, the title itself naturally disappeared from literature as well as history; and if we find, that in later times the key to its meaning had been lost, it is but a new mark of the abruptness and width of the breach that lies between Homer and his successors, of the paucity of continuous traditions, and of the limited means possessed by the Greeks of the historic ages for research into the earlier periods of their national existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[764] Od. iv. 697.

[765] This caution is not needless, as the error is a common one. Damm, indeed, most strangely says, ἄναξ _ex multo augustius nomen quam_ βασιλεὺς (in voc. ἄναξ). The English translators, Chapman, Pope, Cowper, and others, render ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, king of men. Voss, with his usual precision, though probably without a very specific meaning, translates it, ‘_der herrscher des volks_.’

[766] Il. xxiii. 417.

[767] Od. xiii. 223.

[768] Il. xx. 17.

[769] V. 121.

[770] Il. ii. 196.

[771] Od. i. 394.

[772] Od. xv. 533.

[773] Od. xvii. 416.

[774] Od. i. 386; cf. 401.

[775] In voc. ἄναξ.

[776] Lit. Greece, vol. ii. p. 78.

[777] Il. xiv. 322.

[778] Il. viii. 31. Od. i. 45.

[779] Il. ii. 85.

[780] Il. iv. 296.

[781] Il. ix. 92. v. 144. xi. 578. xiii. 411.

[782] Il. ix. 81. xiii. 600.

[783] Od. iv. 528.

[784] Paradiso, xii. 71. xiv. 104. xix. 104. xxix. 11.

[785] Il. i. 1-7.

[786] See Il. xx. 106.

[787] Il. xiv. 343.

[788] Od. xi. 281.

[789] Sup. p. 398.

[790] See E. Curtius, Ionier vor der Ionischen Wanderung, p. 9.

[791] Od. v. 121. also see Il. xviii. 436.

[792] Od. vii. 323.

[793] Sup. sect. viii. pp. 427, 8.

[794] Thes. 20.

[795] Il. xxiv. 615.

[796] Pausan. ii. 23. 4.

[797] Strabo, xii. p. 579. xiv. p. 680.

[798] Strabo xii. 572, 3.

[799] Il. ii. 104.

[800] Il. ii. 108.

[801] Paus. v. xiii. 1-4.

[802] Book viii. 5, 5. p. 365.

[803] See sup. p. 381.

[804] Herod. viii. 7, 73.

[805] Pausan. vii. 1.

[806] Polyb. xviii. c. 30.

[807] v. 65. 3 and 11.

[808] Paus. vii. 1. 3.

[809] Polyb. xl. 8. 10.

[810] Polyb. ii. 41. 4. iv. i. 5.

[811] See sect. x.

[812] Die Ionier vor der Ionischen Wanderung: von E. Curtius, Berlin, 1855.

[813] Il. iii. 276. vii. 202. ix. 47, 8. xvi. 605. xxiv. 290, 308.

[814] Il. xx. 90-3, 128-31.

[815] Il. xi. 58.

[816] Il. vi. 77.

[817] Il. xx. 240.

[818] Il. v. 268.

[819] Il. xx. 303.

[820] Il. iii. 297, 320.

[821] Od. iv. 125-35.

[822] Od. xiv. 276-86.

[823] Od. iii. 302.

[824] Il. iii. 48. xix. 324.

[825] Od. iii. 48. xx. 219. Il. xvi. 550.

[826] See also Dolon’s description, Il. x. 418-21.

[827] Strabo, p. 338.

[828] Il. xii. 30.

[829] Il. xvii. 432.

[830] Il. i. 350.

[831] Il. vii. 86. Od. xxiv. 82.

[832] Il. xxiv. 545.

[833] Il. ix. 360.

[834] Il. xii. 19-23.

[835] Il. xxiii. 293-9.

[836] Il. xi. 759.

[837] Il. ii. 592 et seqq.

[838] Il. ii. 596, 621.

[839] Il. xvi. 189.

[840] Il. ii. 513.

[841] Cramer’s Greece, i. 449.

[842] Il. ii. 511.

[843] Thuc. iv. 76. Strabo, 356, 432. Cramer’s Greece, i. 207, 399.

[844] Il. ii. 608, 695.

[845] Il. ii. 682.

[846] Strabo, b. viii. p. 351.

[847] Schol. Il. vii. 135. Od. xv. 297. Cramer, Geogr. Gr. iii. 87.

[848] Paus. Lac. b. III. c. xx. 5, 3.

[849] Cramer iii. 221.

[850] Il. ii. 743.

[851] Il. xiii. 301.

[852] New Cratylus iii. 1. p. 282, 286.

[853] Heyne Exc. iii. ad Hom. Il. xix. vol. vii. p. 770.

[854] Comp. Gram. sect. 490.

[855] See Il. xi. 222. xx. 485, compared with x. 436, 545-7.

[856] Od. iv. 635; and xxi. 347.

[857] Compare Propertius, b. ii. El. v. 1.

_Ephyreæ Laidos ædes_.

[858] Ver. 301.

[859] Od. i. 259.

[860] Od. ii. 326.

[861] Od. xviii. 245.

[862] Od. xxiv. 430.

[863] Od. i. 251.

[864] Eumelus, sup. p. 428.

[865] Il. xv. 530.

[866] Il. ii. 658.

[867] Il. ii. 667.

[868] Il. xi. 688-95.

[869] Il. xvi. 179.

[870] Il. xiii. 692.

[871] Il. ii. 625-30.

[872] Strabo p. 459.

[873] Il. ii. 711-15.

[874] Cramer’s Greece, vol. i. p. 392.

[875] Il. ii. 763.

[876] Od. xi. 258.

[877] Ibid. xi. 237.

[878] St. Luke iii. 38.

[879] Il. ix. 483.

[880] Il. xvi. 175.

[881] Il. xxi. 189.

[882] Strabo ix. 5. p. 433.

[883] Il. x. 239.

[884] Il. ix. 142, 284.

[885] Thuc. i. 13.

[886] Compare Il. ii. 540 with iv. 363.

[887] Thuc. i. 2.

[888] The name of Thessaly is not found in Homer; and it is marked by Thucydides as modern: ἡ νῦν Θεσσαλία καλουμένη. May it not be reasonably conjectured, that when the great Dorian tribe had evacuated Hellas to reconquer the Peloponnesus, this Thessalid branch of the Heraclidæ, which had migrated to the south-east, went back thither, and imparted to it the name of their ancestor?

[889] Cramer i. 360.

[890] Il. iv. 202.

[891] Il. ii. 641.

[892] Il. vi. 152, compared with ii. 570.

[893] Il. ii. 659, 60, and xi. 689, 91.

SECT. X.

_On the connection of the Hellenes and Achæans with the East._

We have reached the close of this inquiry, so far as it regards the origin, character, and pursuits of the Pelasgians; the character of the Hellenic tribes, and their relations to the Pelasgians; and the position of the Achæans among the Hellenes, as the first national representatives of the Hellenic stock. But who were these Achæans, and whence did they come? We have at present been able only to describe them by negatives. They were not the descendants of a legendary Achæus: they did not take their name from a Greek territory, nor from any pursuit that they followed; and the word has no apparent root in the etymology of the Greek tongue.

But we have seen manifest indications that the Hellic name did not first come into being on the western side of the Dardanelles: and if the Achæi were the first leaders of the Helli, why should we not trace them too beyond the Straits, and thus follow perhaps the Helli also, by their means, and as represented in them, up to a fountain-head?

At the same time, if I presume to affiliate the Hellic nation upon any Eastern parentage, and, again, to suggest relationships between that nation and others, which had also migrated from the first nurseries of man towards the West, it will, I hope, be understood, that all such propositions are asserted, not only as not demonstrable, but as likewise being, even within their own limits, those of merely probable truth, subject, by an admission tacitly carried all along, to every kind of qualification. The succession and intermixture of races, the combinations of language, the sympathetic and imitative communication of ideas and institutions, form a mass of phenomena complex enough, and difficult to describe, even by contemporaries; how much more so by the aid only of those faint and scattered rays that we can now find cast upon them.

Let us then proceed to consider what aid can be had from other sources in support of those presumptions, arising out of the text of Homer, which tend to connect the Hellenes of his day, and the Achæans as their leading tribe, with the East.

And here we may look first, as far as regards the general outlines of race and language, to the ethnological evidences afforded by the course of migration from Central Asia over Europe.

Next, to the evidence of those among ancient authors, who have taken notice of this diffusion in such a manner as in any degree to guide us towards the sources of the great factors of the Greek nation.

After that, we will inquire whether the names themselves, which are employed in Homer for the contemporary Greeks, can, by comparison with cognate names elsewhere, afford us any light.

And lastly, whether in the quarter to which these lines of information would lead us, we can discover any of those resemblances of manners and character with the Greeks which, if found, would afford the most satisfactory corroboration to the argument in favour of the derivation of one from the other.

The labours of ethnologists have associated together in one great family, at first called Indo-Germanic, and then Indo-European, but threatening to expand even beyond the scope of that comprehensive name, a mass of leading languages from the Celtic regions in the west to the plains of India in the east.

_High German and Low German races._

This great family, says Dr. Donaldson[894], divides itself into two groups. To these two groups respectively belong the Low German and the High German tongues: the former spoken in the plain countries to the north of Europe, the latter in the more mountainous countries to the south. The Low German languages contain evidence of greater antiquity, and those who speak them appear to have been driven onward in their migrations by the High Germans following them: the latter entering Europe by Asia Minor, the former to the north of the Euxine.

The distinction runs back to the earlier seat of the race in Ariana or Iran, a portion of Asia which may be loosely defined as lying between the Caspian and the Indian ocean to the north and south, the Indus and the Euphrates to the east and west. Within these limits are to be found two forms of language, holding the same relation to one another as that which subsists between the High German and Low German tongues; the first, corresponding with the High German, was spoken among the countries of the south-west, where lies Persia proper, and the other in its more northern and eastern portions, of which Media formed a central part. The population of this great tract issued forth in the direction of the south-east, over the northern parts of India; and again towards Asia Minor and Europe, in the direction of the north-west. Those who came first proceeded from Media, and supplied the base of what have been called, the Low German nations: Sarmatians, Saxons, Getæ (or Scythians or Goths). The language of these emigrants was that which, when it assumed an organized or classical form, and with due allowance for changes which the lapse of time must have introduced, became the tongue now best represented, at least as a literary language, by the Sanscrit.

The whole course of history seems to indicate a struggle of races in that quarter of the world, which may be used to illustrate the present inquiry. To a certain extent the scene of that struggle may be pointed out on the map. From the Caspian towards the south, and from the head of the Persian Gulf towards the north, the land soon rises to a great general elevation, but with marked and also highly diversified inequalities. Media would appear to have occupied the principal part of the great central space, defined by the mountains which form the outer line of this elevation. It corresponds with what is now the Province of Irak, and Ispahan is its principal city. Here, says Malcolm[895], we find the happiest climate that Persia can boast. To the south, near the Gulf, the summer heat is overpowering: as the country rises towards Shiraz the climate becomes temperate, and further improves as we advance northward, until we approach the hills that divide Irak from Mazenderan on the Caspian, where it deteriorates.

_The Province of Fars or Persia proper._

Immediately to the south of Irak, and touching the Persian gulf, a little to the east of the Karoon and Jerokh, which are the eastern tributaries of the great central rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, is the Province of Fars, which ascends the hills to its capital town Shiraz, and then extends in a north-easterly direction towards the sandy deserts. This is the province[896] where the Persian race is still to be found in its greatest purity; and from this tract the name of Persia, attached by Europeans to the empire of Iran, is supposed to be derived[897]. From Fars or Pars, for both forms are understood to exist, is drawn the name Parsee, borne by the fire-worshippers, who migrated for safety into India: and the same root appears to be clearly traceable in the great Persian tribe of Pasargadæ, named by Herodotus[898] as the leading tribe of the country. But though the province of Fars now embraces a considerable range of country and diversity of climate, all that is recorded of the ancient Persians would seem to connect them particularly with its ruder and more mountainous parts: for we have every reason to believe that Herodotus spoke truly when he described the Persians, properly so called, as poor, and their country as hard and barren in comparison with the rich valleys of Media, which at an early date attracted and repaid the labours of agriculture. It was inhabited, as Herodotus[899] says, κατὰ κώμας, that is, in the Pelasgian fashion, at the time when Dejoces acquired the throne.

The conflict of race between a bold highland people of superior energies, and the more advanced, but also more relaxed inhabitants of the more favoured district, is indicated even amidst the indistinctness of the earliest efforts of history. Ethnologically the general character of the movement is that of a pressure, to adopt the language of Dr. Donaldson[900], of the High upon the Low Iranians; I would be understood, however, to signify by the terms High and Low a distinction in language and not one in altitude of site. The overthrow of the Median empire by the Persians, related in different forms by Ctesias and Herodotus, and again in Holy Scripture, whatever be its chronological epoch, may be taken as a great crisis in the struggle, at which the High Iranians established themselves in the country of the Low, and in permanent political ascendancy among them. The Magian revolution, doubtless a great reaction against this ascendancy, was of short duration. The invasion of Media by the Scythians, which Herodotus has reported as proceeding from beyond the Euxine and the Palus Mæotis, but which was more probably from the east of the Caspian[901], indicates, it is probable, another form of this reaction. This invasion took place under Cyaxares, the grandson of Dejoces: and we may perhaps consider Media as having at this time received Persian influences, possibly by the immigration of groups of Persian families, before the general ascendancy of that race, just as we see the Æolid houses, and the family of Perseus, finding their way into Southern Greece before the days of the Achæan race, and of the general Hellenic ascendancy in the country.