Chapter 19

The Danaan Argives of Od. viii. 578.

In the Odyssey[675]we have this singular and rare juxtaposition of the words:

Ἀργείων Δαναῶν ἠδ’ Ἰλίου οἶτον ἀκούων.

Nitzsch[676]observes, that we might almost suppose the wordἈργείωνto be an epithet, and this observation is quoted by G. Crusius. Eustathius, the Scholiast, Barnes,Payne Knight, do not notice it. It seems to me more agreeable to Homeric laws to treatἈργείωνas the substantive, andΔαναῶνas the adjective. For as Homer knows of an Achaic, an Iasian, a Pelasgic Argos, so he may consistently speak of Danaan Argives, with the latent idea that there might be, and were, other Lowlanders out of Greece. But there were not, so far as we know, any other Danaans than a single Greek dynasty.

Homer also in other places usesΔαναοὶ[677]as an adjective, with the substantivesἥρωεςandαἰχμηταί. He has no corresponding use ofἈργεῖοι: thus the old idea of acolonusor farming settler seems still to colour the word, and lingers in it, even after it has grown to be in common use a proper name.

In the application of the wordἈργείηas an epithet to Juno and Helen, he appears not to mean simply Greek but Argive Juno, Argive Helen, so that the word here is not properly the singular ofἈργεῖοιthe national name, but simply the adjective formed fromἌργος, in the sense of that part of Peloponnesus which formed the Pelopid dominions. To these Helen belonged: and for that family, as previously for the Perseid race, Juno felt her chief anxiety, evidently because they were the political heads of Greece.

Thus the use of Argeian as an adjective seems to be quite clearly limited to a local sense of the word: and this being the case, it seems remarkable that the attention of the commentators before Nitzsch should not have been directed to the line in the Eighth Odyssey, and that Nitzsch, withἥρωες Δαναοὶandαἰχμηταὶ Δαναοὶto guide him, should suggest the sense of Argive Danaans, instead of Danaan Argives.

The local use, however, of the Argeian name must not be dismissed without a more full investigation. Let us first dispose of its use for Juno and Helen.

The proof that Helen is meant to be described as not merely Greek, but as connected with Achaic Argos or Eastern Peloponnesus, has already been sufficiently[678]set forth.

As respects Juno, we shall find that her affections always centre in the house that was paramount in the chief seat of Hellenic power, the Eastern Peloponnesus. Her tenacious attachments are constantly directed to the nation, and they survive dynastic changes. Hence her keen and venturesome feeling for Eurystheus; her never dying, never sleeping hatred to his rival Hercules; her esteem for Agamemnon equally with Achilles[679], though they were so unequal in fame and valour: perhaps suggesting that Achilles was regarded by her either because he was necessary for the purposes of Agamemnon, or because he was closely allied to the chief Achæan stock[680]. Hence it is that, when he has assumed his arms[681], she thunders in his honour: and hence her especial love for the three cities, which were the symbols of Greek power, Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ[682]. So intense is her attachment, that she could wish to be the actual mother of the Greeks, even as she would readily devour the Trojans upon occasion[683]. Hence, once more, even in the Odyssey, where she is almost a mute, it is mentioned, that Agamemnon[684]came safe across the sea, for Juno protectedhim. This is quite enough to fix the sense ofἈργείη, when it is applied to Juno, as a local sense.

In fact, Homer’s use of this word with a restrained and local sense is not only clear, but most carefully defined, both as to time and as to place.

While in the army before Troy he freely interchanges Danaan, Argive, and Achæan, as they are near enough to identity for his purpose, he never applies Danaan at all to the Greeks at home, and employs the other two names with the most accurate discrimination.

Transition from Argeians to Achæans.

The Argeian name is confined in place to the Eastern Peloponnesus, and in time to the Perseid epoch. Upon the transfer of the sovereignty to the Pelopid house, the Argeian name ceases to be applied to their immediate subjects. Let us now examine passages which may illustrate the case.

1. Two or nearly three generations before theTroica, in the time when Bellerophon was young, Prœtus ruled over theἈργεῖοι,

πολὺ φέρτερος ἦενἈργείων· Ζεὺς γὰρ οἱ ὑπὸ σκηπτρῷ ἐδάμασσεν[685].

Now Prœtus was certainly not lord of Greece. There was no lord paramount of Greece before the Pelopids: and near the time of Prœtus we have Eurystheus, Œneus and his line, Cadmus and his line, Neleus and his line, Minos and his line, as well as probably other thrones, each in its own place. But Prœtus falls within the period of the Perseids, and within the local circumscription of the Eastern Peloponnesus where they reigned.

2. But neither is Eurystheus spoken of by Homer as sovereign of Greece; though he is king of the Argives[686],

ὃς Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάξει.

For when Juno fraudulently asks and obtains from Jupiter the promise that the person to be born that day shall enjoy a certain sovereignty, it is not over the Argives, but over theπερικτίονες:

ἦ μὲν τὸν πάντεσσι περικτιόνεσσιν ἀνάξεινὅς κεν ἐπ’ ἤματι τῷδε πέσῃ μετὰ ποσσὶ γυναικός.

Thus the promise is the babe shall reign overπερικτίονες, a word clearly inapplicable to the whole of that straggling territory, which was occupied irregularly by the Greeks. But when the fulfilment is claimed, it is that he shall reign overἈργεῖοι. Therefore the two names are coextensive, and accordinglyἈργεῖοιdoes not mean all Greeks; for example, it does not include the line of Cadmus then ruling in Bœotia.

3. But we come down to the time of Tydeus, who was lord of Argos during the epoch of the Pelopid sovereigns. And now we find that his subjects cease to be calledἈργεῖοι(see Il. v. 803. iv. 384) in the legends, where Homer observes a peculiar nicety in the application of these important words.

Local sense of the former name retained.

4. Still the Argeian name continues to preserve its local application to the inhabitants of Argos and its district, or of Achaic Argos.

At the games on the death of Patroclus, Idomeneus thinks he discerns Diomed coming in as the winner, and he describes him thus:

δοκέει δέ μοι ἔμμεναι ἀνὴρΑἴτωλος γενέην, μετὰ δ’ Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάσσει[687].

It is plain that here Idomeneus means among Argives, and not among Greeks.

1. Because not Diomed was lord among the Greeks, but Agamemnon.

2. Because Diomed was lord over a part of the Argives.

3. Because the word is used in evident contradistinction to, and correspondence with, the foregoing wordΑἴτωλος, which is undoubtedly local.

Again, when we are told that Orestes made a funeral feast for theἈργεῖοι[688], we may probably presume that we have here again the local sense.

Thus we see plainly enough the history of the rise of the Argive name. Belonging to the subjects of the ruling part of Greece, it grows so as to be applicable to all Greeks, in cases where no confusion can arise from its being thus employed. Thus the Roman name became applicable to Campanians or Calabrians as subjects of Rome, in contradistinction to Germans, Dacians, or Parthians; but if the subject in hand were domestic and Italian, the domestic distinction would naturally revive. Even so Homer’s Greeks are all Argeians in theTroica: but at home they have their local meaning, like Cadmeans, Ætolians, Pylians, Elians, Epeans, Arcadians, Locrians, and also, as we shall find, Achæans.

It is at the very period of the local prevalence of the Argive name, that we find also from Homer unequivocal appearances of a Cretan empire, circumscribing it by sea, and possibly more or less by land, though perhaps the Minoan power and dynasty may not at once have acquired its Grecian character. If then, with respect to the wordἈργεῖοι, we see that it was originally of limited and local application; we have no reason whatever to suppose that the Danaan name could ever have been of wider scope. Two questions then arise.

First, why does Homer use the Danaan and Argive names as national, when they were only local?

Secondly, the priority of the Danaan name being clear, as we see that the Danaan dynasty preceded that one whose subjects were called Argives, why did the Argive name supplant or succeed the Danaan?

The first question will be resumed hereafter, but I will now touch upon the second.

The name Danaan, in all likelihood, was that of a dynasty originating beyond seas; and if so, it could not well, until softened by the mellow haze of distance, be more popular with the Greeks, when they had awakened under Hellic influence to a full consciousness of national life, than it would have been with the English in the last century to be called Hanoverians or Brunswickers.

The Danaid line ceased, when Perseus came to the throne, as he was descended on the father’s side from another source.

Nothing could be more natural, than that with this change of dynasty an old and merely dynastic name should disappear. But why should it be succeeded by the nameἈργεῖοι?

Relation of Argeian and Pelasgian names.

I hope it will not be thought too bold, if, founding myself on the probable, perhaps I might say, plain resemblance of meaning betweenΠελασγοὶandἈργεῖοι, I conjecture that on the disappearance from use of the nameΔαναοὶ, instead of falling back upon theold agricultural nameΠελασγοὶ, which had by a Danaan conquest become that of a subordinate, if not servile class, the people may have come to bear the nameἈργεῖοι; borrowed, like the other, from the region they inhabited, and from their habits of life in it, and of equal force, but without the taint which attached to the designation of a depressed race.

In this view, the nameἈργεῖοιmay be defined to be the Hellic equivalent of the old Pelasgic appellation of the people of the country: and it naturally takes root upon the passing away of the Danaan power, within the dominions of those to whom that power had been transferred.

I shall hereafter have occasion to consider further, what was the first historic use of the Argeian name.

There are signs in the later Greek of the affinity, which I have here supposed, between the Pelasgian and Argeian names, and of the assumption of the functions of the former by the latter. I do not enter on the question of etymological identity, but I refer to similarity of application alone.

Illustrations of the Etymology.

In Suidas we find the proverbἈργείους ὁρᾷς, with this explanation;παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀτενῶς καὶ καταπληκτικῶς ὁρώντων. Now we know nothing of the Argives, that is, the inhabitants of Argolis, which would warrant the supposition that they were of particularly savage and wild appearance. But ifἈργεῖοι, as has been shown, originally meant settlers in an agricultural district, and if in process of time the population gathered into towns, in lieu of their old manner of livingκωμηδὸν, then, in consequence of the change,Ἀργεῖοιwould come to mean rustics, as opposed to townspeople, and from this the transition would be slight and easy to the sense of a wild and savage aspect, as in the proverb.

Let us compare with it the Latin wordagrestis. This I take to be precisely similar, indeed identical, etymologically, withἈργεῖος. The point of divergence is whenἌργοςby transposition becomesἀγρὸς, whence areagerandagrestis. Materially this Latin word is in still closer correspondence withἀργηστὴς, a Greek derivative ofἄργος. Ideally, it passes through the very same process as has been shown in the case ofἈργεῖος, and here it is strongly supported by the common Homeric wordἄγριος, rude or savage, which comes fromἄγρος, made ready by transposition to yield such a derivative.

This name we find not only as an adjective, but likewise as a proper name. It is applied to a brother of Œneus and Melas, a son of Portheus[689]: and in these names we appear to see described the first rude Hellic invaders of Ætolia, at an epoch three generations before theTroica. Theagrestis, or agricultural settler, next comes to mean the class of country folk, as opposed to the inhabitants of towns orurbani; and then, whileurbanus, with its Greek correlativeἀστεῖος, passes on to acquire the meaning of cultivated and polished,agrestis, on the other hand, following a parallel movement withἈργεῖος, and in the opposite direction, comes to mean uneducated, coarse, wild, barbarous. Thus Ovid says of the river Achelous, when he had been mutilated by the loss of his horn in the combat with Hercules,

Vultus Achelous agrestesEt lacerum cornu mediis caput abdidit undis[690].

Thus Cicero, in the Tusculans, after a description of the battles of the Spartan youths, carried on not only with fists and feet, but with nails and teeth, asks,Quæbarbaria India (al.barbaries Indica) vastior atque agrestior?

We also find in Suidas the phraseἈργεῖοι φῶρες, and this explanation:Ἐπὶ τῶν προδήλως πονηρῶν· οἱ γὰρ Ἀργεῖοι ἐπὶ κλοπῇ κωμῳδοῦνται. Ἀριστοφάνης Ἀναγύρῳ.

No part of this play remains, so that we are left to general reasoning: but it seems a most natural explanation of this proverb or phrase, that the wordἈργεῖος, meaning wild and savage, should be applied to banditti: theft in the early stages of society, always frequenting solitary places, as in the later ones, it rather draws to the most crowded haunts of men.

Again, Æschines, in theΠερὶ Παραπρεσβείας, brings the grossest personal charges against Demosthenes, for offences, which he says had brought upon him various nicknames. Among these, he thus accuses him:Ἐκ παιδῶν δὲ ἀπαλλαττόμενος, καὶ δεκαταλάντους δίκας ἑκαστῷ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων λαγχάνων, Ἄργας ἐκλήθη. This passage is noticed by both Suidas and Hesychius underἈργὰς, and it is explainedὄνομα ὀφέως. A serpent, either generally or of some particular kind, had, it seems, the name ofἈργὰς, which we can easily derive fromἄργος, taken in the same sense as that in which it became the name of Argus the spy. ‘Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field[691].’ But this does not seem to satisfy the intention of the highly vituperative passage in Æschines. This imputation of extreme cleverness or craft would not have been perhaps a very effective one in Greece. I think he more probably means to call Demosthenes a swindler or plunderer,homo trium literarum, from whom his guardians were trying torecover, and who was likely to be exposed, not like the serpent, to get off: and in this sense the wordἈργὰςat once attaches itself to the reported passage in Aristophanes, and through that to the old meaning ofagrestisorἈργεῖος. Nor isἈργεῖος, a thief, more remote in sense fromἈργεῖος, a rural settler, than ispaganus, an idolater, frompaganus, a villager.

I will take yet one more illustration, Hesychius underἈργεῖοιgives this explanation;ἐκ τῶν Εἱλώτων οἱ πιστευόμενοι οὕτως ἐλέγοντο, ἢ λαμπροί. Now the sense ofλαμπροὶmight easily be derived from the primitive sense, in the same way as that of whiteness. But it is quite distinct from the explanation respecting that select and trusted class of Helots, who were calledἈργεῖοι. This usage both serves to explain history, and is explained by it.Ἀργεῖοιwas the name of the Greek citizen in Eastern Peloponnesus under the Perseids; it appears in part to have retained its local force throughout the period of the Pelopids; for though in the legend of Tydeus the inhabitants of Argolis we at least find the nameἈχαιοὶamong them, yet in the Twenty-third Iliad, and in the Third Odyssey, they are calledἈργεῖοι. In the local usage, then, the Helot meaning a serf, the emancipated Helot would be a citizen, anἈργεῖος. But neither serfship nor citizenship were in those days rigidly defined, and the one ran into the other. What could under such circumstances be more natural, than that any Helot who was separated from his brethren, by being taken into the confidence of his master, and living on easy terms with him, should acquire the name ofἈργεῖος, and, that the class who had thus obtained it in a somewhat peculiar sense, that is to say, the sense of a free rural settler, or (so to speak) freeholder, should continue to bear it as descriptive of their own position,even when it had ceased to be generally applicable to the free Greeks of that particular district? which of course it could no longer be when the family and dynastic tie between Argolis and Lacedæmon came to be dissolved.

And if I am right in supposing that even in Homer[692]the nameἈργεῖοιevidently leans towards the masses, and that ofἈχαιοὶtowards the select few or chiefs, such a distinction is in marked harmony with the whole of this inquiry respecting the force of the former phrase.

Different extent ofἈργεῖοιandἌργος.

According to the view which has been here given, we must carefully distinguish between the sense ofἈργεῖοι, as a national name in Homer, and that ofἌργος, in this respect. The nameἈργεῖοιwas raised to the distinction of a national name apparently in consequence of the political ascendancy of a house that reigned over territories specially namedἌργος, and over subjects named from the regionἈργεῖοι. I say this without undertaking to determine whether there actually was a period in which the Greeks were as a nation calledἈργεῖοι, a supposition which seems to me improbable: or whether it was a name which Homer applied to them poetically, like the nameΔαναοὶ, because it had once been the proper designation of those who held the seat of Greek supremacy. In either view, however, the case of the nameἌργοςis different. That name had not its root in political power, actual or remembered: it kept its place, as being founded in a good physical description, so far as it went, of the general character of the principal habitable parts of the peninsula which the Hellic tribes, swarming downwardsfrom their hills, successively and gradually occupied. Hence the substantive was, as we see, capable of spreading beyond the adjective in space, since, while we have an Iasian and a PelasgianἌργος, we have no Iasian or PelasgianἈργεῖοι. Thus they were detached one from the other. In Homer the epithet has a larger range of clear signification than the substantive. But apart from Homer the substantive appears from etymology to have been the older, and from history either to have reached points at which the adjective never arrived, or to have long survived its desuetude.

Particulars of the use of the Achæan name.

The lights, which we have already obtained in considering the Danaan and Argive names, will assist the inquiry with respect to the Achæans. At the same time, the fullest view of that name and race cannot be attained, until we shall have succeeded in fixing what we are to understand by the Homericἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

I now proceed, however, to show from the text of the poems,

1. That of the three great appellatives of the nation, the nameἈχαιοὶis the most familiar.

2. That the manner of its national use indicates the political predominance of an Achæan race, in the Homeric age, over other races, ranged by its side in the Troic enterprise, and composing along with it the nation, which owned Agamemnon for its head.

3. That, besides its national use, the nameἈχαιοὶhas also an important local and particular use for a race which had spread through Greece, and which exercised sway among its population.

4. That the manner of its local and particular use points out to us, with considerable clearness, the epochat which it acquired preponderance, namely that when Pelops and his family acquired ascendancy in Greece.

As respects the first of these propositions, the numerical test, although a rude one, yet appears to be conclusive. We find that Homer uses the nameἈργεῖοιin the plural two hundred and five times, of which twenty-eight are in the Odyssey; besides fifteen passages in which the singular is used. And the nameΔαναοὶabout one hundred and sixty times, of which thirteen are in the Odyssey. But we find the nameἈχαιοὶ, employed from seven to eight hundred times: that is to say, five hundred and ninety-seven times in the Iliad, and one hundred and seventeen times in the Odyssey; all these in the plural number, besides thirty-two places of the poems in which it is used in the singular, or in its derivativesἈχαίïςorἈχαιïκός.

The particulars next to be stated will bear at once upon the first and upon the second proposition.

Homer very rarely attaches any epithet to the nameἈργεῖοι, more frequently by much toΔαναοὶ, and still oftener toἈχαιοί. To the first only six times in all: to the second twenty-four: and to the third near one hundred and forty times. It is not likely that metrical convenience is the cause of this diversity. We have already seen thatἈργεῖοιis susceptible of a substantive force, which will carry one at least of the other names by way of epithet, as if it indicated an employment, and not properly the name of a race. A like inference may be drawn from the greater susceptibility of carrying descriptive epithets, which we now find the Danaan and Achæan names evince. For example, the name of the Scotts, Douglasses, or Grahams, four centuries ago, would have afforded larger scope for characteristic epithets than such a name as Farmers or Colonists, when used to point out a particular people, or than such a name as Lowlanders, while it still retained its descriptive character, and had not yet become purely titular or proper. We must probably look, then, to political significance for the basis of the use made by Homer of the Achæan name.

When we examine the character of the epithets, this presumption is greatly corroborated. Homer uses with the wordἈχαιοὶ, and with this word only, epithets indicating, firstly, high spirit, secondly, personal beauty, and thirdly, finished armour[693]. I take these to be of themselves sufficient signs, even were others wanting, to point to the Achæans as being properly the ruling class, or aristocracy, of the heroic age.

The Achæan name, again, attains with Homer to a greater variety of use and inflexion than the Danaan or Argeian names.

He has worked it into the female formsἈχαιΐδες,Ἀχαιïάδες,Ἀχαιαὶ, as on the other side he has done with the namesΤρῶεςintoΤρωὲς,Τρωάδες, andΤρωαὶ, andΔάρδανοιintoΔαρδανίδες: but he has not made any such use of the namesἈργεῖοιandΔαναοί. The female use of the former appears indeed in the singular with the names of Juno and of Helen, but never as applicable to Greek women in general, or to a Greek woman simply as such.

He uses it in the singular to describe ‘a Greek’Ἀχαιὸς ἄνηρ, Il. iii. 167, 226: which he never does for the two other names. In the same manner he usesΔάρδανος ἄνηρ, Il. ii. 701. This form seems to indicate the full and familiar establishment of a name; and theDardanians had, we know, been Dardanians for seven generations before theTroica(Il. xx. 215-40).

In the opening passage of the First Iliad, not less than in that of the Odyssey, Homer has, as it is generally observed by critics, intentionally given us a summary or ‘Argument’ of his poem. But I doubt whether sufficient notice has been taken of the very effective manner in which he has given force to his purpose, by taking care in that passage to use the most characteristic words. Achilles is there the son of Peleus, for his extraction, as on both sides divine, but especially as on the father’s side from Jupiter, is the groundwork of his high position in the poem. Agamemnon is likewise here introduced under the title which establishes the same origin for him, and more than any thing else enhances the dignity of his supremacy before men[694]. And the Greeks too, if I am correct, are not without significancy here introduced to us, as is right, under their highest and also their best established designation, that of Achæans. Nor is it until they have been five times called Achæans[695]that he introduces the Danaan name[696]at all. The Argive name, as if the weakest, when it is first employed, is placed in an awkward nearness to the title of Achæans, perhaps by way of explanation:

ὃς μέγα πάντωνἈργείων κρατέει, καὶ οἱ πείθονται Ἀχαιοί[697].

Again the paramount force of the Achæan name may justly be inferred from its being the only territorial name which had clearly grasped the whole of Greece at the epoch of theTroica[698].

Turning now entirely to what indicates more or less of peculiar character in the Achæans, I would observe,that the adjectiveδῖοιappears to be the highest of all the national epithets employed by Homer; and this he couples, as has been observed by Mure[699], (who recognises a peculiar force in the term,) with the Achæan designation alone among the three. He also applies it to the Pelasgi; for whom, as we have found, he means it to be a highly honourable epithet. Probably the Achæans areδῖοιbecause of preeminence, the Pelasgians because of antiquity. To no other nation or tribe whatever does he apply this epithet. His very chary use of it in the plural is a sign of its possessing in his eyes some peculiar virtue.

Signs of its leaning to the aristocracy.

Of its feminine forms one has been selected to convey the most biting form of reproach to the army, in the speech of Thersites. Now it is remarkable that in that speech, of which an inflated presumption is the great mark, the Achæan name is used five times within nine lines, and neither of the other names is used at all. I do not doubt that the upstart and braggart uses this name only because it was the most distinguished or aristocratic name, as an ill-bred person always takes peculiar care to call himself a gentleman. And doubtless it is for the same reason that he takes the feminine ofἈχαιὸς, instead of usingΔανααὶorἈργειαὶfor his interpretative epithet, when he wants to sting the soldiery as ‘Greekesses and not Greeks.’

Somewhat similar evidence is supplied by the Homeric phraseυἷες Ἀχαιῶν, which has nothing corresponding to it under the Danaan or Argive names. This is an Homeric formula, and the formυἷεςseems to belong exclusively to the Achæan name. To the Greeks who always asked the stranger who were his parents, this phrase would carry a peculiar significance.What addressed them as the sons of honoured parents would be to them the sharpest touchstone of honour or disgrace. And what the patronymic was to the individual, this form of speech was to the nation, an incentive under the form of an embellishment. It is a principle that runs throughout Homer; it is every whereμηδὲ γένος πατέρων αἰσχύνεμεν. The poet could not say sons of Danaans, for their forefathers were not Danaan: nor sons of Argeians, for this would recall the ploughshare and not the sword: though the army are addressed from time to time asἥρωες Δαναοὶ, andἥρωες Ἀχαιοὶ, they are neverἥρωες Ἀργεῖοι. But to be sons of the Achæans was the great glory of the race, even as to degenerate from being Achæan warriors into effeminacy would have been its deepest reproach: and the fact that he calls a mixed race sons of the Achæans is conversely a proof that the Achæan element was the highest and most famous element in the compound of their ancestry.

But, unless I am mistaken, we have many passages in Homer where the use of the simple termἈχαιοὶis shown from the context to have a special and peculiar, sometimes perhaps even an exclusive reference to the chiefs and leaders of the army. I think it may be shown that the word has in fact three meanings:

1. That of a particular Greek race, which extended itself from point to point, acquiring power everywhere as it spread, by inherent superiority.

2. That of the aristocracy of the country, which it naturally became by virtue of such extension and assumption.

3. That of the whole nation, which takes the name from its prime part.

We have now to examine some passages in supportof the second meaning: and I know not why, but certainly these passages appear in the Iliad to be most abundant near the opening of the poem.

Chryses solicits ‘all the Achæans and most the two Atridæ[700].’ All the Achæans assent, except Agamemnon. Now the priest could not solicit the army generally except in an assembly: and there is no mention of one, indeed the reply of Agamemnon[701]is hardly such as would have been given in one. It is likely, then, that those whom he addressed were Agamemnon’s habitual and ordinary associates; in other words, the chiefs.

When Calchas proceeds to invoke the vengeance of Apollo, which is to fall upon the army at large, it is no longer theἈχαιοὶof whom he speaks, but his prayer is,

τισείαν Δαναοὶ ἐμὰ δάκρυα σοῖσι βέλεσσιν[702].

Although I do not concur with those, who find no element of real freedom in the condition of the Greek masses, whether at home or in the camp, yet it seems plain enough, from the nature of the case, that the questions relating to the division of booty, as being necessarily an executive affair, must have been decided by the chiefs. Now whenever questions of this class are handled, we generally find such an office ascribed toἈχαιοί. Agamemnon says[703], ‘Do not let me alone of the Argeians go without a prize;’ and in conformity with this we find Nestor stimulating the host at large with the expectation of booty[704]. But Achilles replies to Agamemnon, ‘that theAchæanshave it not in their power to compensate him there and then, for they have no common stock:’ but ‘when Troy is taken,then we the Achæans will repay you three and four fold[705].’ The same subject is again touched in i. 135, 162, 392. ii. 227: and both times with reference to theἈχαιοὶas the distributors of the spoil. In Il. ii. 255 it is allotted by theἥρωες Δαναοί.

In the same way we find a decided leaning to the use of the wordἈχαιοὶ, when reference is made to other governing duties.

For instance, in the adjuration of Achilles by the staff or sceptre. ‘It has been stripped of leaf and bark, and now theυἷες Ἀχαιῶν, who are intrusted by Jupiter with sovereign functions, bear it in hand[706].’ It is hardly possible here to construe the phrase without limiting it to the chiefs.

I have referred to the passage where Homer introduces the wordἈργεῖοιfor the first time, under the shadow, as it were, ofἈχαιοί. Now, if we examine that passage, we shall perceive that unless there be some shade whatever of difference in the meaning, the words are tautological, an imputation which Homer never merits. But if we admit in the Achæan name a certain bias towards the nobles of the army, then the sense and expressions are alike appropriate. ‘I fear the resentment of him, who mightily lords it over (all) the Greeks, and to whom even the Achæans (or chiefs) submit themselves[707].’

Again the phraseἈχαιὸς ἄνηρ[708], twice used by Homer, and both times in the mouth of Priam from the Trojan wall, both times also refers to noble and chieftainlike figures, which his eye, keen for beauty, discerns among the crowd. The second case is particularly worthy of notice:

τίς τ’ ἄρ’ ὅδ’ ἄλλος Ἀχαιὸς ἀνὴρ ἤυς τε μέγας τε,ἔξοχος Ἀργείων κεφάλην ἠδ’ εὔρεας ὤμους;

Of which the effect seems to be expressed in these words:

Who is th’ Achæan ChieftainSo beautiful and tall?His shoulders broad surmount the crowd,His head outtops them all.

Here again, if Achæan and Argeian be synonymous, the use of the latter word is in the highest degree insipid, but if the reference be to the chief, excelling in height the mass of the soldiery, a perfect propriety is maintained.

I need not extend these illustrations to other passages, such as Il. ii. 80, 346. ix. 670. And, on the other hand, it is easy to point to passages where the force of the Achæan and Argeian names is obviously identical, such as Il. ix. 521: or again where Achæan and Danaan must agree, as in Il. ix. 641, 2. The most frequent use of the Achæan name is, I believe, for the nation, and not the race or class: yet a number of passages remain to show the native bias and primitive meaning of the word.

I will however point out two more places, one in each poem, where that shading of the sense, for which I contend, will either greatly facilitate the rendering of the text, or even may be called requisite in order to attain a tolerable construction.

1. It deserves particular notice, that Homer sometimes places the words in very close proximity, as in the following passage;

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