Persons to whom it is applied.
It is applied to Agamemnon in the following passages:
Il. i. 7, 172, 442, 506.ii. 402, 434, 441, 612.iii. 81, 267, 455.iv. 148, 255, 336.v. 38.vi. 33.vii. 162, 314.viii. 278.ix. 96, 114, 163, 672, 677, 697.x. 64, 86, 103, 119, 233.xi. 99, 254.xiv. 64, 103, 134.xviii. 111.xix. 51, 76, 146, 172, 184, 199.xxiii. 161, 895.Od. viii. 77.xi. 396.
It is also applied to
Anchises, Il. v. 268.Æneas, Il. v. 311.Augeias, Il. xi. 701, 739.Euphetes, Il. xv. 532.Eumelus, Il. xxiii. 288.
Now although, as we have seen, the term is in fact employed only with names nearly akin to one another in point of metrical value, yet the Poet has given usthe most distinct evidence that the employment of it was not a mere metrical expedient to assist him in the use of names otherwise unmanageable. This we learn in the two following forms:
1. The name Eumelus is one of those to which he applies the phrase: but the metrical conjunction of it with this name is by no means particularly convenient, for out of five places in which Homer mentions Eumelus in the nominative case, he only once gives him his title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Again, it is evident that he has no preference for the end of the verse as a place for the name of Eumelus; for he places it elsewhere, at the beginning, and inτὴν Εὔμηλος ὄπυιε(Il. ii. 714. Od. iv. 798), on the only two occasions when he uses the nominative without a title annexed. He only puts it at the end of the verse in order to couple it withἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and withκρείων(Il. xxiii. 288, 354). So far then from being a metrical convenience, this phrase rather forces him out of his way in order to introduce it. So it is with Æneas. Homer uses his name very many times, but never once places it at the end of a verse, except in the single case in which he attaches it to the titleἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Again, then, the phrase compels him to adopt a position which he is uniformly careful to avoid elsewhere for Æneas, and this in little short of forty instances.
Persons to whom it might have been applied.
2. Besides the names to which Homer applies the phrase, he employs a great number of names, of persons having high or the very highest rank, which possess exactly the same metrical value as one or another of the six names above quoted; but yet to none of these does he at any time give the title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Of such names I have observed the following: and I exclude from the list the merely local characters of the Odyssey, and all persons in inferior station.
(1) Of the same metrical value with Eumelus:Patroclus.Pheidippus.Euneus.Eudorus.Euphemus.Ægisthus.Admetus.Amphius.Euphorbus.And of the dead,Isandros.Adrestus.(2) Of the same metrical value with Augeias, Euphetes, Æneas, Anchises:Antenor.Sarpedon.Pyræchmes.Hercules (Heracles).Eurystheus.(3) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon:Diomedes.Polypœtes.Megapenthes.Thrasymedes.Eteoneus.Agapenor.Euphenor.Prothoenor.Hyperenor.(4) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon, except having the last syllable short:Menelaus.Echepolus.Melanippus.Polydorus.And of the dead,Rhadamanthus.Meleagros.
(1) Of the same metrical value with Eumelus:
Patroclus.Pheidippus.Euneus.Eudorus.Euphemus.Ægisthus.Admetus.Amphius.Euphorbus.
And of the dead,
Isandros.Adrestus.
(2) Of the same metrical value with Augeias, Euphetes, Æneas, Anchises:
Antenor.Sarpedon.Pyræchmes.Hercules (Heracles).Eurystheus.
(3) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon:
Diomedes.Polypœtes.Megapenthes.Thrasymedes.Eteoneus.Agapenor.Euphenor.Prothoenor.Hyperenor.
(4) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon, except having the last syllable short:
Menelaus.Echepolus.Melanippus.Polydorus.
And of the dead,
Rhadamanthus.Meleagros.
Here are thirty-five names as susceptible of conjunction with the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνas the six to which he attaches it. How comes it to be attached, significant as it isprimâ facie, to the six, and never to the thirty-five? Did it come and go by accident, or had Homer a meaning in it?
Moreover, I would by no means be understood toadmit, that metrical obstacles would have sufficed to prevent Homer from applying almost any title to almost any name: such were the resources of his genius and his ear, and such the freedom that the youthful elasticity of the language secured to him.
It must be remembered too that he has given us an instance (in Il. i. 7) of a second site, so to speak, forἄναξ ἀνδρῶνin the Greek hexameter, which would have enabled him at once to combine it with all such proper names as come within the compass of a dactyl and trochee, or a spondee and trochee. Such asΠουλυδάμας γὰρ ... Καὶ Πρίαμος μὲν ... Καὶ γὰρ Τευκρὸς ... Θησεὺς αὐτὸς ... Δάρδανος αὐτὸς .... And even without altering its usual position in the verse, by a break of it, or acæsura, which is not unfrequent with him, he might have given us (for example)ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν γὰρ Ἐρεχθεύς. Or he might bytmesis, more liberally used, have further widened the field for its employment.
Or again, he would have been free, by the rules of his own usage, to have said in the vocative,ἀνδρῶν ἄνα.
Homer’s reverence for this title.
His abstinence from inflexion absolutely, and fromtmesisalmost entirely, in the use ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, I think deserves remark. We might be struck, even in another author, by finding a word fifty-six times in the nominative singular, and never in any other form: but in Homer these slight circumstances have a value and significance, which in ordinary cases it would be more dangerous to assign to them. It seems to me possible, that this restraint in the use of the name, which always assigns to it the most commanding place in the sentence, was not unconnected with a sense of reverence towards it. I think that if we were to examine the correspondence, for example, between British Ministers and their Sovereign, we might find that the phrase‘Your Majesty’ was placed, under a sort of natural and unconscious bias, by the writers, in the nominative case, in a proportional number of instances far exceeding that which the pronoun ‘you’ would supply in an ordinary letter.
It is difficult to define this delicate and subtle sentiment: but it may perhaps be illustrated by the feeling on which is founded the prevailing usage of addressing among ourselves the very highest ranks, and in some languages all persons of consideration, in the third rather than the second person. And again, it is the same description of sentiment, which, when carried into the sphere of religion, has led Dante invariably to forbear, when he introduces the name ‘Cristo’ at the close of a verse, from placing any other word in rhyme with it, so that he makes it its own echo (so to speak), and repeats it thrice, in no less than four passages, to meet the full demand of his metre[784].
Or again, as Homer appears to have possessed a fineness of ear which is not only wonderful, but by us in some part inappreciable, it may be that he attached an importance, which we cannot measure, to preserving a perfect uniformity in this dignified and sonorous title, as a means of producing popular impression, not less than of satisfying his own taste.
Other instances might be given from Homer, bearing upon the case.
Ἐνοσίχθωνis used forty times, and only once out of the nominative, though metrical reasons could not hamper the poet with respect to any of the cases of this noun.Διογενὴςis used in the nominative and vocative only.Κύδιστοςis used sixteen times, and in the vocative alone. The feminine form however isfound in the nominative, but only in two passages (one of them with a rival reading) applied to Minerva.Εὐρυκρείωνis found twelve times, and only in the nominative.
Perhaps again the rarity and slightness of his use oftmesismay be accounted for, not by euphony alone, but by the circumstance that these two words had grown by titular use almost into one.
The fact that the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνshould have disappeared with Homer himself, while his heroes were incessantly sung by later poets, of itself raises a presumption that it belonged to a state of things which, when after a wide interval the race of his successors began, had wholly ceased to exist.
That stage of society, in the closing stages of which Homer lived, and which we know through him alone of classical authors, was the patriarchal stage in its last phasis. By the patriarchal stage of society, I mean the stage in which rights on the one hand, and powers and duties on the other, were still indeterminate, and were gradually passing from the state ofnebulainto that of body. Now, if the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνbelonged to it, without doubt it must at the outset have exhibited its unvarying characteristic, the union of sovereign political power not only with hereditary descent, but with a reference to some original stock as an object of deep veneration, if not to a relationship of blood more or less remote between the royal family and their subjects, or to the dominant race among them.
Its relation to Patriarchal Chieftaincy.
The chieftaincies of the Celtic tribes in our own island, such as they existed until within only one century back, afford us a partial analogy. The primary idea is that of the headship of an extended family, sometimes approximating to the character of a nation;sometimes more limited, so that many of such families or tribes may be regarded as belonging to the same nation. One marked characteristic of these chieftaincies is that the preeminence and power, which they attached to birth, is separable from, though capable of union with, sovereignty strictly so called, that is, an absolute political supremacy, and subsists in its main particulars even after the division; neither does it become ambiguous or indefinite, where the field for its exercise is a narrow one. The splendour of the name increases with the range of dominion, but its integrity subsists even in the most contracted sphere, so long as the organization on which it is dependent remains.
It is at least conceivable, that the Greek and the Celtic chieftaincies thus far agree. They differ in this, that the Hellenes, whenever we hear of them, appear more or less clearly as the subjugators of some race in prior occupancy of the soil, and as the masters of slaves: so that, while the relation of the Highland Chief to his clan was elevated and softened by union in blood, a Greek chieftaincy rather affected the relation between the head of the tribe and, not the whole, but only a privileged part, of the community.
The fundamental idea of this chieftainship would lie in the possession of the powers of government, patriarchally organized, by lineal descent, and traced up to the point which was the recognised fountain-head of the traditions of the race.
Where the idea of succession by primogeniture was well defined, there probably would be but one line in existence at a time that could hold the title for any one race. But there might be cases where the rule of primogeniture was unknown, or not consistently applied, or where the fact of elder descent was contested,or where common descent from some one acknowledged race and period might confer the title on a variety of families, situated at remote points from one another, in each of which it might afterwards be confined to the lineal heir. In such cases there would be a plurality of lines, all running up into the stem of a common ancestor, and all bearing in their own separate successions the title of chieftainships.
Again, among these chieftains one might be politically supreme over the rest within a given country. Such were the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles, in Scotland, who claimed to be kings as well as chieftains: and such in Ireland were the Kevanaghs, O’Ruarcs, and O’Briens.
If therefore I am right in interpreting the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνto mean properly (together with something more)Chieftain, in a sense including the main elements of Celtic chieftaincy, orPatriarch, (but the latter phrase is less applicable from its conventional connection with advanced age), then it need excite no surprise if we find anἄναξ ἀνδρῶνon each side, and not in the supreme command. At the same time, though there are vast differences in power between one Homericἄναξ ἀνδρῶνand another, they are all, so far as we see, strictly in the position of princes ordinarily independent within their dominions, though owning, it might be, the prerogatives of a qualified political supremacy lodged in other hands.
Mode of its use for Agamemnon.
It is very worthy of remark, that Homer scarcely ever describes Agamemnon by personal epithets. In a few passages (I see seven noticed) he uses the wordδῖοςin connection with the name: but this is one ofthe least specific among the Homeric epithets for individuals, and is employed not only for Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, Nestor, and others, but for a crowd of inferior personages, so that, as a word of the most general purport, it has little or no defining or individualizing power. It means preeminence in some particular kind, among a class, and it is applicable to any class; to Agamemnon greatest among sovereigns, and to Eumæus worthiest among swineherds. A few times Homer calls himἥρως, a word which he also applies to the entire Greek army (Il. ii. 110). In all other places, (I omit, of course, the invectives of Achilles,) he is characterised only by words taken from his position or descent. The principal of these areἈτρείδης, which he enjoys in common with Menelaus:κρείων, applied to him and to various other chiefs:ποιμὴν λαῶν, yet more largely and loosely used:εὐρυκρείων, which is exclusively his own among men, and which is the epithet used by Homer as properly descriptive of his wide-reaching sway. It is also applied to Neptune among the immortals, because vastness was with Homer a principal feature of theθάλασσα, his domain. Lastly, Agamemnon isἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, which, as I hold, describes his position by birth as the head or chieftain of the Achæans properly so called.
There are two remarkable passages, which are evidently intended to supply the key-note, as it were, for our conception of the material power of Agamemnon: the first, Il. ii. 108, respecting the sceptre: the second, in the Catalogue, Il. ii. 576-80: in both of these he is calledκρείων, in neitherἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. This fact entirely accords with the supposition that neither a determinate form of political power, nor military command, is the vital idea of the phrase.
On the other hand, although the Poet does not seem to connect this phrase with imperial power, yet that he intended to use it as one highly characteristic, we may at once deem probable from his having employed it in that remarkable passage[785]with which the poem begins, and which so succinctly, yet so broadly opens the subject of it. For here he has taken the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνout of its usual, and elsewhere its only place in the verse, and has subjoined it, contrary in this likewise to his uniform practice elsewhere, to the name of the person described by it. The line is
Ἀτρείδης τε, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
Ἀτρείδης τε, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
Evidently this is done for greater emphasis: as ‘great Alexander’ is less emphatic than ‘Alexander the Great,’ and ‘king Darius’ than ‘Darius the king.’ It may be admitted that the epithetδῖος, used in this place for Achilles, is not one of the most characteristic: but Achilles had already been described (in v. i.) by that distinguished patronymic which formed his chief glory[786], as it connected him, through his father and his grandfather, with Jupiter.
All these presumptions drawn from the case of Agamemnon converge upon a point: they tend to show, thatἄναξ ἀνδρῶνmeans preeminence indeed, but yet a particular kind of preeminence; and one distinct from, and more specific than, the general idea of sovereignty.
Extraction and station of Agamemnon.
The so-called genealogy of Agamemnon differs from every other one given by Homer in this, that it does not describe the descent in a right line. For as Thyestes, one of his three predecessors on the Pelopid throne was the father of Ægisthus, who was the contemporary, but yet not the brother of Agamemnon, hemust without doubt have been brother to Atreus, Agamemnon’s father. It is in fact not a genealogy simply, but rather a succession in dignities. The dignity ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνmay have combined with that of the political supremacy to lead Homer into this unusual course. If, as I suppose,ἄναξ ἀνδρῶνrequired the double derivation both of lineage and of sovereignty, this was the way, and the only way, in which Homer could attain his end. And his having pursued this method seems to imply that suchwashis end.
I cannot therefore under the conditions of the definition given above, explain the application of the phrase to Agamemnon by mere reference to his political supremacy. It will be necessary to prove, either by direct or by presumptive evidence, his lineal connection with the primitive Grecian or Hellenic stock, the trunk of the tree from which other Achæan families were branches and offshoots only.
I propose to do this by showing,
First, that no appreciable value is to be attached to the notions which represent him as the grandson of an Asiatic immigrant; while even if this descent could be made good, we should not on that account be justified in at once proceeding to deny that the Pelopids were of pure Hellenic blood.
Secondly, that he was not merely at the moment the political head of Greece, but that he was also the hereditary chief of the Achæans, then the ruling tribe of the country.
Thirdly, that this Achæan tribe was in all likelihood derived from Thessaly, where it was especially rooted and distinguished: as Thessaly was itself fed from the Helli of the mountains, and constituted the secondary and immediate source from whence the Hellenic racessuccessively issued, and spread themselves over the peninsula.
I do not pretend to carry the proof of a patriarchal position or lineal chieftaincy in the case of Agamemnon further. We do not know what was the strictly original royal stock of the Hellenic tribes. The current tradition of Hellen and his sons would be very convenient, but it is too obviously accommodated to after-times, and too flatly at variance with the earliest, that is to say with the Homeric accounts, to be in the slightest degree trustworthy as an historic basis. We may take the Hesiodic tradition as affording evidence of the belief that there was a primitive royal stock, and that the ruling families had been derived from it, since within these limits it does not contradict Homer; but we can justly build upon it nothing further. Undoubtedly the very employment of the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, if the proposed construction of it can be made good, will greatly fortify this belief. But this can only be made good in a presumptive manner: as by showing that the phrase was only given in ruling families: and only in the representative lines of ruling families: and only in families which ruled over tribes of the dominant race; and which had so ruled from time immemorial—that is to say, they must be families of which it cannot be shown that at any time they had acquired their position in their own tribe. If a first ancestor, apparently the channel of the title, is indicated, he must be one from whom history begins: there must be nothing before him, nothing to show that he or his line had ever been less than what he came to be. Lastly, the tribes, over which theἄναξ ἀνδρῶνrules, must be in visible or presumable connection locally with the original seat or cradle of the nation; and it will be a furtherconfirmation of the argument if, as we ascend the lineal lines, we find in them a tendency to converge towards an unity of origin, which we shall find poetically expressed as the divine parentage of Jupiter, and thus covered with the golden clouds of a remote antiquity, that not even the sun can pierce[787]. Perhaps we may even find reason to suppose it likely that descent from Jupiter was an essential qualification for the title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
Arguments against his Hellenic descent.
First, then, let us deal with the negative or adverse presumptions, which would go to prove that Agamemnon was not Hellenic at all.
It may be urged,
1. That we see, even from Homer, that Pelops was a recent hero, only two generations before theTroica, so that Agamemnon has no antiquity to boast of.
2. That, according to extraneous tradition, there is no connection between Agamemnon and the Hellic stock: as Pelops is reputed to be the son of Tantalus, and Tantalus the king of Phrygia.
To the first I answer, that the list of names in Il. ii. 101-8, is not simply a genealogy, for it includes Thyestes, who is not in the right line; but it is a succession of kings on a common throne, and can only therefore begin with Pelops, as the first who sat upon that throne.
But, further, even if it were a genealogy, yet Homer seems usually to begin his genealogies not with the first known ancestor of a person, but with the first ancestor of his who settled in the place where he exercises power. Thus Nestor, though we acquire indirectly a knowledge of his earlier descent through theΝεκυΐα, has no genealogy beyond Neleus his father,because he was the ancestor that migrated into Peloponnesus, or, at least, that first acquired the Pylian throne, by marriage into a prior, and perhaps a Pelasgian house[788]. Ulysses has none beyond Arceisius; and it is plain, from the records of the earlier dynasty in Ithaca, that there could have been no king of that house before him. Dardanus and Minos, heads of genealogies, were also the founders of sovereignties. Again, Portheus is given us as the head of the Œneid line in Ætolia: and we have found it probable that he was the first of his race[789]who migrated into that country. The same considerations, in all likelihood, hold good with regard to Pelops.
Now with respect to the second objection.
We are to remember that Homer has nowhere asserted the connection between Pelops and Tantalus, or between Tantalus and Phrygia.
But not even the latter connection, and far less the former, would disprove the title of Agamemnon to represent lineally the character ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. For, as we have seen, that title subsisted in the line of Dardanus, and the causes which planted it there might also have planted it in Phrygia; which is not irrationally supposed to have been the line of march for the Hellic race in its original movement westwards[790]. Moreover, Phrygia is not a name confined to Asia.
Connection of Tantalus with the Greeks.
There are, however, many indirect Homeric indications, as well as much extra-Homeric tradition, which tend to connect Pelops both with Tantalus and with Greece.
First, even if Tantalus were known to Homer as the father of Pelops, he could not have been named inthe tradition of Il. ii. 101-8, unless he had occupied, like Pelops, the throne to which Agamemnon succeeded.
From the appearance of Tantalus in theΝεκυΐα, it is probable that Homer regarded him as Greek, either by birth or by what we may call naturalization. This he might be in the Poet’s view, if the traditions concerning him, without assigning to him Greek birth or even residence, made him the father of one who became a great Greek sovereign. If, for instance, we take the name of Æolus; it is the source of some of the most famous Greek houses, yet Homer never mentions it, except in the patronymic, and gives us no means of absolutely attaching it to any part of Greece. Æolus may have been known only as the father of Greeks. So Minos was not of Greek birth; but was naturalized, and therefore appears in theΝεκυΐαas the judge of the nether world. All the other personages, without exception, who are introduced there, are apparently Greek: Sisyphus, Hercules, Tityus, Theseus, Pirithous, from clear marks of residence: even Orion, since he is made the hero of a scene in Delos[791], appears, whatever his origin, to have been already Hellenized by tradition. Nor is it easy to avoid the same assumption with respect to Tantalus.
Again, we may be quite sure, that Tantalus was a person of the highest rank and position. None others seem to have been distinguished by an express notice of their fate after death. Orion was the object of the passion of Aurora (Od. v. 121). Tityus was an offender so lofty, that he became the occasion of a voyage of Rhadamanthus himself to deal with his crime[792]. Sisyphus was, as we have found reason to believe[793], of the most exalted stock.
The punishment of Tantalus in the nether world isprobably, as in other cases, the reflection of a previous catastrophe, certainly of a previous character, upon earth. The nature of his punishment is a perpetual temptation, of irresistible force, presented to the appetites of hunger and thirst, while the gratification of it is wholly and perpetually denied. This shews that his offence on earth must have been some form ofπλεονεξία, of greediness, presumption, or ambition. It is therefore not unlikely that by restless attempts at acquisition, he may have convulsed his dominions, and caused his son to migrate.
Now this supposed vein of character in Tantalus would thoroughly accord with that of the Pelopid line. He is punished for covetousness or acquisitiveness. His son gains a kingdom through Mercury, who is the god of increase by fair means or foul. His grandson Thyestes gathers wealth (πολύαρς, Il. ii. 106): his great-grandson Agamemnon is deeply marked by the avarice everywhere glanced at in the Iliad: and finally we have the reckless and guilty cravings of the ambition of Ægisthus.
We are by no means without reasons from the poems for placing Tantalus, as the later tradition places him, among the heroes of the stock of Jupiter. One ground is afforded us by the text of the Eleventh Odyssey for supposing that he was, I do not say a son, but at least a descendant of Jupiter. It is this; that apparently all the heroes, to whom we are thus introduced, were at least of divine extraction. They are, besides Tantalus, as follows:—
1. Minos, who was a son of Jupiter. (Od. xi. 568.)
2. Orion: he was of divine extraction according to the later tradition. In Homer he has no parentage, but he had at least attained to divine honours, inasmuch as he was translated into a star. (Od. v. 274 et alibi.)
3. Tityus, son ofΓαῖα. (Od. xi. 596, and vii. 324.)
4. Sisyphus, son of Æolus; therefore descended from Jupiter.
5. Hercules, son of Jupiter (ibid. 620.)
But I rely specially upon the passages towards the end, where these are all calledἄνδρες ἥρωες, and where Ulysses says he might have seen others, namely,Θήσεα Πειρίθοόν τε, θεῶν ἐρικύδεα τέκνα, illustrious children of the gods: as if to be a child of the gods were a condition of appearing in this august, though mournful, company.
Hereas, a Megarian author of uncertain age, is quoted by Plutarch[794]as having declared that the last cited verse was among the interpolations of Pisistratus. But Hereas was as likely to be wrong in this statement, through Megarian antipathy, as Pisistratus to have interpolated the verse in favour of Athenian vanity. The internal evidence is, I think, in its favour. For the phraseθεῶν ἐρικύδεα τέκναis, according to the view here given, really characteristic. It is, at the same time, characteristic through the medium of an idea which, though it can be deduced fairly from the text, is not obvious upon its surface; namely the idea that all the heroes of theΝεκυΐαwere divine. The verse is therefore supported by something in the nature of a spontaneous or undesigned coincidence.
The post-Homeric tradition makes Niobe the daughter of Tantalus; and, if this be so, then we may derive from her very high position a further support to the presumption that Tantalus was of the race of Jupiter, as also to the hypothesis of his personal connection with Greece. For that the tradition of Niobe is Greek we see, from its being cited by Achilles; and that she was a sovereign is clearly implied by thecombined effect of various circumstances. The first is her being compared by Achilles with Priam. The second, that the vaunt of an inferior person would hardly have been noticed by the direct intervention of the gods. The third is the singular extent and dignity of that intervention: Apollo slays the sons, Diana the daughters; Jupiter converts the people to stone; the Immortals at large bury the dead. The fourth is the use of the termλαοὺς, which means plainly the subjects of the kingdom where Niobe was queen.
We cannot now carry farther the presumptions that Tantalus was the descendant of Jupiter, and Agamemnon of Tantalus: but if, in considering the cases of the other members of his class, we shall sufficiently shew that they were all descended in common repute from Jupiter, we shall then perhaps be warranted in relying more decidedly upon the connection, which is suggested by the text in the case of Agamemnon through his presumed ancestor Tantalus.
It is difficult to find more than slight traces of the seat of the power of Tantalus from Homer.
He mentions a mountain called Sipylus[795], near the Achelous, and thus near the principal passage from Northern and Middle into Southern Greece. Here it is that he places the mourning Niobe. But Pausanias places the tomb of Pelops on the summit of Mount Sipylus, meaning, apparently, the hill of that name in Lydia[796]. Again, the Phryges, over whom the later tradition reports him to have reigned, are also made known to us as a Thracian people[797]: a designation quite capable of embracing any of the hill tribes in the neighbourhood of Thessaly. We have another sign of the extension of this name in the Phrygians of Attica,mentioned by Thucydides (ii. 22): and the Phrygian alphabet is closely akin to that of Greece.
Strabo, however, observes, that the state of these traditions is so greatly confused, so as to make them scarcely tractable for the purposes of history[798].
Place of Pelops in Greek history.
The connection of Pelops with Southern Greece is well supported by the ancient name of Peloponnesus. No notice of this name is found in Homer; but we need not be surprised, if Pelops was the first of his race in that part of the country, at finding him sparely recognised by the Poet: it is the uniform manner of the poet with strangers ornovi homines.
The Homeric notices of Pelops are not more liberal than of Tantalus. 1. We find him calledπλήξιππος[799]in such a way as shows that something connected with the driving of a chariot must have been attached either to the known habits, or to some great crisis of his life, or to both. In either mode, it agrees with the common tradition, according to which, by success in the chariot race, he won the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of king Œnomaus, and therewith the throne of Pisa. We have another fact from Homer which tends to support this tradition, namely, that in the earliest youth of Nestor there were, as we have seen, public games, which included chariot-races, in Elis.
2. The common tradition is also further supported by the passage in the Second Iliad, which gives us the line of Pelopid sovereigns. For we are there told that Vulcan wrought the Pelopid sceptre for Jupiter: that Jupiter gave it to Mercury, and Mercury to Pelops the horse-driver, who handed it on to Atreus and the rest. From this statement two things clearly appear. First, that the throne of Pelops was gained either by craft, or at least by enterprise, of his own. Secondly, that itwas a new power which he erected, and that he was not merely the transferee of the power of the Perseid line.
Nor is it difficult to discern wherein the novelty consisted. This sceptre carried the right of paramount lordship over all Greece—
πολλῇσιν νήσοισι καὶ Ἄργεϊ παντὶ ἀνάσσειν[800]—
πολλῇσιν νήσοισι καὶ Ἄργεϊ παντὶ ἀνάσσειν[800]—
whereas the Perseids had been local sovereigns, though probably the first in rank and power among their contemporaries of Continental Greece.
Now this sovereignty, thus extended, was plainly an Achæan sovereignty. For we have seen that, contemporaneously with its erection, Homer drops the marked and exclusive use of the wordἈργεῖοιfor the inhabitants of that quarter, and calls them by preferenceἈχαιοὶ, the older name falling into the shade. Thus, then, the Achæans rose with the house of Pelops: and this being the case, we can the better understand why it was that that house rose to so great an elevation. It was because the Achæan race had now acquired extension in the North and in the South of Greece, in Eastern and Western Peloponnesus, and because it usually predominated wheresoever it went. Thus the house of Pelops had an opportunity of gaining influence and power, which had not been enjoyed by the preceding dynasties, though they ruled from the same sovereign seat. They were families only: the Pelopids were chiefs of a race.
What we have thus seen from Homer, with respect to the high position attained by Pelops, is confirmed by the later tradition.
Pausanias notices the local traces of Tantalus, as well as of Pelops, in Elis. A harbour there bore the name of Tantalus[801]: and Pelops was worshipped in a sanctuaryhard by the temple of Jupiter Olympius. It was on the right hand, in front of that temple, a very marked situation in all likelihood: and Pausanias says, that the Elians reverenced Pelops among heroes, like Jupiter among gods. It was probably on this account, and as a memorial of the worship from high places, that theθρόνος, or seat of Pelops, was, as he says, not only in Sipylus, but on the summit of the mountain.
Another tradition makes Pelops the original king of Pisa, the rival town to Elis, which at length succumbed to it. And a further tradition reports, that he became the son-in-law of Œnomaus, king of Pisa, by conquering him in the chariot-race: and together with this, that he restored the Olympian Games. Another tradition reports him to have come from Olenos in Achaia: and as the Dorians, with the Heraclids, came into Peloponnesus by that route, probably as the easiest, so, and for the same reason, may Pelops probably have done. Lastly, while Homer places Achæans in Ægina and in Mases, (of which the site is unknown,) Pausanias (b. ii. c. 34) states that nine islands (νησίδες) off the coast of Methana, which lies directly opposite Ægina, were in his time called the Islands of Pelops.
Before quitting the subject of Pelops, I would observe, that his worship in Olympia with such peculiar honours is connected with a tradition, that he raised the Olympian Games to a distinction which they had never before attained. Now if we view him as the principal chief who brought the Achæans into Peloponnesus, this tradition tends to support the view which has been taken in a former section of the relation between the Hellic race and the institution of public Games. Nor is there any thing more intrinsically probable, than that a chief from the great breeding region of Thessaly shouldhave either founded the chariot or horse-races of Olympia, or should have raised them to an unprecedented celebrity, and secured for them the truly national position that they for so long a time maintained.
We have seen thus far,
1. That the title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνis employed by Homer as the chief distinction of Agamemnon.
2. That most probably Agamemnon was descended from Tantalus, as well as from Pelops, that the line was a line of sovereigns all along, and Tantalus in all likelihood a reputed descendant of Jupiter himself.
3. That the Achæans emerge in company with the Pelopids, from the cavern of pre-historic night, and that the Pelopids are therefore to be taken as in all likelihood the chief and senior house of the Achæan tribe.
But we have still to ask, whence came the Achæans themselves? and how are we to prove their connection with the Hellenic name and stock?
And first, as to Homeric evidence.
Achæans from Thessaly.
We have already seen, in considering Homer’s account of the contingent of Achilles, and also from Il. ix. 395, that the Achæan race appears to have been the dominant one in the proper and original Hellas of Thessaly: which appears to place it beyond doubt, that the Achæans were they who first carried with them extensively into Greece the Hellenic name, a name always following in the wake of the Achæan one, and in Homer extending to all Greece, unless we except that part which was the sovereign seat of Achæan power.
The first form of the name is with the Helli of Northern Thessaly: 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 namegains 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 asαὐτόχθονες, who had never changed their habitation; four other races, including the Dorians, asἐπήλυδες, 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 thanvice 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.