Chapter 25

Summary of the evidence for Augeias.

The following brief synopsis will, after what has been said, serve to indicate the chief presumptive grounds of the title of Augeias toἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

1. Augeias is connected with theφάρμακα, Il. xi. 739-41.

2. Theφάρμακαwith Ephyre, Od. i. 259.

3. Ephyre with Sisyphus, Il. vi. 152, 3.

4. Sisyphus is the son of Æolus, Il. vi. 154.

5. Æolus is Eteo-Hellenic, as the common ancestorof several of the great Greek houses, and the lineal ancestor of at least oneἄναξ ἀνδρῶν[864].

6. Æolus is also of divine descent, for his descendant Bellerophon isθεοῦ γόνος, Il. vi. 191.

7. That is to say, he is a son of Jupiter; forθεὸςcommonly means Jupiter, when there is no particular reference to any other deity in the context, and when a personal act or attribute is described.

The extra-Homeric tradition entirely supports this belief, for it makes Augeias the son of Salmoneus, and Salmoneus the son of Æolus.

And now, after we have considered so fully the termἘφύρηand its kindred words, we shall do well to notice that at least the dominions of Agamemnon are not void of some relation to this family of names; inasmuch asΦᾶρις, in the Catalogue, is one of the towns that provide his forces, andΦῆραι, in the Ninth Iliad, is one of the towns of which he promises to make Achilles lord. Of Phellias and Sellasia we have already treated.

Case of Euphetes.

I proceed to the case of Euphetes.

He is mentioned only once in the Homeric Poems. It is when, in the Fifteenth Iliad, Dolops strikes at Meges, son of Phyleus, who is saved by his stout breastplate: by that breastplate,

τόν ποτε Φύλευςἤγαγεν ἐξ Ἐφύρης, ποταμοῦ ἀπὸ Σελλήεντος.ξεῖνος γάρ οἱ ἔδωκεν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Εὐφήτης[865].

This case, as it stands, is very simple. Euphetes is manifestly the king of Ephyre: the name of the place supplies the connection with the cradle of the Hellenes; the link is doubled by the name of the riverΣελληείς, and his rank presumably stamps him as of a ruling race in the country; for he is aξεῖνοςto a sovereign, and the xenial relation appears to have been always one between persons equal, or nearly so.

The passage, however, affords us no aid towards determining where this Ephyre lay; for it does not tell us where to look for the residence of Phyleus.

Was it the Ephyre of Elis, or was it another Ephyre, mentioned in a passage that we have not yet examined? To this passage let us now turn.

In the Greek Catalogue, Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules, commands nine ships from Rhodes, whither he had migrated, on account of having slain his grand uncle Licymnius. His birth is described as follows,—

ὃν τέκεν Ἀστυόχεια βίῃ Ἡρακληείῃ·τὴν ἄγετ’ ἐξ Ἐφύρης, ποταμοῦ ἀπὸ Σελληέντος,πέρσας ἄστεα πολλὰ Διοτρεφέων αἰζηῶν[866].

Hercules then led off Astyocheia from Ephyre beside Selleeis, after having devastated many cities. The opinion may perhaps be sustained from this passage, that the Ephyre mentioned in it is not the Ephyre of Elis, for the following reasons.

1. Tlepolemus[867]emigrates to Rhodes in consequence of homicide. He is more likely to have done this from Thessaly than Elis, for we see no signs of communication between western Peloponnesus and the islands of Asia Minor near the base of the Ægean.

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 beenforgotten, 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 anἄναξ 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 theξεῖνοςof 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 wecannot suppose Phyleus to have been theξεῖνοςof 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 anἄναξ 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 ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Augeias lives two generations before the Trojan war, rules in Ephyre, and isἄναξ 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 wasΔιὶ 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 anἄναξ 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 theTroica, 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 beenξεῖνοι, 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 ofἄναξ 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 ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνwith 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.

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 ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

He is introduced to us in the Catalogue as theφίλος παῖς[873](φίλοςmeaning 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 titleἄναξ 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 relativelyto Admetus, as Ephyre does relatively to Augeias, Euphetes, and the older Æolid, Sisyphus.

Through the medium of the name Pheræ we connect this family withἘφύρη, 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 anἄναξ 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 townΦηραί.

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 Cretheusto 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 theTroica; 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 theἄναξ 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 ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνis 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 phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶνin 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 termἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, though we know the descent as a fact: surely a strong proof that it is part of the meaning of the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and is a thing not only inseparable from it, but conveyed by it.

Theἄναξ ἀνδρῶνdescended 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 calledεὐπατέρειαin common with Helen only, is evidently meant to be described as sprung from that deity.

3. That Bellerophon, also an Æolid, is alsoθεοῦ 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 ofΔιοτρεφὴςandΔιογενὴςto Hellic kingship, as a sign that the earliest Hellic kingship, being also that which conveyed the title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, was always associated with divine descent.

Among those who bear the title ofἄναξ 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 anἄναξ 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 theἄναξ ἀνδρῶνfrom 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 theresult of unlawful love, or perhaps indicates the sudden rise into eminence of a family previously obscure: with theἄναξ ἀνδρῶνthe 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 theἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.

To conclude then: the notes of theἄναξ ἀνδρῶνin Homer, probable or demonstrative, are these:

1. He must be born of Jupiterab 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 titleἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, partakes, by evidence either demonstrative or probable, of every one of these notes.

Negative proofs.

Among negative evidences that the titleἄναξ ἀνδρῶνconveys 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 ofγέροντες, 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 ofἄναξ 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 calledἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. The example may appear weak, because of the divine descent of the Phæacians. But if this phrase had, likeκρείων, been one of merely general ornament, why should it not have been applied to him asκρείωνis, 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 anἄναξ 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 immediateties 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 anἄναξ ἀνδρῶν? Here was a throne above thrones: for Patroclus was not only anἄναξ, but was calledΔιογενὴς, 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 theἄναξ 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 ofἌγριοςthe Rude, andΜέλαςthe 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 calledἄναξ 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. Hehad 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 beἄναξ 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 theἄναξ 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 hasnotapplied the title ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνto 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 anἄναξ 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 ofἄναξ ἀνδρῶνis 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 onlyas 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 showἄναξ ἀνδρῶνnot 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, andκρείων. Although they were supplanted in actual use by the termτυραννὸς, 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 nameβασιλεὺςwas 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 theπατρικαὶ βασιλεῖαι[885]. But the phraseἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, the most specific of them all, disappears even from retrospective use: and the inference is, that its proper meaning had ceased to berepresented 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 asΒασιλεῖςin 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 underDiomed. 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 expressionδῆμος, 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)

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