And what is true of the commanders is true also of the troops. Athens, and with her Arcadia, may justly be regarded as the only two undistinguished in Homer among those states of Greece which afterwards attained to distinction. For among the States which acquired fame in the historic ages, Argolis, Achaia, and Laconia hold through their chiefs very high places in the poem: Elis and Bœotia are conspicuous in the anterior traditions which it enshrines. Only Attica and Arcadia fail in exhibiting to us signs of early pre-eminence in the arts of war: which in a marked manner confirms the suppositions we have already obtained, as to the Pelasgian character of their inhabitants. A sign, though a more uncertain one, that points in the same direction, is afforded by the choice of Athens, on the part of Orestes[206], as his place of habitation during the tyranny of Ægisthus in Mycenæ. The displaced, if they do not fly to the strong for protection, go among those who are weaker, and where they may most easily hold their ground, or even acquire power afresh. In other words, in the case before us, an Hellenic exile would very naturally betake himself among a Pelasgian people. While however the indications of a predominating Pelasgian character among the Athenians at the epoch of the _Troica_ appear to be varied and powerful, I must admit that they are crossed by one indication, which is at first sight of an opposite character, I mean that which is afforded by their name. Even though we were to surrender the entire passages in the Catalogue respecting them, it would still be difficult to contend that the name of Athens and of Athenians is forged in six other places of the poems where one or the other of them is found, besides that there is a second allusion to Erechtheus in the Odyssey. Here we have then, attached to a people whom we suppose Pelasgian, a name connecting them immediately with a deity commonly reputed to be of strong Hellic propensities: connecting them, indeed, in a manner so special as to be exclusive, because no other city or population in Homer takes its name from a deity at all. This indicates a relation of the closest description: and it is quite independent of the suspected passage, which represents Minerva as the nurse or foster-mother of Erechtheus. _Athenian relations with Minerva._ Now it will be found, upon close examination, that Minerva plays a very different part in the Iliad from Juno, the great protectress of the Greeks, and from Neptune, their actual comrade in fight. The difference even at first sight is this, that theirs appears to be a national, hers more a personal and moral sentiment. In Juno, it is sympathy with the Greeks as Greeks; in Neptune, antipathy to the Trojans as Trojans: but both cases are plainly distinguishable from the temper and attitude of Minerva.