Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3: I. Prolegomena II. Achæis; or, the Ethnology of the Greek RacesGladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
History
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3: I. Prolegomena II. Achæis; or, the Ethnology of the Greek Races
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
Nor is it difficult to find a meaning. Homer indeed leaves us but
narrow information as to the extraction of Helen. He calls her
sometimes εὐπατέρεια[621], and many times Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα[622]. In the
Third Iliad he shows her to be the sister of Castor and Pollux, and
in the Eleventh Odyssey he shows them to be the children of Tyndareus
and Leda[623]. Who Tyndareus was we do not know from him. But the
common tradition, which makes him a sovereign in Eastern Peloponnesus,
is thoroughly accordant with the slight notices in Homer. For, as
we see from the cases of Eurystheus and Prœtus, it was in Eastern
Peloponnesus that the Argive power and name prevailed; and Helen, the
daughter of Tyndareus is, as we have also seen, characteristically
with him the Argive Helen. Thus then it may now be lawful to say, we
are supplied with a meaning for the name which makes it especially
appropriate in the mouth of Agamemnon, the head of the Pelopids. For
they were the race who, coming in at the head of the Achæans, had from
the West overpowered and superseded the Argive power of the East,
while they also held as heirs to it by marriage: and if a royal Argive
house at the epoch of the war survived only in Helen and her sister
Clytemnestra, she in part at least represented its title, and, as a
lawful wife of Menelaus, added to his throne whatever authority the
name and rights of her race were capable of conferring.
Having, I trust, seen enough to justify the belief that some at least
of these names in the mind of Homer had a definite as well as a more
general meaning, let us now, taking them in succession, proceed to
examine what that meaning is.
_The Danaans of Homer._
Among the three great Homeric appellatives, let us direct our attention
first to the one, which is presumably the oldest. The word Δαναοὶ, from
the comparative paucity of the signs and indications connected with it,
evidently answers to this description.
We will take first the Homeric, and then the later, evidence respecting
it. Of the former, the greater number of particulars are negative.
Indeed we have but two positive notes to dwell upon; both of these,
however, are of great importance.
1. The Danaan name is with Homer a standing appellation of the Greeks.
I think, however, it can be shown that it never means the Greek nation,
but always the Greek armament or soldiery.
It is used in the Iliad one hundred and forty-seven times. The name
Ἀργεῖοι is employed oftener, namely, one hundred and seventy-seven
times in the plural, besides eleven times in the singular as a personal
epithet: and Ἀχαιοὶ much more frequently still.
_His epithets for the three designations._
If we observe the shadings, attached to these words respectively by
means of the epithets which Homer annexes to them, we shall find they
establish perceptible distinctions.
The epithets of Δαναοὶ are exclusively military epithets:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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