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 uses Δάρδανος ἄνηρ, Il. ii. 701. This form seems to indicate the full and familiar establishment of a name; and the Dardanians had, we know, been Dardanians for seven generations before the _Troica_ (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 πάντων Ἀργείων 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 the _Troica_[698]. Turning now entirely to what indicates more or less of peculiar character in the Achæans, I would observe, that the adjective δῖοι appears 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 are δῖοι because 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._