Of its feminine forms one has been selected to convey the most biting form of reproach to the army, in the speech of Thersites. Now it is remarkable that in that speech, of which an inflated presumption is the great mark, the Achæan name is used five times within nine lines, and neither of the other names is used at all. I do not doubt that the upstart and braggart uses this name only because it was the most distinguished or aristocratic name, as an ill-bred person always takes peculiar care to call himself a gentleman. And doubtless it is for the same reason that he takes the feminine of Ἀχαιὸς, instead of using Δανααὶ or Ἀργειαὶ for his interpretative epithet, when he wants to sting the soldiery as ‘Greekesses and not Greeks.’ Somewhat similar evidence is supplied by the Homeric phrase υἷες Ἀχαιῶν, which has nothing corresponding to it under the Danaan or Argive names. This is an Homeric formula, and the form υἷες seems to belong exclusively to the Achæan name. To the Greeks who always asked the stranger who were his parents, this phrase would carry a peculiar significance. What addressed them as the sons of honoured parents would be to them the sharpest touchstone of honour or disgrace. And what the patronymic was to the individual, this form of speech was to the nation, an incentive under the form of an embellishment. It is a principle that runs throughout Homer; it is every where μηδὲ γένος πατέρων αἰσχύνεμεν. The poet could not say sons of Danaans, for their forefathers were not Danaan: nor sons of Argeians, for this would recall the ploughshare and not the sword: though the army are addressed from time to time as ἥρωες Δαναοὶ, and ἥρωες Ἀχαιοὶ, they are never ἥρωες Ἀργεῖοι. But to be sons of the Achæans was the great glory of the race, even as to degenerate from being Achæan warriors into effeminacy would have been its deepest reproach: and the fact that he calls a mixed race sons of the Achæans is conversely a proof that the Achæan element was the highest and most famous element in the compound of their ancestry. But, unless I am mistaken, we have many passages in Homer where the use of the simple term Ἀχαιοὶ is shown from the context to have a special and peculiar, sometimes perhaps even an exclusive reference to the chiefs and leaders of the army. I think it may be shown that the word has in fact three meanings: 1. That of a particular Greek race, which extended itself from point to point, acquiring power everywhere as it spread, by inherent superiority. 2. That of the aristocracy of the country, which it naturally became by virtue of such extension and assumption. 3. That of the whole nation, which takes the name from its prime part. We have now to examine some passages in support of the second meaning: and I know not why, but certainly these passages appear in the Iliad to be most abundant near the opening of the poem.