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
The presence of an Achæan tribe in Crete may have been due to its
constant intercourse with Eastern Peloponnesus[730], where the Achæans
had for some time been dominant: or to those relations with Thessaly,
to which the name of Deucalion in Homer bears probable witness. In any
case, the passage clearly establishes the local virtue of the name.
It also exhibits to us Achæans as distinct from Dorians, and shows us
that there were a variety of branches, known to Homer, of the Hellenic
tree. And the enumeration of the Achæan and Pelasgian races with others
in this place, compared with the uniform description in the Iliad of
the whole force of Idomeneus as Cretan, shows us how careful Homer was
to avoid such confusion as the juxtaposition of Achæans and Pelasgians
would have caused with reference to the main ethnical division in the
Iliad.
3. In the Pylian raid of the Eleventh Book, Nestor carefully
distinguishes between the parties, as Epeans, also called Elians, on
the one side, and Pylians, also called Achæans, on the other[731]. This
raid took place in his early youth, perhaps forty or fifty years before
the _Troica_, and within the Achæan epoch. And as he withholds the
Achæan name from the other party, they plainly were not Achæan in the
limited sense. And yet they were Hellenic: for, among other Hellenic
signs, Augeas, the king of the Epeans, was an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Thus again
we have Achæan fixed as a subdivision, though probably the principal
subdivision, of the Hellenic race.
4. A fourth case, in which the Achæan name appears clearly to have a
limited signification, is in a second passage of the Greek Catalogue,
where a part of the forces of Diomed are described as those,
οἵ τ’ ἔχον Αἰγίνην, Μάσητά τε, κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν[732].
Although Mases has been taken to be a town, yet its junction here
with Ægina perhaps rather points to it as an island. It appears to be
admitted that its site is unknown. And an extra-Homeric tradition[733]
reports, that the small islands off the Trœzenian coast were called
after Pelops. It is impossible not to observe the correspondence
between this tradition, and the indirect traditions afforded us by
Homer’s language in this verse. For in the Catalogue he seems carefully
to avoid repeating the general Greek appellatives in connection with
the inhabitants of particular places, and to give them local and
special names only. It follows irresistibly, that therefore he must
be understood here to speak of the distinct race and local name of
Achæans: to which race and name would naturally belong any settlers
brought by Pelops into Southern Greece.
And, as Homer does not discontinue altogether the application of the
Argeian name to the inhabitants of Argolis, he probably in this place
means to distinguish Achæans not only from other Greek races, but even
from other subjects of Tydeus and of Diomed, who would most properly be
called Argeians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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