Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Philosophy
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: Polities of the Homeric Age. II. Ilios: Trojans and Greeks Compared. III. Thalassa: The Outer Geography. IV. Aoidos: Some Points of the Poetry of Homer.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
This assemblage of facts appears to point to a very great diversity of
relations subsisting between Priam, with his capital, and the states,
cities, and races, of which we hear as arrayed on his side in the war.
There are first the cities of Troas, or Troja proper, furnishing the
five, or if we except Dardania four out of the five, first contingents
of the Catalogue. Over these Priam was sovereign.
There are next the cities, so far as they can be traced, under the
δυναστεῖαι mentioned by Strabo, such as Thebe, and the cities of Altes
and Munes. These were probably in the same sort of relation to the
sceptre of Priam, as the Greek states in general to that of Agamemnon.
Thirdly, there are the independent nations. Of these eleven named
in the Catalogue; others are added as newly arrived in the Tenth
Book[494], and further additions were subsequently made, such as the
force under Memnon, and the Keteians under Eurypylus[495]. Nothing
perhaps tends so much, as the powerful assistance lent to Priam by
numerous and distant allies, to show how justly in substance Horace has
described the Trojan war as the conflict between the Eastern and the
Western world. The two confederacies, which then came into collision,
between them absorbed the whole known world of Homer; and foreshadowed
the great conflicts of later epochs.
[494] Il. x. 428-30.
[495] Od. xi. 519-22.
~_Political institutions of Troy._~
We may now proceed to consider the political institutions of the
kingdom of Priam, which has thus loosely been defined.
The Βασιλεὺς of the Trojans is less clearly marked, than he is among
the Greeks: for (as we shall find) they had no Βουλὴ, and therefore we
have not the same opportunities of seeing the members of the highest
class collected for separate action in the conduct of the war. Still,
however, the name is distinctly given to the following persons on the
Trojan side, and to no others.
1. Priam, Il. v. 464, xxiv. 630.
2. Paris, iv. 96.
3. Rhesus, x. 435.
4. Sarpedon, xii. 319. xvi. 660.
5. Glaucus, xii. 319.
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