I am inclined under correction to suppose that Palamedes was originally no warrior under Ilios, but a Culture Hero of the "Pelasgians of the seacoasts," the Culture Hero of a fairly advanced civilisation. He was credited with the discovery of written characters,[10] or, at least, of a syllabary; or he taught the Greeks to use Phoenician characters in the Ionian alphabet. He also discovered arithmetic, Weights and Measures; Astronomy; the reckoning of Time; military discipline,--with post-Homeric centurions;--sentinels, fire-signals; a number of games, such as draughts, and so forth. Homer knows nothing of such Culture Heroes in the Achaean camp, where they are manifestly out of place. It has been suggested that Palamedes is Palamaon, an ancient understudy of Hephaestus; παλάμημα being _τέχνη_, art, or handicraft, and _πάλαμις_ the Salaminian equivalent of τεχνίτης. Palamedes is properly "the Inventor." I suggest that, in the mixed multitude of Ionia, poets were found who simply inserted the old Culture Hero among the Achaean heroes, and asserted his supremacy in counsel and in war; while, as has been said, it was impossible to bring him into the _Iliad,_ so he was made the martyr of the jealousy of Homer's bravest and wisest Achaeans at the moment just before the _Iliad_ begins. In the opinion of Socrates, Aias, no less than Palamedes, was the victim of an unjust verdict, a belief which he never found in Homer. But Aias was claimed as an ally and neighbour of Athens; Palamedes was of a seacoast city allied with Athens; both heroes, therefore, were useful links between the Ionians and Attica and the Trojan affair, in which, as in the legendary affairs of Thebes and Calydon, the Ionians had no part, except what they invented for themselves. They imposed their version on Rome and on the Middle Ages, but we repeat, they could not get a reference to Palamedes into the _Iliad_. Among all its alleged borrowings from the Cyclics, the _Iliad_ never borrowed a hint of Palamedes.[11]