Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer; Homer -- Criticism and interpretation
Homer's Catalogue of the Asian allies of Troy is brief, and contains
only about sixty lines. There was a Trojan Catalogue in the _Cypria_,
a lost Ionian epic poem of the eighth century, and as the Ionian
colonists in Asia knew the country of their settlement well, it is
likely to have been copious. Beginning, in Homer's Trojan Catalogue,
with the Dardanians under Aeneas, who may be said to represent "the
Orleans branch" of the Trojan royal family, we next hear of the Trojans
under Pandarus, who, in fact, broke the solemn oaths of truce, and
sealed the doom of Ilium (_Iliad_, iv.), but who somehow as "Sir
Pandarus of Troy" acquired another kind of ill fame among our mediaeval
poets. He dwelt by the Aesepus. "At the extreme north of the Troad,
where the Hellespont opens out into the Sea of Marmora," lived Adrastus
and Amphius. Asius led forces from Sestus and Abydus, on both sides,
European and Asian, of the Hellespont: there were also Pelasgians,
apparently from the European side. There were, from Europe, Thracians
and Cicones; the chief Thracian contingent arrived later (see _Iliad_,
Book x.). The Cicones, with whom Odysseus has trouble when first he
leaves Troy, in the _Odyssey,_ are also European, as were probably,
in origin, the people of Troy itself. European are the Paeonians,
the Paphlagonians, again, are Asiatic; the Alizonians are remote
and unrecognisable. Then we have Asiatic Mysians and Phrygians, and
Maeonians from near Sardis, and under Mount Tmolos inland. The Carians
of Miletus (later an Ionian city) follow, the Meander is their river;
last come the Lycians under Sarpedon (whom legend connects with Crete),
and Glaucus; another Glaucus was son of Sisyphus of Ephyre (Corinth),
in Argos, and was father of Bellerophon. Bellerophon, again, was sent
to his death in Lycia, by Proetus, who had married a Lycian princess.
The Lycian Glaucus of the _Iliad_ is a grandson of Bellerophon
(_Iliad_, vi.).
According to this story, Greeks freely passed to Lycia and intermarried
with Lycians. Only the Carians are described as "barbaric" in language.
Homer knows not, we said, the distinction of Hellenes and Barbarians;
the Greeks did not know it till the struggle of their Asiatic colonies
against Lydia and Persia produced the sense of "racial" repulsion. In
Homer any Greek prince going to Asia is courteously treated, perhaps
settles there like Bellerophon, or makes hereditary guest-friendships,
like the ancestors of Glaucus and Diomede.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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