First tokens of change in the Heroic Polities.

13

that island. Now, although general words are employed (Il. ii. 649.) to signify that the force was not drawn from these cities exclusively, yet Homer would probably have been more particular, had other places made any considerable contribution, than to omit the names of them all. Again, Crete, though so large and rich, furnishes a smaller contingent than Pylos. And, once more, if it had been united in itself, it is very doubtful whether any ruler of so considerable a country would have been content that it should stand only as a province of the empire of Agamemnon. In the many passages of either poem which mention Idomeneus, he is never decorated with a title implying, like that of Minos (KρTy Tíoυpos), that he was ruler of the whole islaud. Indeed, one passage at least appears to bear pretty certain evidence to the contrary. For Ulysses,

in his fabulous but of course self-consistent narration to Minerva, shows us that even the Cretan force in Troy was not thoroughly united in allegiance to a single head. The son of Idomeneus,' he says, 'endeavoured to deprive me of my share of the spoil, because I did not obey his father in Troas, but led a band of my own:'

οὔνεκ ̓ ἄρ ̓ οὐχ ᾧ πατρὶ χαριζόμενος θεράπευον

δήμῳ ἔνι Τρώων, ἀλλ ̓ ἄλλων ἦρχον ἑταίρων.

So likewise in the youth of Nestor, two generations back, Augeias appears as the sole king of the Epeans; but, in the Catalogue, his grandson Polyxeinus only commands one out of the four Epean divisions of ten ships each, without any sign of superiority: of the other three, two are commanded by generals of the Actorid family, which in the earlier legend appears as part of the court or following of Augeias". And wherever we u Il. xi. 709, 39, 50.

t Od. xiii. 265.

find in the case of any considerable Greek contingent the chief command divided among persons other than brothers, we may probably infer that there had been a breaking up of the old monarchical and patriarchal system. This point deserves more particular inquiry. In the Greek armament, there are twenty-nine contingents in all.

Of these, twenty-three are under a single head; with or without assistants who, where they appear, are described as having been secondary.

Shown by analysis of the Catalogue.

15

Under brothers united in command, there were four

more contingents:

1. Of Aspledon and Orchomenus, with 30 ships.

In all these cases, comprising the whole armament except from two states, the old form of government seems to have continued. The two exceptions are:

1. Boeotians; with 50 ships, under five leaders. 2. Elians; with 40 ships, under four leaders. It is quite clear that these two divisions were acephalous. As to the Elians, because the Catalogue expressly divides the 40 ships into four squadrons, and places one under each leader, two of these being of the Actorid house, and a third descended from Augeias. As to the Boeotians, the Catalogue indicates the equality of the leaders by placing the five names in a series under the same category.

An indirect but rather strong confirmation is afforded by the passage in the Thirteenth Book", where five Greek races or divisions are engaged in the endeavour to repel Hector from the rampart. They are,

J. Boeotians.

2. Athenians (or Ionians), under Menestheus, seconded by Pheidas, Stichios, and Bias.

3. Locrians.

4. Epeans (of Dulichium &c.) under Meges, son of Phyleus, with Amphion, and Drakios. The addition of the patronymic to Meges seems in this place to mark

u Il. xiii. 685-700.

his position; which is distinctly defined as the chief one in the Catalogue, by his being mentioned there alone.

5. Phthians, under Medon and Podarces. These supplied two contingents, numbered 17 and 19 respectively in the list just given; and they constituted separate commands, though of the same race.

It will be remarked that the Poet enumerates the commanders of the Athenians, Epeans, and Phthians; but not of the Locrians and Boeotians. Obviously, in the case of the Locrians, the reason is, that Oilean Ajax, a king and chief of the first rank, and a person familiar to us in every page, was their leader. Such a person he never mixes on equal terms with secondary commanders, or puts to secondary duties; and the text immediately proceeds to tell us he was with the Telamonian Ajax. But why does it not name the Boeotian leader? Probably, we may conjecture, because that force had no one commander in chief, but were an aggregation of independent bodies, whom ties of blood or neighbourhood drew together in the armament and in action.

Having thus endeavoured to mark the partial and small beginnings of disorganization in the ancient form of government, let us now observe the character of the particular spots where they are found. These districts by no means represent, in their physical characteristics, the average character of Greece. In the first place, they are both on the highway of the movement between North and South. In the second, they both are open and fertile countries; a distinction which, in certain local positions, at certain stages of society, not only does not favour the attainment of political power, but almost precludes its possession. The Elis of Homer is marked

x Il. xiii. 701-8.

Extended signs in the Odyssey.

17

by two epithets having a direct reference to fertility of soil; it is inπóßоTоs, horse-feeding, and it is also eupúxopos, wide-spaced or open. Again, the twenty-nine towns assigned in the Catalogue to the Boeotians far exceed in number those which are named for any other division of Greece. We have other parallel indications; such as the wealth of Orchomenos; and of Orestius with the variegated girdle. He dwelt in Hyle, one of the twenty-nine, amidst other Boeotians who held a district of extreme fertility", μάλα πίονα δῆμον ἔχοντες. Now when we find signs like these in Homer, that Elis and Boeotia had been first subjected to revolution, not in the shape of mere change of dynasty, but in the decomposition, so to speak, of their ancient forms of monarchy, we must again call to mind that Thucydides, when he tells us that the best lands underwent the most frequent social changes by the successions of new inhabitants, names Boeotia, and 'most of Peloponnesus' as examples of the kind of district to which his remark applied.

Upon the whole, the organization of the armament for Troy shows us the ancient monarchical system intact in by far the greater part of Greece. But when we come to the Odyssey, we find increasing signs of serious changes; which doubtless were then preparing the way, by the overthrow of old dynasties, for the great Dorian invasion. And it is here worth while to remark a great difference. The mere supervention of one race upon another, the change from a Pelasgian to an Hellenic character, does not appear to have entailed alterations nearly so substantial in the character and stability of Hellenic government, as did the Trojan expedition; which, by depriving societies of their natural heads, and

* Il. ix. 381.

y II. v. 707-10.

с

z Thục. i. 2.