Aigai in Alkaios Huxley, George Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1969; 10, 1; ProQuest pg. 5

Aigai in Alkaios 
George Huxley 

THE NEW Cologne fragment of Alkaios1 begins in the middle of a 
sentence. The sense at the beginning seems to be ce ••• <putting 
to shame 0) those who (had acted (1) unjustly. We must tie 

a noose (?) about his neck and stone him ... it would have been far 
better for the Achaeans if they had killed < the man who had offended 
against the gods); then as they sailed past Aigai they would have 
found the sea more gentle ... " The supplements are made likely by 
a papyrus commentary2 on the poem, four verses of which particularly 
concern us here: 

[ ] ' AxcdoLa' 7}S 7ToAv {3€AT€POV 

5 [ ] .. 7JPT~ KaT€KTaVOV 

[ 7TJ~p.'VMoVT€S AtyaLS 
[ ] S gTvxov ()aA&.aaas 

The entire fragment includes parts of some forty-nine lines in all. 
In his commentary on them Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones3 writes of 
Aigai in line 6 as follows:4 HMerkelbach must be right in thinking that 
a place of that name in Euboea is in question," and again, "The storm 
struck the fleet as it was passing Aegae (v.6). Merkelbach must be 
right in taking this to be the place in Euboea variously called Aige, 
Aigai and Aigaia and identified by Stephanus of Byzantium with 
Carystlls.5 In the Towneleian scholia to the Iliad (13.21), this is said to 
be the Aegae to which Poseidon repairs from Samothrace to harness 
his chariot before travelling to Troy; the same view is taken by Strabo 
386 (cf 405). The unidentified author of a work called Nesias, 'the book 
of islands', cited in the scholia to Apollonius 1.1165 (p.lD5 Wendel) 
takes this to be the place from which the name of the Aegaean sea 

1 Peolon. inv. no.2021, published by R. Merkelbach in Zeitschr. fur Papyrologie und 
Epigraphik 1 (1967) 81fT. 

2 Alkaios fr.298 L.-P. See also D. L. Page, Lyrica Graeca Selecta (Oxford 1968) p.75. 
3 "The Cologne Fragment of Alcaeus," GRBS 9 (1968) 125-39. 
4 Lloyd-Jones, op.cit. 130 and 138. 
5 Lloyd-Jones here refers to Lexikon des fruhgriechischen Epos (Gottingen 1955-) 241f s.v. 

Alyul. 

5 



6 AlGAl IN ALKAlOS 

derives." "Der Lokrer Aias ist auf der Heimfahrt bei Euboea geschei­
tert," says Merkelbach.6 

Even if Alkaios is referring to Euboia here, Strabo ought not to have 
been cited in support of the theory that the poet is thinking of the 
Achaean fleet sailing past or near Karystos, which lies in the southern 
part of the island-Lloyd-Jones thinks that Alkaios had the rocks of 
Kaphereus in mind when he wrote Atycus. Strabo (405) in discussing 
the western coast of Euboia to the north of Chalkis declares: "They 
say that along this coast lies the Aigai in Euboia, in which is the sanc­
tuary of Poseidon Aigaios; we have made mention of it earlier also. 
The distance from Anthedon to Aigai is one hundred and twenty 
stades, and from the other places (on the mainland) much less; 
the sanctuary lies on a high hill, and there was once a town too. 
Nearby is Orobiai." The earlier mention, recalled by Strabo here, is 
in 386, where Poseidon's journey to an Aigai in the Iliad (13.21) is 
noted; Strabo here distinguishes the Euboian Aigai from an Achaian 
Aigai, and says that it is better to identify the Aigai to which the god 
goes with the Euboian; as 405 makes clear, this Aigai faced across the 
strait to Opountian Lokris. It can, therefore, have nothing to do with 
Karystos and its neighbourhood.7 In 386 Strabo also suggests that the 
Aegaean sea took its name from the Euboian place called Aigai. 

The author of the Nesias as quoted in the scholia to Apollonius 
Rhodius 1.1165b stated: "Some say that the Aigaion Pelagos had its 
name from Aix near Kanai, others from the land of Karystos which 
was called Aigaie. The Aigai visited by Poseidon is over against 
Peloponnese in the neighbourhood of Krisa. And there are some who 
say that the Aegaean is so called because throughout the entire sea the 
adjacent land is visible." Stephanos of Byzantium, s.v. Alyat (p.38-39 
Meineke), notes several places of the name, including one in Euboia, 
"which Homer (mentions) in Book 13," but Stephanos does not assert 
that Aigai in Euboia had anything to do with Karystos-in fact, as 
often, he may well be agreeing with Strabo here. In his article s.v. 
K&pvaTos (p.362-63 Meineke) Stephanos says: "It was also called 
Aigaia from Aigaion its ruler, who gave the Aigaion Pelagos its name." 
These notices are not strong support for a theory which would 

6 op.cit. (supra n.1) p.86. 
7 Some scholars would place it at Limni, some at Politika: see L. H. Sackett and others in 

BSA 61 (1966) 49 and 53; both places are far from Karystos. Cf Der Kleine Pauly 1(1964) 155 
s.v. AlGAl 1. 



GEORGE HUXLEY 7 

identify the Aigai in Alkaios with Karystos. Stephanos says that 
Karystos was called Aigaia, the author of the Nesias that the Karystia 
was called Aigaie. Strabo's Aigai in Euboia was nowhere near Karystos, 
and even if the rocks of Kaphereus were thought by Alkaios to be in 
territory of Karystos (an assumption we need not make), why did the 
poet then not call them by their proper name, or even by the poetical 
name Aigaia ? Karystos in fact faces southwards to the K yklades, not 
northwards as does Kaphereus towards Troy. 

Thus the confident assertion that Aigai here in Alkaios must refer 
to Kaphereus is perhaps (I respectfully suggest) too strongly made.s 
Lloyd-Jones remarks that Proklos in his summary of the Nostoi of 
Agias tells that the storm struck the fleet off Kaphereus; true, but in 
the view a Lesbian lyric poetess took of the Returns (for which she 
may have been indebted to Lesches, the epic poet ofPyrrha in Lesbos), 
the storm struck long before the fleet drew near to Euboia. Sappho 
(in fr.17 L.-P.) calls upon Lady Hera, "to whom the Atreidai made 
prayer 0) when, having accomplished many labours, first around 
<I1ios, then on the sea) after they departed hither, they could not 
<fulfil their journey) until they summoned" her and Zeus and 
Dionysos. If the supplement 'AT[pd8at in line 3 of the fragment is 
correct, then Sappho's view of the Nostoi differs from that of the 
Odyssey (3. 13ofl), where of the Atreidai only Menelaos is said to have 
put in to Lesbos; she believed Agamemnon to have been present 
beside Menelaos in Lesbos,9 if the supplement is correct. In the 
Odyssey Agamemnon stays in the Troad with half the army to appease 
Athena by sacrifice; the other half under Menelaos, Nestor and 
Odysseus go to Tenedos, whence, after a quarrel, Odysseus leads a 
force back to Agamemnon. Nestor with Diomedes sails to Lesbos, 
and Menelaos follows him thither. In Lesbos they stayed praying to 
Zeus for a sign about their onward voyage. The god told them not to 
go inside Chios but to make straight over the Aegaean to Euboia. 

In Sappho, however, it is almost certain that a storm had struck 

8 There is also to be borne in mind the island Aigai or Aige off Euboia (if the place ever in 
fact existed); Hesych. s.v. Alyal, Etym.Mag. S.v. Alrr7, and schol. ad Pind. Nem. 5.67a (3.95 
Drachmann). See IG XII 9p.168 and Wilamowitz, Der Glaube der Hellenen I (Berlin 1931) 336 n.3. 
Etym.Mag. (loc.cit.) declares that the island sank beneath the waves; there is in any case no 
sign that Alkaios had it in mind here. Statius, Theb. 7.370f, clearly distinguishes an Euboian 
Aigai both from Karystos and from Kaphereus: non te, saxosa Caryste, non humiles Aegas 
altumque Capherea dixi. 

9 D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford 1955) 60. 



8 AlGAl IN ALKAIOS 

the Atreidai and the fleet long before they came near to Euboia; 
indeed-a point not made in the Odyssey-that they were driven by 
a storm into Lesbos when they were still not far from the Troad. 
According to the very attractive supplements in Page's edition, 
Sappho wrote of the Atreidai, 

EKT€AEUUaVT€S JL[ aAa 7ToM' a€8Aa, 
~ , '''I[' " , 7TpWTa P.EV 7TEp IUOV, EV T€ 7TOVTWt 
,~, , , [j [ ,,~ , TVW a7Topp.aUE VTES, ooov 7TEpaLlIrJV 

0-6K eovvavro. 

Since Alkaios may well have taken a view of the Nostos tradition 
similar to Sappho's, it is worth asking whether the storm to which he 
refers in lines 5 to 7 of the Cologne fragment was first sent by Athena 
against the fleet, not off Euboia, but somewhere between the Troad 
and Lesbos, where, according to Sappho, the Achaeans were storm­
bound after their efforts on the main. Two points favour the hy­
pothesis that Alkaios refers here to the northeastern Aegaean near 
Lesbos. (1) The storm was due to Athena's anger at the rape of 
Kassandra by Lokrian Aias. Immediately after his mention of the 
terrible impiety, Alkaios in the Cologne fragment says (lines 24-27) 
that Athena went Hand <her eyes burned (?» terribly beneath her 
brows, and she darted over the wine-dark sea and suddenly stirred 
up the hidden blasts of the storm ... " The passage is at least consis­
tent with the view that Alkaios declared Athena to have stirred up 
trouble as soon as, or quite soon after, the fleet sailed from the Troad. 
(2) There was a prominent sailing mark near Lesbos called Aix, Aiga, 
or a similar name. We have already seen that the author of the 
Nesias refers to it. It is the point of the mountain range KaVY} or Kavat 
opposite to the southeastern tip of Lesbos, and the most important 
sailing mark for anyone navigating southwards between Lesbos and 
the Aeolic coast. Strabo (615) states that this prominent feature was 
called Aix or Aiga, which was originally the name of the whole 
mountain of KaVY} or Kavat. It is not wanton to conjecture that a 
plural nam.e <Aigai' corresponding to Kanai was also used of the 

cape, which, says Strabo, gave its name to the Aigaion Pelagos. Later 
the name Aiga or Aix or <Aigai' was confined to the promontory, 
Kane and Kanai being reserved for the remainder. Strabo's text here 
(III p.62 Kramer) reads: VU7'EPOJI of: a-67'O 7'0 cXKpW7'ljpWV Alya tKEKA~a8a" 
W~ Ea'Trc/>W, 7'0 of: AOt'TrOV KaVY} Kat Kava,. The words W~ Ea'Trcpw could 



GEORGE HUXLEY 9 

be an intrusive marginal note or an interpolationlO-but, even so, 
the reference to Sappho may be none the less true; the poetess may 
well have mentioned the promontory, but not necessarily in the 
context of the Nostoi (fr.dub. 170 L.-P.). She would have looked across 
to Aiga and the Black Mountain of Kane countless times. If W~ Ea7/'¢w 
is not an interpolation-and it need not be one-then we should, I 
suggest, set out the text of Strabo as follows: VaT€pOIl OE aVTO TO 
CtKPWT17ptoll Alya KEKAT}Tat <~ ALyat), w<; Ea7T~w <~T}at), TO oJ AOl7TOIl 
KaVYJ Kat KallaL. Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. Alya (p.38 Meineke) 
draws on this passage of Strabo. There is no difficulty over the variant 
plural Aiyat: Strabo (387) noted that north Peloponnesian Alya{ 
was also called Alya. Aigai the inland Aeolic town must of course 
be distinguished from the Aigai at Kane. "The sheer mount of Auto­
kane" in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (35) is almost certainly the Aeolic 
Kane facing Lesbos. 

To sum up: it is likely that according to Sappho and Alkaios, who 
drew on a local Lesbian tradition, the Achaean fleet was driven by 
Athena's storm from the Troad, through the gulf of Adramytteion, 
past Aiga and Mount Kane, and took shelter in the two great natural 
harbours in the south of Lesbos. Neither poet need have rejected the 
tale of a storm off Euboia, but in the opinion of each of them the storm 
sent by Athena had, it seems, already begun when the fleet was still 
close to Lesbos. I do not claim that this interpretation must be correct; 
but it has at least as much likelihood as the assumption that when 
Alkaios wrote "sailing past Aigai" he paradoxically meant "being 
wrecked on Kaphereus," which, in any case, is some distance from 
Aigaie-Karystos and has nothing to do with the Aigai on the west 
coast of Euboia discussed by Strabo in 386 and 405. The only Achaeans 
to sail past that Aigai would have been the Lokrians, who, we learn 
from Apollodoros CEpit. 6.20 p.222 Wagner), had the greatest difficulty 
in reaching home. 

As for the ancient problem of the Aigai to which Poseidon went in 
Iliad 13.21, I have one small suggestion to make. The traditional 
objection to the Euboian Aigai as the place from which the god drove 
his chariot and team is that it is so far off Poseidon's course from 
Samothrace to Imbros and Tenedos. That is not an insuperable 
difficulty if the god wanted his equipment nearer to him when he was 

10 See W. Leaf. Strabo on the Troad (Cambridge 1923) 337. K'K),:rrra~ Groskurd. 



10 AlGAl IN ALKAIOS 

on the battlefield; and if the original story told, as Leaf in loco sug­
gested, of a journey from Olympos to Imbros and Tenedos, a route 
by way of Euboian Aigai was hardly more direct.H What is perhaps 
needed is an Aigai as close as possible to Samothrace, Imbros and 
Tenedos. According to our texts of Stephan os of Byzantium s.v. 
Alycd, there was a place of the name Tfj~ epCfK'TJutwv X€PpovrJuov­
not, surely, in the Thrakesian theme of the Byzantine empire, for 
the theme did not exist when Stephanos wrote: we should emend to 
TfjS f9PCfKLKfjS X€PPovrJuov. This could in Homer's view be the place 
visited by Poseidon: it need have nothing to do with Aigospotamoi, 
but a point on the Aegaean coast, near the entrance to the Hellespont, 
would suit the poet's geography. The god would view the fighting on 
the Trojan plain, looking from Samothrace over Imbros. He would 
hasten from Samothrace to the southern shore of the Chersonese, 
collect his team, and leave them between Imbros and Tenedos. 
Thence it is a short step to the battlefield. Another possible objection 
to identifying the Aigai in Iliad 13.21 with the place on the west 
coast of Euboia is that Euboian Aigai seems to have been sacred to 
Dionysos also, not exclusively to Poseidon-though this does not 
tell conclusively against the identification: the Townley scholium on 
13.21 places here the wondrous vine which within one day has a 
complete life cycle from shoots to grape harvest. Here, perhaps, is 
the EVf30L~S ata to which Sophokles referred in the Thyestes, where 
the miraculous vine is lovingly described by the poet efr.255 Pearson).12 

Let us return to Alkaios: according to the summary of Agias' 
Nostoi, the lesser Aias was wrecked after the storm blew up off 
Kaphereus. The summary does not entail that the hero was in that 
poem said to have been wrecked at Kaphereus: he may only have 
been overtaken there by the gale. Other authorities placed his wreck 
on Mykonos or nearby. Alkaios did not reserve his pity, surely, for 
the impious Aias, but for the Achaeans who suffered because Aias 
sinned. The sufferings began for them, according to Sappho, long 
before the ships reached Kaphereus, as we have seen; they began, 
almost certainly, close to Lesbos. The point, I think, strengthens the 
moral of Alkaios' poem. The Achaeans suffered here, close to our 

11 Cj H. T. Wade-Gery, The Poet of the Iliad (Cambridge 1952) 81-82. 
12 For other places whose names are formed from the root my- (possibly a pre-Greek 

word meaning 'waves') see Allen, Halliday and Sikes on the Homeric Hymns to Apollo 
(32) and Poseidon (3), and W. Spoerri in Lexikon des fruhgriechischen Epos II.241-42. 



GEORGE HUXLEY 11 

home in Lesbos, because they had failed to condemn Aias to death. 
We too are now suffering (in Lesbos, presumably), because we failed 
to stone a sinner to death.13 

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST 

December, 1968 

13 I am grateful to Mr J. N. Coldstream and to Mr James Grainger for reading a draft of 
this paper.