The Government of Troy: Politics in the "Iliad" Sale, William Merritt Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1994; 35, 1; ProQuest pg. 5

The Government of Troy: 
Politics in the Iliad 

William Merritt Sale 

I N RECENTLY PUBLISHED STUDIES of Homeric formulae I have 
called attention, on the basis of statistical evidence, to two 
facts about Homer's Trojans in the Iliad: 

(1) The nominative proper-name formulae used by the poet 
to refer to them display a remarkable lacuna: there are no 
frequently occurring, 'regular', formulae. 1 The other characters 
and peoples who are mentioned anything like as often as the 
Trojans all have regular formulae, usually more than one. We 
give the term 'regular formula' a quantitative definition, "exactly 
repeated six times or more," but the phenomenon is not mere­
ly quantitative; there are certain qualities that regular formulae 
have and that infrequently occurring formulae tend to lack. 
Most notable of these are their noun-epithet form (nominative 
proper-name noun-verb formulae all occur infrequently) and 
the occurrence of the formula in a major colon: 2 frequently oc­
curring formulae are noun-epithet and occupy major cola; infre­
quent formulae fall in minor cola, and the less frequently they 
occur, the more likely they are to fall in minor cola and to be 
noun-verbal in syntax. Hence the distinction between regular 
and infrequent formulae is qualitative, and the Trojans in the 
nominative lack something they ought to have, noun-epithet 
formulae used regularly to fill metrical spaces that the other 
characters have formulae to fill. A lack of regular formulae is 
significant; and the significance is statistically demonstrable.3 

1 w. M. Sale, "The Trojans, Statistics, and Milman Parry," GRBS 30 (1989) 
341-410. 

2 For the nominative proper nouns, I defined the major cola as those that 
run from the trochaic caesura, the hephthemimeral caesura, and the bucolic 
diaeresis to the end of the verse. Noun-verb formulae exist for oblique cases 
and common nouns. 

3 More will be found on the nature and behavior of regular formulae in W. 
M. Sale, "Homer and the Roland: The Shared Formular Technique," Oral 
Tradition 8.1-2 (1993) 87-142, 381-412. 

5 



6 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

(2) There is a corresponding and equally striking deficiency in 
some of the place-phrases for Troy.4 All the places in the Iliad 
that are mentioned with any frequency-the Greek camp, 
Olympus, the battlefield, the Troad, Troy-have plenty of for­
mulae for going to the place. Almost all of them have plenty of 
formulae for coming from it or being in it. The Greek camp is 
somewhat deficient in place-from-where formulae; but that de­
ficiency is nothing compared with the almost total absence of 
formulae for 'from Troy', and the presence of only a few infre­
quent formulae for 'in Troy'. Again, the lacuna is striking and 
statisticall y si gnifican t. 

These two formulary gaps are demonstrable facts, not impres­
sions. They cannot be dismissed as accidental: to do so is to ig­
nore what we mean by 'statistically significant'. They must be 
explained. The explanations I have offered are of course not the 
only ones possible; the study of history rarely vouchsafes us 
such certainties. But they will work and they afford a coherent 
picture of Homer engaged in his compositional task. s In 
summary: 

The absence of regular nominative proper-name formulae 
(no. 1 above) can be understood when we examine the few 
noun-epithet formulae in the nominative case that the Trojans 
do possess. Several epithets tend to express very negative quali­
ties: arrogance, insolence, disdain for civilized values. The 
words are very similar in tone to, and indeed two of them are 
identical with, the epithets used of the suitors in the Odyssey. 
As the Trojans in the Iliad do not appear to be notably disdain­
ful or insolent, it is predictable that these epithets are never ap-

4 W. M. Sale, "The Formularity of the Place-phrases in the Iliad, " TAPA 117 
(1987)21-50. 

5 Here, and throughout the paper, I use the word 'Homer' ambiguously. I 
have in mind always "the eighth-century poet who composed the Iliad (but 
not necessarily the Odyssey), probably orally." I am picturing an individual's 
creation of a fixed oral text (sit venia verbis), something that was dictated, 
either to a scribe or to a person, or group of people, who could preserve it 
literally in their memories. But most of what I say is compatible with the 
picture of a whole generation of poets bringing about the changes I ascribe to 
just one man. Moreover the text as produced in the eighth century, even if it 
was written down, must have suffered alteration afterwards; I assume that 
this alteration was slight enough that the meanings I ascribe to Homer 
survived, and that any changes in the percentages of formulaic expression 
were random enough not to affect the statistics. The statistics are not affected, 
and no meaning I ascribe to Homer is altered, so far as I am aware, if we 
remove the lines that appear to have come into the tradition after Aristarchus. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 7 

plied to the Trojans by Homer-by the narrator-himself, or 
by the Trojans or their allies. They are used only by the Greeks 
and the gods who favor the Greeks. If now we assume that in 
the pre-Homeric tradition the Trojans were referred to by 
these unflattering epithets in regular formulae, just as the 
Suitors in the Odyssey are still, the lacuna in Trojan formulae is 
easy to understand. Homer avoided them because he wanted 
his listeners to feel sympathy for the Trojans. The Greeks and 
their gods are free to use them, because the Trojans are the 
enemy; but even they do not use them with any frequency. 

That Homer wants us to sympathize with the Trojans, and 
that listeners and readers do so, is not a novel idea. Poets after 
Homer-Euripides, Vergil, Quintus, Chaucer, Shakespeare, for 
instance-have painted sympathetic portraits, even when they 
have been critical as well. The later poets are also not very flat­
tering to the Greeks, to the people that Homer called Achaeans. 
Just how well the Achaeans in the Iliad come off is arguable, but 
the Trojans are as attractive in Homer as they are in later 
authors. We all feel the appeal of Homer's Priam, of his An­
dromache, and (with reservations, perhaps) of his Hector. We 
agree with Zeus, who says that of all cities in the world, sacred 
Ilium and Priam and Priam's people are "honored in my heart 
the most" (4.44-47). We may stand alongside the Greeks most 
of the time; we may even be Greeks for the nonce, however 
we feel about them; but much of the poem's depth is due to its 
ability to make us compassionate towards the Trojans in their 
traged y. They are an essentially decent lot, but a flaw in their 
culture prevents them from returning Helen and making appro­
priate restitution. We do not feel this way about the Suitors as a 
group. They are not an essentially decent lot, though one or 
two of the Suitors may appeal at times. Nor is there, so far as I 
know, any large group of major later poets who sympathize 
with the Suitors; and I think that part of the reason for the rela­
tive popularity of the Trojans in later poetry is that Homer does 
not say, in regularly repeated formulae, how awful they are. 

Homer, we are saying, changed the character of the Trojans 
from insolent and hybristic to decent though flawed. Such a 
change can help explain the other lacuna, the gaps in the 
formulae for the Trojan place-phrases (no. 2 above). First, we 
observe that when the Iliad says "in Troy" or "from Troy" 
(non-formulaically or formulaically) the passage usually occurs 
in the midst of narrative action set inside the city: such phrases 
are usually used in Trojan scenes. When the action is set out-



8 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

side, the phrases are found much more rarely (one-seventeenth 
as often).6 We infer that the decision to locate the action inside 
the city is what gives rise to the occasion to say 'in' and 'from 
Troy'. Now, in our Iliad the Trojan scenes are one of the main 
sources of our sympathy for the city. There we meet Androm­
ache, there for the most part we come to know Priam, there we 
see Hector softened by intimate contact with his wife and child. 
If we were right (above) in supposing that Homer was first 
among the epic poets to paint the Trojans in compassionate 
colors, it would not be surprising if he were also the first to 
compose such a multitude of Trojan scenes, many of them 
quite long. He wants us to sympathize with Troy, and so brings 
us inside it frequently. His predecessors, who regularly called 
Trojans insolent and disdainful, probably had some Trojan 
scenes, but many fewer. As a result they will have said 'in Troy' 
and 'from Troy' much less often. And because formulae are 
normally developed only for ideas that poets refer to relatively 
frequently, they will not have developed formulae to express 
location in and egress from Troy. Despite what Parry some­
times suggests, the epic style is by no means 100% formulaic: 
even for those nouns that do display regular formulae, the 
average number of non-formulaic occurrences is 25%. 

The tradition did develop plenty of formulae for being in, 
leaving, and going to the Greek camp, Olympus, and the battle­
field, for that is where the action was. It developed some for 
'from the Greek camp', though not as many, perhaps because 
this idea was usually expressed 'to the battlefield' or 'to Troy'. It 
developed them for going to Troy city, because this is some­
thing you do outside the walls. It created extensive and elabor­
ate formulae for the future destruction of Troy, because you 
dreamt of this as you stood there outside the city alongside the 
Achaeans. Homer inherited and employs all of these; but he 
inherited no formulae for 'in' and 'from Troy'. As he composed 
his many and sometimes lengthy Trojan scenes, he either had to 
make up formulae (and we catch him doing this a few times), or 

6 It is possible to make a more conservative calculation than the one I gave 
in "Formularity" (supra n.4) 37: if we count Trojan scenes embedded in 
speeches spoken outside the city as not being genuine Trojan scenes, the 
density of 'in Troy' spoken inside is one in fifty-eight lines, the density of 
'from Troy' spoken inside is one in 109; the density of 'in Troy' spoken 
outside is one in 973 lines, of 'from Troy' spoken outside one in 1825. Even by 
this conservative calculation, for both 'in Troy' and 'from Troy' the density of 
occurrences inside the city is seventeen times as great. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 9 

else he had to employ non-formulaic references (something 
any good oral poet must be able to do). 

Our explanations for the formulaic lacunae seem to propose a 
complex set of developments; but the essential hypothesis is 
really very simple. We have made two suppositions about the 
pre-Homeric epic tradition: that it had few Trojan scenes, and 
that it thought of the Trojans as villains. As the Iliad has many 
Trojan scenes and does not characterize the Trojans as villain­
ous, the rest of the argument follows automatically. And the 
two suppositions give a highly coherent picture: the earlier 
poets gazed from the Trojan plain at the enemy city, with its fair 
walls and high towers and insolent denizens, and shared the 
Achaean desire to sack it. This is the picture offered by the for­
mulae: by the place-phrases, by the nominative-formulae for 
the Trojans, by the formulae for the destruction of Troy. It is al­
together suitable that the tradition should have looked at Troy 
this way; it accords not only with the way we all look at the 
Suitors in the Odyssey, but with the view of the enemy in such 
later epics as the Song of Roland and Avdo's Wedding of 
Meho. But it is not Homer's Troy. Homer wants us to come in­
side the city with him so that we may meet Andromache, who 
cannot leave the city, and Priam who can leave it only under ex­
traordinary circumstances; and so that we may see Hector in 
his domestic setting. He wants us inside so that we can come to 
know the whole city, not just its citizen-warriors. And apart 
from such emotional needs, Homer must bring us inside to 
show us something of how the Trojans govern, or fail to gov­
ern, themselves, so that their hamartia -their inability to return 
Helen and achieve an honorable peace-can be made evident. 

Once inside, we notice that the government and economy of 
Troy are not the same as the government and economy of the 
Achaeans (the Achaeans in the Iliad, that is, for the Trojans do 
bear some resemblance to the Ithacans in the Odyssey). The 
lliadic Achaean states-the Myrmidons, the Pylians, the Mycen­
aeans-are absolute monarchies with a military economy and a 
warrior class. The city of Troy (perhaps unlike its allies) is an oli­
garchy or aristocracy with a weak king; it is dominated by a 
Council of Elders, and lacks a warrior-class: with rare excep­
tions its men all have peace-time occupations. The Trojan 
hamartia resides in the system: some members of the Council 
of Elders can be bribed, and this is why Troy falls. I wish to set 
out this state of affairs and to explain, by invoking the same 
hypothesis I have already adduced for the two formulaic 



10 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

lacunae, Homer's desire to depict Troy as a tragic hero. We 
attribute yet another detail to the tradition: the pre-Homeric 
Trojans were not only insolent but were ruled, like the 
Achaeans, by an absolute monarch. As Homer cast the Trojans 
in a kindlier light, he also changed their form of government to 
one that permitted them to be the tragic victims of the city's 
hamartia, the corruptibility of their Elders. 

There is nothing violent in this addition to our previous 
assumptions. Many formulae refer to the" city of Priam" and to 
"king Priam"; they speak of "Priam and the sons of Priam" as if 
they were the Trojans; so strident is the message of these for­
mulae that I suspect most readers picture Priam as possessing 
much more power than the poem actually allots him. The gap 
between the Troy of the formulae and Troy as otherwise 
depicted needs to be explained. (A gap, not a contradiction: 
Troy is still the city of Priam, only Priam is now a very weak 
king.) We begin the explanation by supposing that the formulae 
give us the traditional government, a monarchy in which Priam 
ruled the Trojans with the same authority that Achilles has over 
the Myrmidons. As these are haughty and arrogant Trojans, we 
suppose them to be ruled by an equally arrogant Priam. Now 
Homer enters the scene. Seeking to make the Trojans tragic, he 
might have retained a villainous Priam and let Troy's inability to 
check Priam's insolence be its hamartia. But it is too easy for 
listeners to take a king as symbolic of the people, especially in 
an absolute monarchy; nor can Homer make Paris into the sole 
villain, unless Paris also has overwhelming political power-and 
this seems impossible to bring about in the "city of Priam." So 
instead Paris becomes one aspect of Troy's hamartia, a man 
who puts legitimate self-interest ahead of his fellow-citizens' 
equally legitimate interests, while Priam becomes Homer's ve­
hicle for what is best in Troy: kindness, gentleness, sympathy, 
love-love even for the most reprehensible of his fellows, Paris 
and Helen. Homer cannot permit Priam to retain absolute au­
thority, or else, despite his love for Paris, he must out of love 
for his people insist on Helen's return and deprive the poet of 
his Iliad. And so Priam becomes a good man sitting on a largely 
symbolic throne, and power is allotted to a Council of demoger­
antes that includes Priam but whose key members are corrup­
ted by Paris' bribery. This weakness in the system-the corrup­
tibility of the Council-makes an exceeding useful tragic flaw. 

Again, by imagining alternatives and supplying reasoning, we 
seem to be proposing a complex process of change from the 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 11 

tradition to Homer; but again the essential hypothesis is simple. 
We have already supposed that the poets before Homer de­
picted the Trojans as villainous; if so, their king was no doubt 
just as bad. The whole lot of them, from Priam on down, were 
what Menelaus (understandably from his point of view) thinks 
they still are (13.620-39), so arrogant and fond of war that they 
think nothing of stealing a man's wife and fighting to keep her. 
All we add now is the supposition, on the basis of analogy with 
the Achaeans and such formulae as "the city of Priam," that this 
insolent and haughty pre-Homeric Priam was an absolute ruler. 
As before, this is not what we observe in the Iliad; and again we 
attribute the difference to Homer's desire to create a tragic and 
sympathetic city. That Priam in the Iliad is a king without great 
political authority, and that the Trojan demogerontes are the 
real rulers of Troy, is a straightforward interpretation of the 
Iliad that this paper will set forth. It may appear to be a some­
what surprising-at least I have never seen it stated as such­
though it cannot come as a total surprise, because every pas­
sage I discuss is similarly understood by some or all of the 
authorities I have consulted.? Given this straightforward inter­
pretation, the rest of the argument is extremely simple. 

There are several reasons why the importance of the Trojan 
Elders has not been stated before. The formulaic lacunae were 
hitherto unobserved, and therefore the inference that Homer 
had changed the portrait of the Trojans remained undrawn. The 
old formulae, "city of Priam" and the rest, were taken to imply 
that Troy had a powerful absolute monarchy-as, in the tradi­
tion, it no doubt did. Also most scholars have tended to assume 
a uniform 'Homeric society', perhaps feeling that Homer, that 
oral poets generally, were not capable of the complexities en­
tailed by the current interpretation. Because the Achaean states 
are manifestly monarchical, Troy was assumed to follow suit. 
Above all, the intellectual force of the creation of the polis has 

7 For the poem as a whole these authorities are: R. J. CUNLIFFE, A Lexicon of 
the Homeric Dialect (Norman 1980) and Homeric Proper and Place Names 
(London 1931: hereafter 'Cunliffe, Place Names'); Thesaurus Linguae 
Graecae; Lexikon des fruhgriechischen Epos (Gottingen 1955-91: hereafter 
'LfgrE'); LSJ; K. f. AMEIS and C. HENTZE, edd., Homers Ilias6 (Leipzig 
1903-06: hereafter' Ameis-Hentze); G. S. KIRK et aI., edd., The Iliad: A 
Commentary (Cambridge 1985-92: hereafter 'Kirk'): Books 1-8 by Kirk, 
13-16 by R. Janko, 17-20 by M. W. Edwards; W. Leaf, The Iliad (London 
1900-02); P. Mazon, Homere, I/iade (Paris 1946-47); D. B. Munro, Homer, 
Iliad (repr. Oxford 1953); M. M. Willcock, The Iliad of Homer (New York 
1978-84). 



12 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

not been sufficiently appreciated, the fact that Homer could see 
that the minds of his contemporaries and their fathers had 
brought to birth a new political entity, and that a variety of 
social structures was therefore a human possibility.8 

We now have three suppositions about Troy in the pre-Ho­
meric tradition: villainous Trojans, few Trojan scenes, absolute 
monarchy. Let us note an important methodological difference 
between the process that leads to this third supposition as op­
posed to the first two. The formulaic lacunae are scientifically 
verifiable facts: visual signifiers of such-and-such a shape are 
wanting, and the lack is statistically significant. From these scien­
tific facts we drew historical inferences: Homer added Trojan 
scenes and suppressed regular formulae. These inferences im­
ply authorial intention-the desire to have us sympathize with 
Troy and see its fate as tragic-and the statement that Homer 
cherished this desire, though conjectural, is conjecturing a his­
torical fact. In positing a change in Trojan government, we are 
still implying the same authorial intention. But we have been 
led to this third step not by scientific fact, but by literary inter­
pretation. The statement that in our Iliad Troy has an oligarchi­
calor aristocratic government does not yield to statistical dem­
onstration; it emerges from the evaluation of signifieds, not the 
counting and comparing of signifiers. Like any literary interpre­
tation, it is quite at the mercy of critical and scholarly response. 
Granted, some of the evidence it rests on is hard to dispute, 
such as the statement that Paris bribed Antimachus to oppose 
the return of Helen (11.123ff). Granted too, the fact that the 
interpretation suits a reasonable theory of authorial intention 
adds to its appeal. But a scholar could, without contradiction, 

8 Of course Homer's Dark Age predecessors knew that the communities 
they lived in were very different from Mycenae rich in gold, and they believed 
that men of old could throw much larger rocks; but since they could not 
observe the mind at work in the creation of the polis, they are less likely to 

have been able to appreciate in depth the differences in political structure 
between then and now. They were politically naive, as Homer is not. I am 
suggesting, and will soon state, that I think Homer modeled Troy upon the 
newly created polis. 

It is perhaps worth pointing out that the view that Trojan society differs 
from the Achaean was actually arrived at long before I knew anything about 
statistics (or indeed very much about the theory of oral composition), long 
before I saw the resemblance between Trojan and contemporary society, and 
long before I had evolved any theory of Homeric intention beyond the view 
that he added Book 9 and 19 to the tradition so that Achilles could question 
and reject the heroic code. See my "Achilles and Heroic Values," Arion 2.3 
(1963) 96ff. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 13 

agree that Homer intended us to sympathize with the Trojans 
and still dispute the literary interpretation of Troy's political 
situation.9 

The statement that Homer intended us to sympathize with 
Troy-does this not arouse certain literary inquietudes? Is the 
Iliad, despite its title, not a poem about the Wrath of Achilles? 
Are not its values heroic? How can we speak of a tragedy of 
Troy with Achilles occupying stage center so much of the 
time? To respond, perhaps too briefly: the plot of the poem 
(not its subject) is indeed given by the Wrath theme, and 
Achilles is the most important individual in the poem. And we 
are interested in heroism, though perhaps we are even more 
interested in the varieties of love that dominate Achilles' 
heroism after Book 9. If, however, Achilles is in stage center 
more than Hector, he is not on stage more than the Trojans 
generally. We can be deeply moved both by his tragedy and by 
his search for love, and still moved by Troy's plight. It is a long 
poem, with room for much more than heroism and wrath. 

The tragedy of Troy may be somewhat harder for us to see, 
but I do not think that it was harder for Homer's initial audi­
ence. Troy-its physical features, its government, its econ­
omy-was much more familiar to them than it is to us. For 
them it would be perfectly natural for Homer to begin, as he 
does, with Achilles and end, as he does, with Troy. They can 
appreciate the Wrath, and also appreciate the City. For them 
the title of the poem would be perfectly apt. 

To justify this last assertion, and to make clear why an Iliad 
was born where earlier an Achilleid may have stood, we need 
to take a further step, and assert that the government and 
economy of Troy in the Iliad reflects the government and econ­
omy of an eighth-century polis. 10 This step, not without its 
perils, requires leaving the literary universe, with its facts about 

9 Thus demonstrating the dangers in conunitting the intentional fallacy: not 
only are there good interpretations not intended by the author, but there may 
be a variety of interpretations consistent with a given intention. Still, if we 
have an interpretation that we like, and if it can be shown to fit what the 
author intended, it is only human to point that out. See also n.23 infra. 

10 The recent arguments of H. van Wees for an early seventh-century date 
for the Iliad are not without force; see his "The Homeric Way of War I, II," 
GaR 41 (1994) 1-18,131-55, and Status Warriors (Amsterdam 1992) 54-58, 
157-62, 253-58. I do not think this date would affect my position much; 
indeed some historical parallels would be strengthened. But it is far safer to 
assume that the earlier date, and the numerous arguments for it, are correct. 



14 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

the Iliad's signifiers and its interpretations of the Iliad's signi­
fieds and its relatively simple assumptions about the pre-Ho­
meric epic tradition and reconstruction of Homer's intentions, 
in order to turn to eighth-century physical and political history. 
This is a matter that we know much less about than we do 
about any later century in Greek antiquity, or about the late 
Mycenaeans, for the obvious reason that we have almost no 
writing dating to that century. 

We have Homer, of course, and historians have tended to 
draw upon Homer freely in order to compensate for the ab­
sence of other sources. This procedure runs grave risks-ex­
cept in one area, the Homeric similes. The similes depict a gen­
eralized present; they claim to refer to a world with which the 
audience is familiar; and as I read them, they do refer to such a 
world. "The warrior acted," says the poet, "like a lion descen­
ding upon the herd." This pretends to illuminate the less 
familiar from the more familiar; and if it did not, if it could be as­
sumed that no one in the audience had any experience of preda­
tory lions, the poet would be indulging a kind of irony that I 
find foreign to the oral epic style. 11 In contrast, the world that is 
being illuminated, the world of the epic narrative, is a composite 
of objects, events, and institutions that may belong to any era 
from the early Mycenaean down to the eighth century, or to a 
world entirely fictional. I shall develop this statement in a mo­
ment; for now I want only to insist that we cannot label a detail 
in the narrative world 'historical' unless additional evidence 
locates it in the world outside the text. The similes constitute 
such evidence. We also have some literary sources other than 
Homer, and we have archaeology. In the absence of evidence 
from at least one of these three outside sources, we are groping 
in the dark, and can easily assign a detail to the wrong century, 
or wrongly assume that a piece of fiction corresponds to fact. 

The view that we cannot use Homer's narrative world for his­
torical purposes without further corroboration may appear to 
be Pyrrhonian skepticism, but it in fact follows naturally from 
statements made recently by two British archaeologists. A. M. 
Snodgrass offers a careful discussion of the world of Homer, in 
which he maintains that there are only two "positively and 

11 In contrast, say, to the irony of Od. 13.248f, where the audience and 
Athena know what Odysseus knows in part (and the "shepherd boy" does 
not know at all) that Athena disguised as the shepherd is saying that Ithaca's 
reputation has reached Troy-saying it to the very man who brought the 
name of Ithaca to Troy. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 15 

widely identifiable historical 'strata'" in the Homeric world, the 
full Mycenaean and the eighth century (for the Iliad)Y Snod­
grass surely means that this positive and wide identification has 
depended upon matching details of the Homeric world with 
archaeological (and perhaps other external) evidence. When he 
goes on to say that the "Homeric political system, like other 
Homeric pictures, is an artificial amalgam of widely separated 
historical stages," his position is very close to what my investiga­
tion will conclude, except that I shall speak of "political sys­
tems" in the plural, and attribute one, the Trojan, to the eighth 
century, and another, that of the Achaeans in the Iliad, partly to 
the Mycenaean age and partly to fiction. Snodgrass goes on to 
speak of the contribution of the Homeric poems as being "of 
priceless worth for eighth-century Greece if it is sifted carefully 
enough" (395); I agree, if by "sifting" we mean the process of 
corroboration that I think essential. 

An effort to avoid the need for such corroboration and to as­
sert that the institutions depicted in oral poetry are inevitably 
and necessarily contemporary with the poet and his audience 
was made in 1968 by Snodgrass' student, Ian Morris.13 This 
stance, ostensibly comparatist but in fact virtually a priori, is 
ironically similar to that of M. 1. Finley when he states that the 
Homeric world "is to be placed in time, as everything we know 
from the comparative study of heroic poetry says it must"; or 
when he points to the gap between history and the events of 
the Chanson de Roland to argue against the historicity of Ho­
mer's picture of the Trojan War; or when he adopts the view 
that the Roland is "not contemporary in its social conditions, its 
politics, or its details of war and warriors" but depicts "the 
France of about a century before the poet's own time" as ana­
logical support for his opinion that the Iliad and Odyssey do not 
reflect contemporary conditions. 14 Morris has some good criti­
cism of Finley, but both of them say far too little about the de­
tails of oral poetry to claim legitimately that their positions really 
are comparatist. They are intuitive: Finley feels that heroic 
poetry avoids excessive contemporaneity out of a need "to re­
tain the 'once upon a time' image" (48); and because oral poetry 
is "constantly recreated" (87), Morris is convinced that it must 
depict contemporary "institutions and modes of thought" (82); 

12 A. M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh 1971) 389. 
13 I. Morris, "The Use and Abuse of Homer," CIAnt 5 (1986) 81-138. 
14 M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus2 (New York 1979) 47f. 



16 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

and each points uncritically to oral poetry to support an essen­
tially a priori stance. In looking away from ancient Greece, Fin­
ley scarcely goes beyond the Roland and Bowra's Heroic 
Poetry, while Morris discusses no demonstrably oral poems, 
preferring instead to cite authority, inaccurately and mis­
leadingly.15 He does refer to the Song of Roland, which he 
thinks might be a problem for him if it were orally composed; 
he asserts that it was not, citing Bowra as his authority and re­
vealing virtually total ignorance of discussions of the problem 
by medievalists, especially Joseph Duggan's statistical argu­
ments for the oral composition of the Roland. 16 He omits en­
tirely any reference to Avdo Medgedovich's Wedding of 
Meho, which is an especial pity, for we know for certain that it 
was orally composed. The political institutions in this poem 
reflect those of Bosnia under the Ottomans, and bear very little 
resemblance to Yugoslavia in 1935. Morris is unaware of Sveto-

15 For instance: R. Finnegan in the course of reminding us that oral litera­
ture involves not just a text that we can examine at leisure, but also its 
performance, says: "Differently performed, or performed at a different time, or 
to a different audience or by a different singer, it is a different poem. In this 
sense, an oral poem is an essentially ephemeral work of art, and has no 
existence or continuity apart from its performance" (Oral Poetry [Cambridge 
1977J 28). Morris (supra n.13: 87) omits the first sentence and the first three 
words of the second, and reports "an oral poem is an essentially ephemeral 
work of art, and has no existence or continuity apart from its performance," 
leaving the reader with the impression that Finnegan is denying even the 
existence of an oral tradition, which she is very far from doing. On the next 
page she says: "In this respect, oral literature differs from our implicit model of 
written literature: the mode of communication to a silent reader, through the 
eye alone, from a definitive written text. Oral literature is more flexible and 
more dependent on its social context." Therefore, she goes on, a discussion of 
oral poetry must always take account of its performance, its audience, its 
performer. Nothing is said here about oral poetry reflecting contemporary 
institutions. But these words are supposed to be testimony against the "long­
term transmission of dead institutions within a tradition of constantly re­
created oral poetry"; in an effort to make them into this, Morris strips the two 
sentences down to "oral literature is ... dependent on its social context," and 
hopes that we will take this to mean that oral literature cannot talk about any 
society except the one it is composed in. 

There are other errors in this article, some of them very important; but its 
weaknesses should not affect our judgement of Morris' very interesting book, 
Burial and Ancient Society (Cambridge 1987), with its exciting effort to 
correlate the rise of the polis with the burial remains (171-210). 

16 J. Duggan, The Song of Roland: Formulaic Style and Poetic Craft 
(Berkeley 1973). Recent mathematical work of my own goes a long way to 
confirm Duggan: see supra n.3. The latter was of course published too recently 
for Morris to use, but Duggan's book is a classic. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 17 

zar Koljevich's The Epic in the Making, which shows how a 
body of poetry, known to be oral, at times reflects contem­
porary society, at times earlier society, and at times a blend of 
societies. Koljevich is able to determine reasonably well what is 
contemporary and what is earlier, and how much earlier, be­
cause we have a fair amount of information about medieval and 
renaissance Serbia and are even relatively well-informed about 
later periodsY It is just not the case that all oral poetry depicts 
contemporary institutions; a priori, Homer can be depicting 
any societies that he might reasonably know about, from 
Bronze Age Mycenae through the eighth century, as well as 
societies quite fictional: witness the 'society' of the Cyclopes in 
the Odyssey. 

Morris' effort to obviate the need for outside evidence, and its 
failure, should make us all the more conscious of that need; it 
drives us back to Snodgrass' perception of what is positively 
and widely identifiable. Even when we do possess outside evi­
dence, we can expect to make mistakes; but there turn out to 
be so many parallels between Homeric Troy and the eighth cen­
tury that we are not likely to be wholly mistaken in seeing a 
likeness. Steven Scully singles out four aspects of Troy that sug­
gest the contemporary Ionian polis: "the city enclosure of the 
entire population, city temples, wall as absolute visual boun­
dary, contemporary (eighth-century) construction."18 To these 
physical features I would add the seated statue of the goddess in 
the temple. 19 I also think it probable that the government and 
economy of the Trojans belong to the eighth century: we have 
parallels to the kingship, the Council of Demogerontes, the 
Assembly, the diverse peacetime occupations. I agree with 
Scully (100-13) that the idea of individual subordination to the 
interests of the polis is part of the picture of Troy; I would add 
to that picture the contrary idea, that the polis is unable to force 
its will upon its citizens, at least upon the members of powerful 
oikoi; and it seems to me likely that both these ideas were 
deeply ingrained in the political life of the emerging eighth-cen­
tury city-state. Note carefully that we are not committed to the 
view that Troy reflects a contemporary but not an older cul­
ture. If any of these institutions can be shown to belong to the 

17 S. Koljevich, The Epic in the Making (Oxford 1980). 
18 S. Scully, Homer and the Sacred City (Ithaca 1990) 88. 
19 Sale (supra n.4) 38; Kirk on 6.90ff. 



18 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Dark Ages or any other era, so be it, as long as they are not 
denied to the eighth century. 

I spoke above of agreeing with Snodgrass that Homer reflects 
both the contemporary and Mycenaean worlds, and of the 
Achaeans in the Iliad as reflecting Mycenae: an idealized version 
of Mycenae, with many details missing, i.e., Mycenae heroized. 
The opinion that there are two Homeric societies in the Iliad 
(and perhaps still others in the Odyssey) is unusual; most his­
torians prefer to speak of a "Homeric society,» a single entity 
found in both poems. 20 This has been thought to be cohesive 
and coherent, but not historical, a poetic fiction (A. MacIn­
tyre).21 Or it has been thought to lack coherence and cohesive­
ness, and to be un historical (A. A. Long). It has been thought to 
lack cohesiveness and to be an amalgam drawn from several 
historical periods (T. B. L. Webster, G. S. Kirk, Snodgrass). It 
has been thought to lack cohesiveness and to reflect a historical 
situation that was not cohesive.22 And it has been felt to be co­
hesive and coherent and to belong mostly to a given era: the 
Mycenaean,23 the years from 1200 to 1000 (A. Andrewes), the 
years from 1000-800 (M. I. Finley, A. W. H. Adkins), the eighth 
century (Morris: supra n.15), or later. 24 

Those scholars (above) who sense a lack of cohesiveness in 
'Homeric Society' have ordinarily not identified more than one 
society within the poems. Others, however, are convinced that 
the world of the Odyssey is different from that of the Iliad. 25 I 
myself think that there are both resemblances and dissimi­
larities, but I have deliberately postponed a full investigation in 
order to make sure that we do not allow the Odyssey to color 
our picture of the Iliad. We cannot be sure that the Odyssey 
was composed by the author of the Iliad; even if it was, it was 

20 Perhaps I should say 'three societies', for the Lycians and Trojans do not 
appear to have the same form of government. But the Lycians may not differ 
from the Achaeans; Sarpedon relates (12.310-21) the foundations of their 
society to the heroic code as we know it from Achaean culture. 

21 Sources for this and most of the following views can be found in A. M. 
Snodgrass, "An Historical Homeric Society?" JUS 94 (1974) 114-25; I shall 
give full reference only for those opinions not to be found there. 

22 A. J. M. Whitley, "Social Diversity in Dark Age Greece," BSA 86 (1991) 
341-65. 

23 E.g. M. P. Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae (Philadelphia 1933) 218. 
H M. Skafte Jensen, The Homeric Question and the Oral-formulaic Theory 

(Copenhagen 1980) 167-71. 
25 E.g. D. L. Page, The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford 1955) 157. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 19 

probably composed later; and there is no necessary reason why 
its use of social history should correspond to the Iliad's. When, 
for instance, we hear Odysseus boast about his skill at plowing 
(18.366-75), or with the bow and arrow at Troy (8.215-20), we 
are struck by the contrast with the heroic warrior in the Iliad; 
we can try to reconcile the data, but there is no good reason to 
do so (see also 49, 82 infra). Naturally when we try to recon­
struct a total picture of the Achaeans in the Iliad our thoughts 
turn to the Odyssey, but we must resist, except to point out a 
likeness or a difference already established. After throughly 
studying the societies in both poems, we may decide that there 
are important likenesses; but it ought to be a strictly a posteriori 
decision. 

In identifying social differences between cultures within the 
poems, my stance is close to Scully's (supra 17). For example, 
Scheria in the Odyssey bears a close resemblance to poleis of 
Homer's time, especially Old Smyrna and Oikonomos (Scully 
87), but on Ithaca as the Odyssey gives it to us, the polis is rela­
tively insignificant (102f) and the oikos predominates. Troy in 
the Iliad, as we saw earlier, is a polis. Scully does not say a great 
deal about the culture of the Achaeans in the Iliad. But he does 
stress that because they are the attackers of the polis and the 
Trojans the defenders, their values and psychology will be 
different; and indeed they live in a different community, one 
lacking wives and children (110).26 

That the Achaeans in the Iliad differ from the Trojans is far 
more important to my argument than the question of what 
society they may derive from. If they should one day prove to 
be wholly fictional, or to belong to the period of the Ionian 
migration, that makes no essential difference. But if they are not 
distinguished from the Trojans, then what the Trojans actually 
are will be lost, and the resemblances the Trojans bear to the 
eighth-century Greek polis will be less meaningful. The 
Achaeans, and especially Achilles, maintain an epic distance; the 
Trojans and Hector are closer to us and especially to the eighth­
century audience. Thus certain apparent similarities-both have 
Elders, both have l3uolA:i1Ec; and aVa1('tEc;-can be very mis­
leading, and I shall therefore be discussing the Achaeans as well 
as the Trojans in great detail. 

26 I have slightly revised Scully's statement, which is that Achilles' com­
munity does not include "women and children." 



20 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Only after the picture of each society is fully drawn do we ask 
the question whether it resembles any particular period. Before 
that, we are doing literary criticism, and of a strictly new-critical 
sort. We cannot bring in political, social, or even physical his­
tory to support an interpretation; such a procedure would be an 
obvious petitio principii, because we are seeking to determine 
what historical period, if any, a given detail in the Iliad suits. We 
can hardly say, 'In this passage Homer resembles the eighth cen­
tury,' when we have introduced the eighth century to interpret 
the passage. Nor can we bring in authorial intention; we are 
trying to establish authorial intention. Nor can we speak of 
initial-audience reaction; that too we are attempting, in part, to 
recreate. Nor can we refer freely to epic tradition, as we are 
engaged in isolating differences between Homer and the tradi­
tion. Granted, there are probably cases where we cannot 
proceed in literary interpretation without invoking history: in 
getting at the basic meaning, for instance, of such terms as 
~a<JlA£U<;. yEPOV't£<;. ~O,\)A", we may need to go outside the Iliad. 
But we want to reduce such egress to an absolute minimum; we 
"tread the circle warily,» and only when we must. 27 Mostly we 
let the poem supply the data. 

There are, I suspect, scholars who are convinced that any in­
terpretation of the data within the poem must be supported by 
historical data from without: either by what the author in­
tended, or by the response of the original audience, or by the 
epic tradition, or by the institutions of contemporary or earlier 
worlds. Threatened by the multitude of interpretative possi­
bilities thrown open by post-structuralist theory, they naturally 
turn outside the text in the hope of objectivity. Certainly some 
places in the following pages present a choice of interpretations. 
But given the uses to which we wish to put our interpretations, 
we must go ahead and trust our judgements-aided by reason 
and by the opinions of other scholars (as in supra n.7). Most of 
us probably do this anyway: few are prepared to abandon an 
attractive interpretation in the face of a historical fact, even an 

27 See A. E. Housman, "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism," 
Proceedings of the Classical Association 18 (1922) 67ff (= ]. Carter, ed., A. E. 
Housman, Selected Prose [Cambridge 1961] 131-50; cf. 145). A good 
discussion of Housman's point may be found in D. Kovacs, "Treading the 
Circle Warily," TAPA 117(1987)257-70. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SA LE 21 

author's intention. 28 In the current enterprise, at least, we have 
no choice. 

1. The Achaeans in the Field 

Agamemnon is in charge of an alliance of individual contin­
gents led by such chieftains as Nestor, Diomedes, Idomeneus, 
Menelaus, Achilles, and all the others who have brought groups 
of soldiers in ships to Troy. The Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 
lists these contingents: they are drawn from twenty-nine separ­
ate regions of Greece, and all twenty-nine are presented as poli­
tically independent of each other. Agamemnon's contingent is 
the largest, and Agamemnon is the best of the heroes; but there 
is no suggestion that he rules anyone except the Mycenaeans 
and the others mentioned at 2.569-80. These are Agamemnon's 
subjects; we have just heard about Diomedes' subjects, and 
next we shall be told about Menelaus' subjects. Not a whisper 
of any overarching authority. 

But on campaign, during the life of the Trojan expedition, Aga­
memnon is, in some sense, the commander-in-chief. If the ex­
pedition fails, his will be the shame (2.285); if it succeeds, his will 
be the glory (4.415). We would like to define his role more pre­
cisely, and we would like to see whether this role actually does 
reflect a political situation back home that is obscured by the 
Catalogue. We would therefore like to know how much 
authority Agamemnon has in three relationships: over his own 
contingent, over the other chieftains' troops, and over the other 
chieftains. We shall find (stating the matter summarily) that in 
the first relationship, over his own contingent, Agamemnon's 
rule is absolute. In the second. over the troops of the other 
chieftains themselves, he has no political power at all, though 
we assume that he can give orders on the battlefield. In the 
third, over the other chieftains, there is uncertainty. At times 

28 It is precisely when someone seeks to rule out an interpretation because 
the author did not intend it that we should refer to the intentional fallacy, 
and listen to the wise words of Thomas Mann on the subject: "I consider it a 
mistake to think that the author himself is the best judge of his work .... 
Others, as time goes on, will know more and better about it than he." If 
Mann can say this about a work he labored over for many years, how much 
the more true must it be for a work produced in a few hours or days of com­
position in performance, where the poet cannot possibly intend everything he 
says. See 1. Mann, The Magic Mountain, tr. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York 
1969) 725, in an author's note entitled "The Making of The Magic Mountain." 



22 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

we are offered an ideal in which Agamemnon rules absolutely, 
at least during the course of the campaign, but mostly we can 
see that his authority is limited by a gentleman's agreement: any 
decision concerning the expedition as a whole must be made by 
Agamemnon, frequently after receiving advice from the others; 
but the other leaders are not necessarily expected to obey that 
decision if it undermines their own legitimate self-interest, or 
the interests of the expedition; and if one leader defies Agamem­
non out of self-interest, the other leaders are expected to con­
tinue to support Agamemnon without condemning the defiant 
leader. 

Let us look more closely at the data. The first relationship, 
Agamemnon vis-a-vis his own contingent, is never brought in­
to question or tested, but we can infer, from analogy and from 
his power back home, that his authority is total. First the 
analogy: we see from the strict obedience given by the Myrmi­
dons to Achilles, despite their grumbling (16.204-07), that Achil­
les' sway is complete. His men are bitterly unhappy over being 
left out of the fight, and make accusations and threaten to leave 
for home; some of these men are high-born indeed, sprung 
from the river Spercheius or the god Hermes; and yet there is 
never the least hint of their really disobeying, and returning 
either to battle or to Greece. Note that Achilles' decision to 
withdraw, and his later reversal, are political, not military: the 
men are under orders in and out of battle; for the life of the 
expedition, at least, Achilles is a monarch. Agamemnon's author­
ity over the Mycenaeans must be no less than this. Second, 
Agamemnon's power back home is unchallenged: he can give 
away whole cities to Achilles if he chooses (9.149-56). His rule 
over his own contingent, like Achilles' over his, is thus not 
merely military, but political: he too is an absolute monarch. 

The second relationship, Agamemnon vis-a-vis the troops of 
the other contingents, is also never brought into question, and 
must be indirectly inferred. Clearly he has no political authority 
off the battlefield; the Myrmidons obey Achilles, and no one 
remotely suggests that they could obey anyone else even if 
they chose. But while the troops are being arrayed for battle, 
they are grouped by contingent under their own leaders, in­
spected, and supervised by Agamemnon and at times the 'YEPOV­
't~ (2.445-84). Agamemnon is the supreme commander in 
Book 4, during the Epipolesis. On the battlefield, we therefore 
assume that (so far as anyone is in charge) it is Agamemnon. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 23 

Van Wees, to be sure, has recently shown that preparation for 
battle is one thing, battle itself another: 

In the preparation for battle we find a hierarchy of bands, 
sections and contingents, all with their respective com­
manders. On top of this there is a commander for the army 
as a whole: Agammemmnon inspects all the Greek contin­
gents. But in the battle itself the entire structure disappears, 
and only the leaders of the smallest units are visible.29 

Still, we hear Agamemnon urge on the men as a whole in 5.529, 
11.154, 165 (though Nestor can do this also, when Agamemnon 
is busy killing, 6.67-71). Lines 11.264-79 show him ranging the 
army until his wound is too much for him, then giving a final 
order to all the Danaans. He docs not appoint anyone to take his 
place; seemingly he is not doing a job that requires, or at any rate 
gets, a deputy. Still, he may have been filling a real need: Posei­
don leads the Achaeans for most of Books 13 and 14; and in 
14.133f Diomedes suggests that he and Odysseus and Agamem­
non, though wounded, ought to drive the men on. In any case 
we infer from the battle-preparation scenes that if Agamemnon 
should give orders to anyone while the battle is raging, they 
would be expected to obey. 

The third relationship, Agamemnon's power over the other 
chieftains, is not only brought into question, but in being ques­
tioned provides the main plot of the poem. On the one hand, 
Agamemnon can take away Achilles' YEPW;, apparently implying 
that his authority is absolute. Agamemnon, says Nestor, is the 
a.va~ of hosts, to whom Zeus has given a scepter and the right 
to issue ordinances (9.98f). Earlier Nestor admonishes Achilles: 
"Do not wish to strive against a ~acrlA£uc; face to face, since a 
scepter-holding ~acrlA£uc; never has a like share of honor, a ~acrt­
A£UC; to whom Zeus traditionally (1£) gives KUOOC;" (1.279).30 "Let 
there be one KOtpaVoc;, one ~acrlA£uc;," urges Odysseus in 
2.204ff. 

29 H. van Wees, "Leaders of Men? Military Organization in the Iliad," CQ 
N.S. 36 (1986) 292. 

30 Thus all the commentators I have regularly employed who discuss the sen­
tence at all; Kirk's silence is presumably assent. But van Leeuwen's translation 
has the merit of not opposing" scepter-holding ~aO"tA£u<;" to Achilles, who is 
presumably a scepter-holding ~a<HAl:u<; as well (cf 2.86): "nam inter reges, quos 
Iuppiter laude ornavit, nullus umquam tanto honore polluit" (quoted in LdfgE 
5.'0.). 



24 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

On the other hand, Achilles can withdraw himself and his 
troops from the battle with impunity, implying that Agamem­
non's authority is limited. Nor is this simply a matter of the 
might of the best warrior; it is his right. Phoenix, the other elder 
statesman, approves of Achilles' initial withdrawal: if Agamem­
non were not offering gifts, he would not urge Achilles to re­
turn to battle (9.515-18). Agamemnon twice says later that he 
himself was at fault (aucra~ Tlv), and casts no blame upon Achil­
les (9.115-20, 19.134-41). He refers to the insults and abuse that 
the Achaeans leveled at himself, without blaming them, either; 
indeed he accepts the justice of their criticisms when he says 
that he was not rea II y responsible, Ut'tlo<;: it was the fault of Zeus, 
Moira, and an Erinys (19.85ff). He does not even say that Achil­
les was wrong to have turned down the gifts; he does not imply 
that Achilles was obligated to return to battle after the embassy 
in Book 9. He wipes out the very suggestion by giving all the 
gifts again (19.137-44); he even insists on waiting to go back to 
battle until Achilles has the gifts (19.190f). We think back to 
Phoenix's fears that Achilles' honor will be less if he delays his 
return (9.605), and ask why in book 19 Homer is undermining 
Phoenix. Amongst the various reasons, one is the poet's almost 
strident insistence that the moral relationship between Achilles 
and Agamemnon has not changed since the beginning of Book 
9. Phoenix presumably thought that it would, that Agamemnon 
would withdraw his offer; but Phoenix was mistaken. Indeed his 
exemplum was not well chosen: Meleager was a citizen of Caly­
don, a subject of the Elders who offer the gifts (9.574-80); 
Achilles is not a subject of any kingdom of Agamemnon's. 

Nestor too, for all his praise of a scepter-holding king, blames 
Agamemnon: he "dishonored the best of men, though the gods 
honored him" (9.110f). Athena concurs: Achilles has described 
the threat to take away Briseis as Uppt<; (1.203), and this is exactly 
what she calls it (1.214). He is not to kill Agamemnon, but she 
foresees, with approval, his withdrawal from the battle and the 
ensuring embassy: "Tell him in insulting words how it will be 
... , " i.e., go ahead and withdraw; "Some day you will have be­
side you three times as many shining gifts," i.e., there will be an 
embassy (1.21lff). Zeus backs Achilles: whatever his motives, 
his support of Achilles after he withdraws cannot help endor­
sing that withdrawal. And Poseidon joins this chorus: it is alto­
gether true, 1ta~1tuv £'tfrc'U~ov, that Agamemnon is guilty, for he 
dishonored Achilles (13.111ff). And he says this after the 
embassy. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 25 

Achilles has the power to defy Agamemnon, and he has the 
right to do so. He has the right because he has been dishonored 
(1.356). Indeed Diomedes, threatened with dishonor, has the 
same right: he asserts that he will not leave the Troad no matter 
what Agamemnon says or does (9.42-49), because he feels that 
to run away would be shameful, an acknowledgement that he is 
antoA.€J.lot; and avaA.Klt; (9.41), and also because "we came with 
God» (9.49); and this assertion is accepted and even praised by 
Nestor: "no one will disparage, no one will gainsay your speech» 
(9.55f). Odysseus too assumes that right in Book 14, when he re­
plies to Agamemnon's suggestion that the ships withdraw by 
telling him to shut up (14.90); he feels that Agamemnon is 
leading badly and the expedition is in jeopardy (14.84-89). Achil­
les is acting in his own self-interest; Diomedes and Odysseus are 
speaking partly out of self-interest, partly in the interests of the 
expedition as a whole. All three gestures appear to fall under the 
g~ntlemen's agreement that permits defiance under certain 
CIrcumstances. 

Could we possibly read the Thersites episode in Book 2 as im­
plying criticism of Achilles? Thersites assails Agamemnon for 
his treatment of Achilles and urges a return home; Od ysseus 
berates him on the grounds that he is too inferior a creature to 
insult princes and the situation too uncertain to warrant retreat, 
then beats him. The men, "for all their distress" (2.270), laugh 
and give ironic compliments to Odysseus: he has done wonder­
ful things before now, but this is his best effort. Thersites is a 
scapegoat, permitting a temporary resolution of the differences 
between the men, who want to return home, and Agamem­
non. 3 ! Ought we to see the men as condemning Thersites, the 
spokesman for Achilles, and therefore in effect condemning 
Achilles? After all, both have committed the same 'crime', that 
of speaking out defiantly against Agamemnon. Can the ugliness 
of Thersites be seen as the men's perception of Achilles' stance 
as an immoral (improper, inappropriate) one? 

There two good reasons for rejecting this interpretation. First, 
the men are not unequivocally pleased with what Odysseus 
does to Thersites; they are distressed in 2.270, either at Odys­
seus' brutality (in which case they are distanced from Odysseus, 
and we will associate them with Achilles' cause) or because, as 
Leaf says ad loc., Thersitcs is their spokesman (in which case 

31 See the excellent discussion by W. G. Thalmann, "Thersites: Comedy, 
Scapegoats and Heroic Ideology in the Iliad," TAPA 118 (1988) 1-28. 



26 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

they en tirel y approve of Achilles). 32 Second, they do not go on 
to criticize what Thersites said, but only how he said it. Seeing 
Achilles' position through the lens of Thersites may permit 
them to set aside any pro-Achilles sentiment they may enter­
tain, but that is a far cry from allowing us to see here any anti­
Achilles feeling that we can use to stigmatize his withdrawal. 
And in the ensuing speeches of Odysseus and Nestor there is 
plenty of criticism of the men, but not a word directed against 
Achilles. 

In Book 9, Ajax is critical of Achilles for disregarding the 
wishes of his friends, of the ambassadors. But his criticism 
comes only after gifts have been offered and rejected, and be­
cause they have been rejected: the family of a murdered man 
accept recompense and forgive; why does Achilles not do like­
wise (9.632-39)? Achilles, in one of the most dramatic lines of 
the poem, agrees with this criticism (9.645). On the basis of 
Ajax's plea, he reverses his earlier decision to leave for home. 
He thereby leaves himself vulnerable to the harsh judgment of 
anyone who feels that now he ought to go back to battle. Patroc­
Ius reinforces this judgment when he bitterly criticizes Achilles 
in 16.31-35. It is unfeeling of Achilles not to return, perhaps­
though it would have been wise of Agamemnon to have apolo­
gized in person. 33 But Achilles has the right to stay away even 
now: as we have seen, when he returns in Book 19, no one 
utters a word against him. A fortiori nothing said in 9 and 16 in­
validates his right to withdraw in the first place. 

Agamemnon has the power to take away Briseis: Achilles will 
not fight to prevent him since "You [plural] who gave her take 
her away" (1.199). But he does not have the right to do it. Achil­
les on the contrary has not only the power, but also the right to 
withdraw-gods and mortals agree on this. Unfortunately, there 
is nowhere in the Iliad a clear statement of the political strucure 
(using 'political' in its modern and general sense) that enables this 
crisis to exist. There is, however, one visible body that might 
offer some guidance, a body that combines Agamemnon and 
the other chiefs, the Achaean Council of Elders (~ouAil YEPOV­
't(()V, 2.53). The Council apparently does not include every leader 
of an Achaean contingent (which would give us over forty coun-

32 Kirk's account of 2.270, which rules out ambivalent feelings despite the 
obviously paradoxical quality of the language, seems to me exceptionally weak. 

33 As he probably would have done, had Odysseus not given such a disas­
trously abbreviated account of the Embassy-as if no one had spoken after his 
own speech (9.677-87). 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 27 

cillors), but a selection: Nestor, Idomeneus, both Ajaxes, Dio­
medes, Odysseus, and Menelaus are mentioned in 2.404-08; 
10.110, without using the term YEpOV'tE~, puts Meges on a level 
with these men, men who were later said to have been "sum­
moned to a council" (10.195); in 4.344 we flnd Menestheus side 
by side with Odysseus among the YEPOV't£~ who are normally 
invited to a feast; in 9.168 Phoenix is among the yrpov't£<; feasting 
with Agamemnon (9.89f), while 18.448 refers to all three mem­
bers of the embassy as elders, and 19.311 includes Phoenix as 
one of the elders (el 19.303, 338). In 10.19M Meriones and Antil­
ochus are asked along to help advise, but are distinguished from 
those who have just sat in the Council. 

This Council meets twice in Book 2 (53, 404), once, appar­
ently, in Book 7 (313-44), once in Book 9 (89; by inference they 
are still sitting at 669), once in Book 10 (195; they are still sitting 
at 532), once perhaps in rump session in 14 (27), and once per­
haps in 19 (303). It meets to initiate policy or tactics: at 2.53-86, 
Agamemnon proposes to arm and test the men; at 2.404-46 they 
pray and feast, and Nestor suggests marshaling the men; at 
7.313-44 Nestor proposes, and the others instigate, the embassy, 
and at 9.669-710 they hear the results; at 10.195-253 Nestor con­
veys Agamemnon's desire for information, and at 10.532-78 
they hear the results; at 14.27-134 Agamemnon proposes flight, 
Odysseus demurs, and Diomedes proposes supervision of the 
battle; at 19.303-39 (if we really ought to call this a Council 
meeting) they try to get Achilles to eat. 

All their meetings concern the joint enterprise, the expedition 
as a whole. Even the effort to get food into Achilles' stomach is 
(besides insurance that he will not faint on the battlefleld) an 
attempt at unity, an effort to overcome the effect of Achilles' 
alienation from them: earlier he withdrew, and even now he re­
fuses food and drink, a most unprofessional stance. All the 
meetings concern action to be taken, future action; Nestor in 
Book 9 may criticize Agamemnon's past misdeeds, but they 
have not met to evaluate and hold him to account. They are in 
search of a plan. 

They never meet simply to take Agamemnon's orders; he and 
others make suggestions that all agree to. But Agamemnon is 
paramount. As Nestor puts it (9.100ff), 

Therefore you must, beyond all others, speak the speech 
and hear it; 

And bring matters to fulfilment for another man, too, 
whenever 



28 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

The heart bids someone speak to the good. Whatever 
He begins, depends on you. 

Sometimes the agreement is reluctant, as in Nestor's response at 
2.79-82: 

If some other one of the Achaeans had mentioned this 
dream, 

We would call it false and turn our backs upon it; 
But as it is, the one who claims to be the best of the 

Achaeans saw it. 
Come, let us attempt to arm the sons of the Achaeans. 

Nestor's hesitation would be more appropriate to Agamem­
non's proposal to test the men than to the dream, for Nestor 
later seems eager for them to resume the battle (2.337-68).34 
Aristarchus wanted to excise this speech, but, as Kirk says in his 
note on it, "someone has to express agreement or disagreement 
with Agamemnon." Although they twice (9.89-181, 14.27-134) 
reject proposals made by Agamemnon to retreat, these are not 
assertions of independent authority: the Elders must persuade 
Agamemnon to change his mind. Nestor may call the meeting in 
Book 9, but Agamemnon is to take charge of it (apx£, says 
Nestor, 9.69), for he is the ~acrlA£{)"[a'to<; (9.69). The Elders are 
clearly an advisory body; the decisions arc made, or endorsed, 
by Agamemnon. 

The upshot is that the Council has no exceptional authority 
that goes beyond Agamemnon's. The embassy in Book 9 is, 
after all, an extension of a Council meeting, and Achilles' first 
response is even more defiant. He threatens to go home, and 
Ajax must talk him out of it; and even so he does not do what 
Agamemnon and the Elders want. And, as we have seen, even 
this second act of defiance is not condemned by the Achaeans 
when Achilles rejoins them in Book 19. No one says, "Defiance 
of Agamemnon is one thing, defiance of the Council another." 
The individual may defy both Agamemnon and the Council 
with impunity on personal grounds, provided presumably that 
society in general agrees with those grounds. 

H Or perhaps he feels that they ought to have an embassy to Achilles right 
now. The passage is hard because Nestor ought to say something about the 
test, and, as Kirk says (123), "his concluding remark at 83, which is an exact 
repetition of Agamemnon's words at 72 (but come, let us arm the Achaeans), is 
most appropriate to a version in which that idea [the test] was never men­
tioned." Perhaps Homer originally told the story without the test, then 
reworked the passage to include it, leaving behind some traces of the revision. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 29 

The Achaeans occasionally meet in an Assembly; it appears to 
be powerless. Right at the beginning of the poem all the 
Achaeans are present at what must be a meeting of the Assem­
bly (else why are all the Achaeans present?). All the other 
Achaeans want Agamemnon to return Chryseis; Agamemnon 
does not want to and does not (1.22-25). The Assembly that 
Achilles calls at 1.54 sees Nestor begging Agamemnon not to 
take away Briseis; and yet he does. The Assembly has even less 
authority than the Council; it exists in order to let views be 
expressed, and to keep the army informed. 

We had reason to hope that by observing the relationship 
between Agamemnon and the Council we might have inferred 
formal limitations on Agamemnon's authority, some statement 
of the circumstances under which he may be defied. It is a tragic 
fact about the Achaeans that they lack such a principle, one that 
might fermit the Council to insist on Agamemnon's restraining 
himsel on penalty of dissolution of the alliance. All we see is 
that the Council is politically no more than an extension of Aga­
memnon: "Whatever anyone begins depends upon you» 
(9.102). No statement as to when Agamemnon has exceeded his 
authority, nor as to the proprieties in cases where individuals dis­
obey him. We are back to the gentleman's agreement (supra 22). 

Where did this agreement come from? Why does everyone 
act on this unexpressed understanding? When the Achaeans left 
Greece for Troy, they (presumably the contingent leaders) 
made a promise to Agamemnon that "he would come back, 
having sacked Troy" (2.286); there were libations and pledges 
"in which we put our trust" (2.341); Idomeneus refers to his 
having "promised and consented» to be a faithful companion 
(4.266f). To be a faithful companion, an EpiTlPo<; £-ta'ipo<;, is am­
biguous-the referent can be a follower, as in 9.220 (Patroclus to 
Achilles), or an equal, as in 10.235, 242 (Odysseus is £-ta'ipa<; to 
Diomedes)-and vague, without definition of rights and duties. 
It is reasonable to suppose that it was on the occasion of these 
libations and promises that the leaders arrived at the arrange­
ment reflected in the Iliad, that Agamemnon would make the 
ultimate decisions, normally after consulting the others in a 
councilor after hearing discussion in an assembly. The trouble is 
that this arrangement did not, probably could not, foresee all 
contingencies. After all, as Odysseus makes perfectly clear, 
these are promises specific to the Trojan expedition, stating that 
Agamemnon will come back having sacked Troy (2.287); they 
do not entail the foundation of a state. The various problems that 



30 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

might arise were left to be resolved by our gentleman's 
agreement. 

Note carefully that when Nestor and Odysseus in Book 2 are 
chiding the Achaeans, they do not make mention of any other 
arrangement than this, any political structure or understanding 
indicating subordination to Agamemnon. Of course the poet 
does not and cannot tell us all he knows; we can picture, for in­
stance, that the epithet "wide-ruling Agamemnon" might have 
meant to the audience that Agamemnon was a Great King. 35 But 
there are so many places in the Iliad where the characters could 
have had recourse to a statement like, "As Great King, Agamem­
non has the right to this but not to that," that it is hard to see 
why we never hear it. We shall return to the Great King 
presently. 

The Achaean political reality on the Trojan plain appears there­
fore to be a vaguely defined overlordship of Agamemnon, 
founded on oaths taken at Aulis that the soldiers would follow 
him in his pursuit of the sack of Troy. Nothing we have seen so 
far contradicts the impression given by the Catalogue, that the 
expedition is a coalition of essentially independent states. A 
Council has been temporarily created to exchange ideas and to 
enable Agamemnon to make good decisions, and assemblies are 
held in response to various needs. There is no formal limitation 
on Agamemnon's power, though there is an informal under­
standing that he can exceed his authority, and be defied with 
impunity if he does. 

This absence of formal limitations, together with several state­
ments made by Odysseus, Nestor, and Homer himself, have 
combined to persuade some scholars that Agamemnon must 
have more authority than I have just allotted him, that the Cata­
logue is misleading and Achilles is, perhaps justifiably, defying 
his king. This additional authority is seen in two ways: either 
Agamemnon is a Great King, the other chieftains vassals, and the 
Achaean host members of an empire; or the relationship 
between Agamemnon and the Achaeans generally is similar to 
the relationship between king, council, and assembly within a 
contemporary Greek polis or ethnos. It is vital to our under­
standing of the government of Troy that we discuss these possi­
bilities, but first let us merely look at the passages they are based 

35 For similiar possibilities, see J. M. Foley, "Word-Power, Performance, and 
Tradition," Journal of American Folklore 105 (1992) 276-301. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 31 

upon, in order to see whether they compel us to abandon the 
theory of Agamemnon's vague overlordship. 

At 2.108 Agamemnon is said to rule in (or over) many islands 
and all Argos, and some want to choose the meaning 'rule over' 
and take Argos here to mean the "whole of the mainland» (Leaf 
on 2.108). Before jumping to an interpretation that obviously 
conflicts with the Catalogue, we should look to other possibil­
ities. First, the word "A pyo<; has several meanings: the phrase 
here, "Apyn nav-d, rules out the city, but that leaves the Argolid, 
or else a larger area including the Argolid,36 or the Pelopon­
nesus, or all of mainland Greece. If we take the verb eXvaoo£lv 
here to mean 'rule over', we must take Agamemnon to be ruling 
over Diomedcs, or Diomedes and the other leaders from the 
Peloponnesus, or over all the leaders, by virtue of his scepter. 
Now we have just heard, twenty-two lines before this, of 
scepter-holding ~a<JlA;T1E<; who are members of the Council, and 
these would normally include Diomedes, Menelaos, and Nes­
tor, all leaders from the Peloponnesus. Agamemnon's scepter is 
elaborate, and no doubt elevates him above the other scepter­
holders; but we are not prepared for the idea that it gives him 
suzerainty over them. Hence we naturally take the dative 
endings in nOAA:T1l0lV viloOl<Jl Kat "Apyn naV'tl to be locatives, 
"rule in many islands and Argos in the wider sense.» When eX v­
aoo£lv takes the dative ending elsewhere, it usually (not always) 
means 'rule over'; but in all those cases the other dative endings 
are all true datives, referring to people (as of course most true 
datives do). 37 Dative endings attached to place names will nor­
mally not be true datives but locatives. Usually Homer uses the 

36 "The Argolic plain in the Peloponnesus stretching inwards from the 
Argolic gulf and, apparently, adjoining lands": Cunliffe, Place Names S.v. 
"ApyoC;. Agamemnon is frequently said to live in Argos. This cannot be the 
city, which belongs to Diomedes; it is a region that must include the cities of 
Argos and Mycenae and therefore encompass the territories of both Agamem­
non and Diomedes. Agamemnon lives in it; he does not rule it. Now Jl. 6.512 
locates Ephyra (=Corinth) '.!UXWt "ApycoC; "in an inner part of Argos." Aristar­
chus wants this Argos to be the whole Peloponnesus, as it must be in other 
passages; but this makes the word jl UXWt difficult. If, however, we take Argos 
here to be the Argo\id plus Agamemnon's possessions outside the Argolid, 
then jlUxwt can mean "inner from the point of view of the Argolic gulf." We 
cannot bring in the Odyssey to demonstrate the validity of this interpretation, 
but it is worth calling attention to the fact that Od. 3.263 locates Mycenae 
jlUXWt "ApycoC;, where again jluXWt is difficult if Argos is the Peloponnesus, but 
makes sense if our standpoint is the Argo\ic gulf, Mycenae being at the other 
end of the Argive plain from the gulf: see Merry and Riddle on the line. 

37 At 20.180 it means 'rule among'; see 80 infra. 



32 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

partItIve for the locative after uVcX(J(JEtV, but the meter here 
prohibits it. 

Why does Homer say" Argos in the wider sense" here? Why 
does he not choose to mean "the Argolid, Corinth, and 
Achaea," as he might well do by omitting the nav'tl ? The fact is 
that in the Iliad generally, Agamemnon is the king of more than 
what he is specifically allotted in the Catalogue; not only are 
there "many islands," but his domain includes other cities in the 
Peloponnesus that do not even adjoin the area allotted to him in 
the Catalogue: they are found along the Messenian gulf (9.149-
53). Hence he really does rule "in Argos in the wider sense." 
Perhaps he communicates with these as well as his islands by 
means of his huge navy (160 vessels counting those given to the 
Arcadians, 2.612-13). Scholars are legitimately puzzled that the 
cities and the islands are not mentioned in the Catalogue, but 
there is no fundamental conflict between it and the rest of the 
Iliad on this point. 38 And we ought to have no problem with his 
ruling cities that do not fall within his primary borders, for this is 
exactly what in Book 9 he is proposing that Achilles do. 

At several places Nestor and Odysseus make an effort to give 
Agamemnon a higher status than any visible political structure 
would warrant. The first occurs in Book 1, in the middle of the 
crisis, as Nestor attempts to reconcile the antagonists. He tells 
Agamemnon not to take away the girl, because she is the gift of 
the Achaeans-i.e., she marks Achilles' status in society's eyes, 
his 't41Tt. So far, so good. Then he tells Achilles not to wish to 
strive with a ~a(JlA£u<; face-to-face, since a scepter-holding ~a(Jl­
AEU<; has a very different share of 'tl/J.Tt (1.278f). These words 
could of course mean, "Don't come to blows with a ~a(JtA.Eu<;, " 
but such advice has no relevance at this point, and potential 
assault is not the behavior that Agamemnon complains about in 
his ensuing speech. Interpreting instead, "Don't quarrel with a 
~a(JtA.£u<;," preserves relevance, but puts Nestor on shaky 

38 See Kirk I 182. Similarly, Odysseus rules over areas geographically sepa­
rated by Meges' Doulichium: see D. L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad 
(Berkeley 1959) 125. Agamemnon also is separated from his "many islands," 
perhaps by a considerable distance. These could be the smaller islands of the 
Saronic gulf, near Agamemnon's mainland kingdom but mingled with 
Aegina, which belongs to Diomedes. (But Diomedes' Aegina could be a town 
near Epidaurus mentioned in Strabo 8.375; Kirk's assertion that the island was 
"continuously inhabited from the neolithic age onward" does not tell us when 
it was named' Aegina' or that it was the only place so named.) Or they could 
be further afield; there are many islands that Homer does not mention by 
name. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 33 

ground. Athena has just told Achilles to "insult him all you 
want" (1.211); we can sympathize with Nestor's intentions, but 
why should we prefer his authority to Athena's? And again, if all 
the Councilors are scepter-holding kings (2.86), Achilles must 
be one too, and therefore logically should have the same Hill). 
Nestor might well answer by referring to Agamemnon's special 
scepter (2.100-08) that Odysseus wields (2.186f, 198, 165,279) as 
a symbol of Agamemnon's overlordship. This scepter was once 
owned by Zeus, and Nestor may have this in mind when he 
speaks of Zeus giving KU()OC; to the ~a(JlAEUC; (1.279). He is in any 
case attempting to suggest that there is a mystical relationship 
between Zeus and Agamemnon such that Achilles should not 
quarrel with him. But Nestor is badly misled: in what follows, 
Zeus supports Achilles. Agamemnon indeed later acknowledges 
this (9.117) and says that it was Zeus who caused him to behave 
so insanely (19.137). 

The religious authority conveyed by Agamemnon's scepter, 
though real enough, obviously does not preclude Achilles' 
attacking Agamemnon verbally or withdrawing from battle. It 
therefore does not correspond to absolute political authority, 
but rather to the relative political power conferred by Agamem­
non's status as commander-in-chief. Indeed Nestor goes on to 
say that Agamemnon is "better" (<pEp'tEPOC;, 1.281) than Achilles 
(and by implication everyone else) because he fields more 
troops (1tAE6vECHHV avaCl'Cl'n). This is not only true, but the poet 
agrees that Agamemnon is aptCl'TOC; for the same rcason, 1tOAU ()f 
1tA£tCl''tOUC; ayE Aaouc; (2.580, where ()E should be translated 
"for"; cf Denniston 169). This is a warrior culture, a military 
economy, at least while in the Troad (see 45 infra); though it 
must value the great warrior, it must value even more the leader 
of the most soldiers. Therefore Agamemnon is <p£p'tEP0C; and 
aptCl''tOC;; and this no doubt is the measure by which the peculiar 
comparative and superlative forms, ~aCl'lAEu'tEPOC; and ~aCl'lAEU­
'ta'toc;, become meaningful. Indeed we cannot avoid the infer­
ence that this is why Agamemnon is the commander-in-chief. 
As Nestor says later, "Take the lead, Agamemnon, for you are 
~aCl'lAEu'ta'toc;" (9.69). But these comparatives and superlatives 
imply a relative status: if Agamemnon has the most of this qual­
ity, others must have some of it. Which is why they too are 
called ~aCl'lAi1EC;. And this relative status is expressed by the fact 
that they follow Agamemnon, except when he is dishonoring 
them or threatening the success of the expedition. 



34 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

And so a scepter-holding ~a<HAtU~, even when the scepter is 
Zeus', even if he is <PEP'tEpO~, or ~aO'lA£u'ta'to~, does not have 
the right to take away a man's YEpa<;, and Nestor does not pre­
tend that he does. It is therefore not wrong for Achilles to strive 
with Agamemnon, however much Nestor might wish that it 
were. Nestor is at an impasse. Note that it would be useless of 
him to call a meeting of the Council; if Nestor cannot persuade 
Aga~emnon here, he would fare no better at a Council 
meetmg. 

But the image of the scepter-holding ~aO'lA£u<; who might 
command absolute authority persists. It lurks in Odyssues' 
words to the leaders when, in Book 2, the army is in flight to the 
ships (2.190-97): 

My friend, it is not proper to frighten you as if you were a 
coward, 

No, but sit down yourself and make the rest of the army 
sit. 

For you don't yet see clearly Agamemnon's intentions. 
Now he's making trial, soon he will bear hard upon the 

Achaeans. 
Didn't we all hear what he said in the Council? 
Don't let him get angry and wreak some evil upon the 

Achaeans! 
For the passion of Zeus-nurtured ~a0tA:il£s is great, 
For their honor comes from Zeus, and counsellor Zeus 

loves them.39 

Odysseus' listeners, just labeled ~aO'lAll£~ at 2.86, seem here 
called upon to look upwards towards a special ~aO'lA£u~ whose 
wishes must be obeyed for fear of their anger and for awe of 
their special relationship to Zeus. This seems to develop Nes­
tor's effort to give Agamemnon mystic authority, authority de­
rived from divinity, and approaches doing violence to the politi­
cal independence of the yEPOV'tE~. Of course we must remem­
ber that in Book 2 Odysseus has reason to worry; there must be 
no repetition of the events of Book 1, and he knows only too 
well how Agamemnon is capable of getting angry and violating 
the normal relationship. He might merely be dressing up in mys-

39 Aristarchus says that 193-97 are unseemly and not conducive to restraint, 
and wants instead to place 203ff here; Leaf complains that these latter lines 
would certainly not lead to restraint, but to independence and opposition 
(they sound almost like a pleas for monarchy). Both are right, I feel, in that 
both sets of verses seem to do violence to the relationship between Agamem­
non and the other chieftains; I shall attempt to justify 193-97 below. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 35 

tical clothing a reminder to his colleagues of the horrible conse­
quences of Agamemnon's irrational anger. 

When he goes on to address the common soldiers, however, 
Odysseus is definitely wishing that they were all led by a 
powerful monarch (200-06): 

Sit still, and hear the speech of others 
Who are better than you .... 
In no way whatever shall all of us Achaeans be ~aO"tAll£S 

here. 
The rule of many is not a good thing. Let there be one 

ruler, 
On~ ~ucrtA£US, to whom Zeus traditionally ('r£ in line 206) 

gIves 
Scepter and rights of ordinance (SEll tcr'ru-;), to plan for his 

people.40 

Interpretation of this passage must be subtle, because the men 
are, of course, doing what Agamemnon told them to do; they 
are treating Agamemnon as the exclusive ~acrtA£u~. We take 
Odysseus to be saying, without saying it, "You know perfectly 
well what Agamemnon wants, and you are using Agamemnon's 
words as an excuse to give orders to yourselves." Perhaps we 
should picture him sensing that the men are in effect voting with 
Achilles: "angered about Achilles, they wish to be their own 
commanders," as an exegetical scholiast suggests. 41 But the 
deeper problem remains. What Odysseus really wants is for the 
men to listen to their individual leaders (who are supposed to be 
restraining them [2.75], and have just been recalled to their 
duty). This is what, in effect, Agamemnon had told the chieftains 
in the council: "Let the men not regard me as the exclusive 
~UcrtAEU~, let them obey you, not me." No wonder Aristarchus 
transposed lines 203ff to follow 192, as being more appropriately 
addressed to leaders-"we can't all be ~acrtAflE~ here [£V8&OE, a 
significant qualification if addressed to the leaders, who would 
never agree to Agamemnon's being a Great King at home]; so 
let there be one !3aatA£us." By not restraining the men, the con­
tingent leaders have been acting like independent ~a(jlAfl£s. 

40 I would retain this line as emended from Dio Chrysostom against the 
objections of Leaf and Willcock; with Kirk I feel that 8WK£ in the previous 
line requires an object. Note that when this same line appears at 9.99, quoted 
36 infra, the 1£ is no longer the epic particle, but simply means 'both'. I have 
translated <J<jll<Jt as "people," which is what it means at 9.99. 

41 ~ b2; see H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri lliadem I (Berlin 1969) 224. 



36 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Odysseus could merely be reminding the captains that they do 
have a single commander-in-chief, and should obey him. 

If we leave the lines where they are, Odysseus seems to be ex­
pressing a wish: as rule of many is not good (witness the defec­
tion of Achilles), let there be one ruler; let there be one leader, 
with scepter and rights of ordinance from Zeus, who plans for 
his people (as Agamemnon has not been doing). Because the 
men, in obeying Agamemnon literally while disobeying his 
unexpressed wish, have not really argued for the 'rule of many', 
it empties the passage of meaning to make Odysseus claim that 
they have. But the lines are fully meaningful (if not wholly 
appropriate) if they are seen to express a fantasy: let us have a 
ruler with the authority that Nestor and I have tried to allot to 
Agamemnon-only let him be a better ruler. Such a man would 
not drive Achilles away, or test the men at a time when they are 
apt to fail, "angered about Achilles.» We can agree with Aris­
tarchus that the lines are pointless as advice to the common sol­
diers, but we can defend them as expressing Odysseus' feelings 
about the chaos that Agamemnon and Achilles have created. 

Odysseus says something similar to Agamemnon at 14.90-95: 

Be silent, lest some other one of the Argives hear this 
speech, 

Which no man could even let pass his lips, if at least 
In his heart he knew how to speak fittingly, 
And if he held a scepter, and if as many hosts obeyed him 
As you now rule among the Argives. 
As it is, I utterly condemn your mind for what you have 

said. 

Agamemnon rules a multitude of hosts and ought to be a de­
cent ruler with supreme authority; but with the reality that 
stands before him being so disparate from the ideal, Odysseus 
tells Agamemnon to be quiet-yet another instance, ironically, 
of a leader defying Agamemnon with impunity. 

Nestor reiterates Odysseus' wish in a passage we have already 
looked at (9.98f) and indeed states that the wish is reality: 

You are the ava~ of many, hosts, and Zeus has put into 
your hands 

Both the scepter and the decrees (eE~tO,a<;), to counsel them 
(9.98£).42 

~2 The idea that the scepter implies that the scepter-holder shall "counsel 
them well" is, I believe, also used in connection with Agamemnon in 2.206, 
though the reading is disputed. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 37 

This sounds like an effort to say with an imperfect vocabulary 
(see 38 infra) that Agamemnon actually is a Great King, and a 
good one, with divine right. From this is supposed to follow the 
state of affairs that we have said is much closer to reality 
(9. 1 OOff): 

Therefore you must, beyond all others, speak the speech 
and hear it; 

And bring matters to fulfilment for another man, too, 
whenever 

The heart bids someone speak to the good. Whatever 
He begins, depends on you. 

When Nestor earlier says tht Agamemnon should take the lead 
because he is pacrtAEUtatO~ (9.69), he may be headed in this 
idealistic direction. Though this need mean nothing more than 
that as "leader of the most troops," Agamemnon should act like 
a commander-in-chief, the line seems to take us up to 9.98f, and 
to suggest that because Agamemnon is the "most leaderly" he 
should rule as good monarchs (Odysseus' "one paOtAEuc;") rule. 
Again, when Agamemnon says that Achilles should tame him­
self and admit how much PCXCrtAEU't£pO<; Agamemnon is 
(9.158ff), he comes close to claiming tht Achilles ought to 
recognize his absolute authority. 

Those are all the passages in the Iliad known to me where 
scholars have been tempted either to hnd a Great King, or to 
identify Agamemnon as a PCXOlAEUs whose authority over all the 
Achaeans is comparable to that of a paOtA£,\)<; in a Greek polis or 
ethnos. We have not found such a king. Let us therefore con­
sider some reasons why we ought not to look for one. First, and 
most important, is that if he were, we would surely not be 
talking about 'gentlemen's agreements' as to when Agamemnon 
had exceeded his authority. It is unimaginable that there should 
be no statement corresponding to the fact that Achilles (or 
Diomedes or Odysseus) can defy this Great King with im­
punity. I am not saying that he should or should not be able to 
defy, only that there has to be some understanding as to 
whether he should. If Homer gives us none, how are we to 
conceive of Agamemnon as Great King? 

Second, we have encountered no suggestion in the Iliad that 
there was a Panachaean Council back home, or any other instru­
ment whereby Agamemnon might rule the rest of Greece. 43 

~3 Nor do we hear of any Council for the individual states represented by 
the contingents in the Catalogue. We might note in passing that even the 
Odyssey knows of no Council anywhere in Greece, and is just barely aware 



38 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

And what we do learn about the Achaeans back home suggests 
that the regional leaders act entirely independently (see 47-54 
infra). As we read the Catalogue of Ships, we see no sign of a 
Council, not even a hint that one contingent might have lord­
ship over another, no trace of an institution whereby they might 
even come together to form common policy. Nestor and Odys­
seus in Book 2 make no reference to Agamemnon's being a 
Great King, though this is precisely the occasion when it would 
be most relevant, and where promises, libations, oaths and 
omens all do find mention. The Achaean Council, as we have 
seen, is evidently formed for the purpose of assisting the 
direction of the Trojan expedition, and discusses only mattters 
concerning the campaign. 

Third, there is no way to refer to Agamemnon as the King, in 
the required sense or indeed in any other. We have already 
(supra 23, 36) heard Nestor call Agamemnon the ava~ of many 
hosts (9.98f), in an effort to define Agamemnon as a Great King, 
but the word ava~ in Homer cannot have the meaning 'king': 
Helenus (13.582, 758, 770, 781) is not a king, nor Poulydamas 
(15.453), nor Teiresias at Od. 11.144,151 (in linguistic matters it is 
probably wise to listen to the voice of both poems); and we are 
not pa(HA:i1£~ over our horses. It is used of gods, both exalted 
(Zeus, Apollo, etc.) and not (Sleep, 14.233, the Scherian river at 
Od. 5.445, 450). Applied to them, and to Helenus and Teiresias, 
it suggests a religious and mystical power that we heed and 
obey, and perhaps this sense is intended in its application to 
Poulydamas, the wise chief-of-staff, though I am reluctant to 
carry it over to our relationship to our horses. It may be that the 
general sense is 'authority that inspires awe and obedience', 
where the quality of awe is a function of the being of whom the 
word is used. This suits well Nestor's coupling of the word with 
the scepter and themistas in 9.98f. LfgrE gives "Herr," and 
"lord" suits pretty well (the 'lord and master' of one's horses?). 
Of course the word is used of men who, within their particular 
spheres, may legitimately be called monarchs: Achilles (9.164, 
276, etc.) is, in effect, ~acrtAEu~ over the Myrmidons; Agamem­
non, the undeniable ~acrtAEu~ of the Mycenaeans. We have seen 
that Nestor appears to be trying in 9.98f to make Agamemnon 
into a ~a<HAEU~ over the Trojan expedition, or at least someone 

of Achaean elders with authority (Od. 2.14, 21.21). Nor does the Odyssey 
show any trace of an overlords hip of the King of Mycenae. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 39 

whose authority is royal. But the word ava~ alone cannot con­
vey the meaning 'king', 'monarch'. Not even Aawv ava~ at 9.98 
can; it is best translated "awe-inspiring authority over the hosts." 

Nor can ava~ avDpwv. It is a convenient shorthand to use this 
term to refer to Agamemnon in his role as commander-in­
chief;44 but this can hardly be a formal title: the phrase is used as 
a generic epithet with other proper nouns possessing the same 
meter and beginning with a vowel, such as Anchises, Aeneas, 
Augeas, Euphetes, and Eumelus. We cannot argue that it is mean­
ingful when used of Agamemnon but loses its meaning when 
used of the others: the view that if an epithet is formulaic it loses 
its meaning is in my opinion quite false (see supra n.l: 379); and 
this false theory is in any case based on the experience of hearing 
an epithet used with the same noun over an over again. When 
we hear it with Anchises and the others, our attention is arrested 
until we remind ourselves that it does not mean 'commander-in­
chief', (let alone' Achaean commander-in-chief), but is vaguer 
and slightly ambiguous: 'av a~ over men' (not specifying any 
particular place) and 'ava~ among men' (not, like ava~ Apollo, 
among gods). And if this is what it means with Anchises, we can­
not say that it has a different meaning when used of Agamem­
non. 

Nor can ~aO"lA£u<;; the Homeric word is, like ava~, vague. M. 
Schmidt (LfgrE) tries to group all the instances of ~acrlA£u<; 
under "Konig," and not being a native speaker of German I 
cannot contest this, though I wonder if the German ear can 
really be happy with 'der Konig Alexandros' (4.96). Of this 
Schmidt says (ta a), "Alex. hier ~ als Sohn des Priamus"; for this 
meaning my ear requires in English, 'Prince Alexander'. And 
what of 'der Konig Antinoos' (Od. 18.64)? Schmidt's argument 
here (2a ~) is that as a member of a leading Ithacan family 
Antinous has a claim to the" monarch. Konigsamt" if it should 
fall vacant, but my ear will not tolerate 'King Antinous' for a 
man who might conceivably be ~acrlA£u<; some day. Schmidt is 
not altogether happy with it: "Allgemeine Bedeutung 'Vorneh­
mer, Adliger' hier allenfalls moglich." One difficulty with 
Schmidt's approach is that he makes "monarchical king" the 
primary meaning because he is convinced that monarchy in 
archaic (sic) Greece is historically older than aristocracy 
(441.13f). This view is not universally maintained today (to say 

H "Meist von Agam. als oberstem Herrfiihrer vor Troja," J. Grimm, in 
LfgrE 787 2aa. 



40 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

the least): Schmidt mentions Gschnitzer as an exception; 45 

Robert Drews rules out monarchy for the archaic Greek polis; 
Walter Donlan holds that in the eighth century "stable, 
centralized kingship eluded the grasp of even the most 
successful basileus"; Morris sees the fundamental pre-polis 
division as lying between agathoi and kakoi. 46 Whoever is right, 
the deeper problem is that Schmidt is using history to determine 
the meaning of a literary text, a procedure that we decried above 
even as we allowed that it must sometimes be necessary (supra 
20). When, as here, there is legitimate scholarly disagreement 
over the history, the danger of the procedure is particularly 
apparent, in that even if Schmidt's history is wrong, he may still 
be right about the text of Homer. We must look at what the text 
says. 

When we do, we note that the word is often used of men who 
are, in my opinion, monarchical kings-males occupying a 
position in a political institution called kingship. Mycenae is 
ruled this way: Atreus held the position, then Thyestes, then 
Agamemnon (2.106£); Agamemnon is ~acrtA:l1a 1tOA:UXPUcrOLO 
MUKllvT\<; (7.180, 11.46). Nestor holds an office that Neleus held 
before him, Achilles an office that Peleus has held and pre­
sumably holds still back home. Technically Achilles may not be 
a monarch with Peleus still alive, but he is certainly in loco regis 
in the Troad (supra 22) and to call him king seems to me a 
permissible stretch of the English word. The members of the 
Achaean Council are all ~acrtAi1£<;. But this does not mean that 
the word ~acrtA£u<; means 'king', any more than 'cattle' in a text 
written 150 years ago meant 'cow'. If it can be used of Paris, An­
tinous, and Eurymachus (Od. 18.64), ~acrtA£u<; means something 
more general. Gschnitzer's "der Erste" is good (105). The word 
can be used of groups of people, as well as individuals: when a 
number of people each called" der Erste" come together, they 
are "die Ersten," and they may in turn recognize one of their 
number as "der Erste." Drews' suggestion, "high-born leader," 
also works reasonably well, though Drews does not demon­
strate the" overtones of high birth that resonate in the Homeric 

45 F. Gschnitzer, «BALIAEYL," Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Kulturwissenschaft 
11 (1 96 5) 99-11 2. 

46 R. DREWS, Basileus (New Haven 1983: hereafter 'Drews') passim; W. 
Donlan, "The Pre-state Community in Greece," SymbOslo 64 (1989) 5-29; 
Morris, Burial (supra n.15) passim. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 41 

word !3a<HA.£u<;." 47 In the various societies that we see in Homer 
it appears that ~acrlA.Tl£<; are high-born, but the term need not 
mean that. 

Gschnitzer thinks that there are some places where the word 
does mean 'Konig' after all; he points, for instance (101), to 
j3acrlATll XOAw8£U; in 1.9. The word has to single out Agamem­
non somehow, though Achilles too has just been mentioned and 
Achilles is a ~acrlA£u<; (1.133, 16.211); it cannot do this unless 
there is an understanding that when the context is indetermin­
ate, the word refers to some special ~acrlA£u<;, the highest­
ranking !3a<HA.£u<; present. The term here cannot just mean 
'leader' or else it would not single out Agamemnon; it must 
mean 'superior leader', even 'exclusive leader'.48 But it does not 
mean 'king'. To show this, let us adopt the theory that most 
scholars today accept and that I have been putting forth, that 
Agamemnon occupies the temporary role of commander-in­
chief of the Greek forces before Troy. These scholars and I 
would then argue that !3acrlA.£Uc; here means 'highest-ranking 
leader' or 'exclusive leader' or perhaps even 'commander-in­
chief'. There is no reason to take the further step to 'king,' 
holder of a permanent office in a certain political institution. 
Never mind whether these scholars and I are certainly right or 
not; to show that the word does not mean 'king', it is enough 
that we could be. Gschnitzer's argument is that the context 
shows that the word has changed its meaning from "der Erste" 
to "Konig," but since the context comfortably permits 'com­
mander-in-chicf', it cannot do this. Similarly for the other 
passages concerning Agamemnon as highest ranking !3acrlA.£u<; 
(1.231,441; 4.402; 19.256); in the remaining places I agree with 
Drews' criticism (103). 

47 Drews 100-03. Paris, not only high-born, is the leader of a Trojan con­
tingent: cf 12.93, 13.490. I feel that in several of the passages that Drews cites 
from Gschnitzer (supra n.45: 103 n.14), claiming that they are ambiguous, 
Gschnitzer is right to feci that an exclusive leader is being designated. 

48 The term is Drews', though he does not see that it belongs here. He finds 
(103) just three places in the Iliad where ~acrtA£,U~ means an exclusive leader: 
7.180 and 11.46, "~c«HA£1)<; of Mycenae rich in gold," and 1.277ff, the "scepter­
holding ~acrtA(1)~" whose share of honor is not the same. The first two of 
these he thinks may be post-Homeric because one of them occurs near the 
description of the Gorgon's head-not a very convincing way to argue-and 
in the third ~acrtAn)~ means 'commander-in-chief'. But he does not do justice 
to the semantics of 1.9 and several other places where Gschnitzer finds the 
meaning 'Konig'. 



42 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

The word ~a.O"lAEUC; then, does not mean 'king' in Homer, but 
'leader', 'exclusive leader', or 'highest-ranking leader of those 
present'; it often refers to men who are ~a.(nA:TlEC;, but it does 
not say that they are. Some ~a.(JlAftEC; are monarchs, while other 
~a.(JlAftEC; are not; ~a.O"lAEUC; is used of Agamemnon in his role as 
~a.(JlAEUC;, and his role as commander. The idea that" scepter­
holding ~a.(JlAEUC;» is an attempt to narrow the word to the 
meaning 'king' is attractive for the Iliad; it might be a way of 
saying, somewhat imprecisely, that the contingent-leaders are in 
fact monarchs (2.86). (Nestor's attempt to confine it to Agamem­
non in 1.278f of course fails.) This idea will not work at all for the 
Odyssey, where the Councilors of Alcinous are all scepter­
holders (8.41, 47). The word ~a.(JlAEUC; unlike liva.~ is not used 
of gods, or of men with exceptional mystic powers; it appears to 
be a secular term.49 

There is therefore in Homer no really good way to say 'king', 
let alone 'Great King', which makes it very hard to see how 
Homer could have imagined Agamemnon playing such a role. A 
Great King is a political entity, a man who occupies a place in a 
structure; there ought to be some way to refer unambiguously 
to such an important person or his place, if he and it exist. The 
struggle that Nestor and Odysseus have to find a term for 
'Great King'-"scepter-bearing ~a.(JlAEUC; to whom Zeus gives 
kydos,» "let there be one ~a.O"lAEUC; to whom Zeus gives the 
scepter"-proclaims not only a lexical gap, but an empty space 
in reality. Because Agamemnon's position is temporary, com­
mander-in-chief of this expedition, there is not even a word for 
this position-let alone 'Great King'. 

Finally, we have seen that in the Iliad the Myrmidons are not 
Agamemnon's subjects. When the men complain about Achil­
les' behavior, they do not imply that they should be getting 
orders from Agamemnon; they threaten, not to go to Agamem­
non or even to battle, but to go home (16.205). When Patroclus 
wants to return to the war, he goes to Achilles; when Achilles 
says that he may re-enter, he re-enters. Agamemnon has 
nothing at all to do with this transaction, though it is absolutely 
vital to his life-work. Granted, Agamemnon wants Achilles to 
admit that Agamemnon is ~a.(JlAEU"tEPOC; (9.160); Nestor says 
that Agamemnon is ~a.O"lAEU"ta."tOC; (9.69). And these are mea-

49 A recent discussion of Homeric kingship may be found in J. R. Lenz, 
Kings and the Ideology of Kingship in Early Greece (diss.Columbia 
University 1993) 175-255, together with references to important earlier work 
by Y. A. Andreyev, P. Carlier, and C. G. Thomas. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 43 

sures of political power, since Agamemnon does in fact rule 
more people. On the other hand, they are comparative and 
superlative forms. If I am the most leader-like, you must still be 
leader-like, which must mean that you, and not I, rule over your 
men. Similar, if I am better (1.281) because I rule over more, and 
the best (2.580) because I rule by far the most, you must there­
fore rule over some, and those you rule over, I do not rule 
over. And Achilles does rule over his men: he could take his 
contingent home if he wanted. If a man must stand and watch 
while a whole nation deserts his cause, can we call him a Great 
King?50 

Much support for seeing Agamemnon as a Great King no 
doubt arises from an analogy that some scholars perceive 
between the Achaeans in the Iliad and the Mycenaeans. If Myce­
nae is the center of a Mycenaean Empire occupying most of 
Greece and many islands, and if Agamemnon once led an 
expedition of Mycenaeans to Troy, then the Achaeans of the 
Iliad ought to reflect that Empire-so that argument goes. Now 
I do not want to cast out all analogies between the Iliad's 
Achaeans and the Mycenaeans. The power of the wanax at 
Mycenae and Pylas is very similar to the power of Agamem­
non, Nestor, and the others over their own contingents and 
their own regions in Greece. But it is far from certain that the 
wanax of Mycenae was a Great King; and even if he was, we 
have no right to import that fact into the Iliad. As we have seen, 
the Iliad must be assumed to preserve traces of several eras, and 
we are secure in identifying such a trace only if both the Iliad 
and also independent sources for the history of a given era offer 
the same picture. 51 

Curiously enough, support for the view of Agamemnon as 
Great King has arisen from a perceived analogy with an era 
much later than the Mycenaean. We have seen that the polis as 
city-state was beginning to emerge in Homer's time, and it is 
thought that the political structure of the polis consisted, in its 
earliest form, of a king, his council, and an assembly. Even if the 

50 But do we not see this happen in the Paema de Mia Cid? Is not Alfonsso 
the Great King, and can the Cid not take men with him into exile? Yes, but 
not a whole nation: sixty knights, and then a number of others who in joining 
him are clearly disobeying Alfonsso's orders, that the Cid is not to be helped 
in any way, not even given food and lodging. 

5! A good discussion of the supposed Mycenaean Empire and its analogies 
with Homer, fancied and real, may be found in J. T. HOOKER, Mycenaean 
Greece (London 1976: hereafter 'Hooker') 132-37. 



44 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

king's power was not absolute, at least everyone in the state was 
subject to his authority; by analogy Agamemnon's Council and 
the members of his Assembly ought to be his subjects. Hence 
he ought to rule all the Achaeans. The leaders of the various 
Achaean contingents may appear to be independent, but per­
haps we can infer from the powerlessness of the Council that 
this is a mirage: they must be aristocratic subjects. Recent his­
torians (e.g. Drews) have rightly questioned this tidy picture of 
king, council, and assembly, and have also questioned whether 
we ought to translate ~a(nAEUC; as 'king'. Still, the three institu­
tions often coexisted in some form or other. The analogy ought 
rather to be questioned on other grounds. 

First, the scale is all wrong. The king, council, and assembly 
belong either to a polis, an ethnos, or a state of similar size, not 
to an empire that includes all the Greek mainland and many 
islands, and can send an army of at least 63,000 troops on a pro­
tracted expeditionary campaign. Many of the individual contin­
gents are the right size, allowing for poetic exaggeration of the 
numbers. If these had councils and assemblies, we could analo­
gize them to the contemporary polis, but they do not. And an 
analogy between a single polis and the entire army is grotesque. 

Second, we return again to the fact that the Myrmidons are 
not Agamemnon's subjects, but Achilles'. If he is sufficiently 
displeased, he will pack them up and take them home. Would 
even the most unruly aristocrat in a polis have this kind of 
power? If he did, what real authority would the king have left? 
And how do we analogize the fact that Agamemnon has the 
power he does have over the other chieftains on campaign but 
not, so far as we can tell from the Catalogue or anywhere else, 
back home? 

Now of course it can be asserted that only the king-council­
assembly structure of the expeditionary force is to be seen as 
analogous to the earlier polis. But as the politics of an expedi­
tionary alliance of twenty-nine independent states is radically dif­
ferent from the politics of a polis, this amounts to saying that the 
analogy is formal, an analogy in name only. It would be ridicu­
lous to claim under such circumstances that the members of 
other chieftains' contingents are Agamemnon's subjects. But 
given this demurrer, the idea of a nominal analogy has one very 
attractive feature. As the Achaean elders are not in fact elderly, 
except for Nestor and Phoenix, their name seems an imposition 
from outside, and the institution of elders in the polis may well 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 4S 

be the external source. 52 And indeed the disparity between the 
name and the reality of the Councillors' age ought to warn us 
not to push the analogy further. There may be many other 
disparities. 

Third, even the names defy analogy, or at least one of them 
does. The early polis distinguishes the Council and/or the Elders 
from the ~aO'tA£u<;. By analogy, we must call Agamemnon the 
~aO'lMu<;. But all the other chieftains are ~aO'lAll£<; and the coun­
cillors, at least, are scepter-holding ~aO'tAf]£<;. What word, what 
term do we have to distinguish Agamemnon? If we use (ivaS, 
the analogy with history disappears because this is not the term 
used in the polis. If we stick to ~aO'tA£u<; the analogy disappears 
because history makes a terminological distinction that the Iliad 
eschews when the latter calls all the chieftains ~aO'tA:il£<;. I would 
suggest therefore that only the terms "Council of Elders" and 
perhaps "Assembly" be seen as drawn from the polis structure 
specifically, with the Iliad's Council having only the vaguest 
political resemblance to the Council in the polis. 

Returning now to the point of departure (supra 23) for our dis­
cussion of the Great King and the king-council-assembly anal­
ogy: we have still found no political structure corresponding to 
the moral state of affairs whereby Agamemnon has the power, 
but not the right, to take away Briseis, while Achilles has the 
power and the right to withdraw. We have seen instead that this 
state of affairs comes from a gentleman's agreement that arose 
when the expedition was organized and oaths taken to fight until 
Troy was taken. Achilles is not in violation of any such oath, be­
cause Agamemnon has violated a basic understanding of the con­
ditions under which such oaths were sworn. The Achaean 
government, as such, consists of the monarchical rule, by the 
individual leaders, of the individual contingents and the states 
from which they come. The Council of Elders is merely a 
means whereby selected leaders of the contingents can ex­
change ideas for the expedition, with the assumption that Aga­
memnon must be satisfied. And the same is all the more true of 
the Assembly. If the Council exists back home, and there is no 
reason to think that it does, it is a convocation of independent 
monarchs who may seek common action from time to time. 

Thus far the political picture; let us add the economic. The 
Achaean soldiers are not just a culture at war; they are the war-

52 ]. R. Lenz is responsible for making this excellent point to me in private 
communication. 



46 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

rior class of a warrior culture. As Odysseus says, "To the 
Achaeans Zeus has given the carrying out of arduous wars, from 
youth to old age" (14.85ff). They are sackers of cities: Achilles 
has captured twenty-three already (9.328f). They are forever 
distributing YEPU'tU, prizes taken in war, symbolizing heroism or 
success or military authority; they are forever plundering, to sus­
tain themselves and to trade for such necessities as wine (e.g. 
7.467). As Schein says excellently, to these pe0f.le "winning 
honor and glory alone make a brief life meaningfu ," and honor 
and glory are won by heroic deeds in battle; "to be fully human 
means to kill or be killed." 53 

Honor and glory, it may be objected, can only go to a relative 
few; what of the warriors of the lower ranks? Odysseus, not 
unexpectedly, has the answer: "Always it is disgraceful to wait 
long and return home empty-handed" (2.298) is addressed to all 
the Achaeans and is a code for all of them. When Troy is sacked, 
the glory will be Agamemnon's, but the plunder will be shared 
by everyone. Odysseus is the professional philosopher for all 
warriors at 19.225-33: "Achaeans cannot lament a corpse by 
denying the belly, too many men fall every day .... Mourn on 
the day whatever man died on that day, then eat and drink, so 
that all the more we may fight our enemies always without 
cease." You must think this way, if your existence is based upon 
war. We feel the contrast with Achilles, whom Odysseus is 
vainly trying to persuade to eat, and who is now guided not by 
professionalism but by passion. 

This is why we must stress that winning booty is meaningful 
in a material as well as a symbolic way. Plunder symbolizes 
honor, but plunder also keeps the people fed and housed and 
clothed, directly and indirectly. Directly, by taking the goods of 
others; indirectly, by trading some of those goods for other com­
modities: bronze, iron, tin, oxen, and slaves (7.467-74). The 
Achaean warriors are a class of professionals who know how to 
live by plundering. 

Of course there is an Achaean serving class. They have men 
on hand to steer their ships, and there are stewards and dispen­
sers of bread (19.41-44); but these stay behind when there is an 
assembly and by implication when there is fighting to do. They 
have woodcutters, whom we see under Meriones' leadership 
cutting logs for Patroclus' funeral pyre (23.112-23). They have a 
seer, Calchas, who never appears in battle (when Poseidon takes 

53 S. Schein, The Mortal Hero (Berkeley 1984) 70, 71. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 47 

his shape near the battleline, 13.45, he is making no attempt at 
realism and reveals his divinity as the words leave his mouth). 
There must be someone on hand to tend the horse-herds 
(19.281) and captured cattle that the warriors eat and trade for 
wine, and perhaps to prepare cowhides (7.474); but even if these 
are not the stewards of 19.43, they are surely non-combatants. 
And there are heralds, KTtPUK£C;, who perform a variety of du­
ties, from boiling water (23.40) to fetching Briseis (1.321) to 
valeting (2.183) to serving at religious functions (3.268, 273) to 
being a messenger (4.192, 198) to heralding (11.685). (These are 
not to be confused with 6£panov't£C;, who can be warriors­
Patroclus, Meriones-as well as aides.)54 

II. The Achaeans at Home 

We are not offered a great deal of information about the 
Achaeans when they are back home on the mainland and in the 
islands: Nestor and Phoenix tell some tales, Homer gives sketch­
portraits of the previous life of some of the leaders, and we can 
make some inferences from the way the Achaeans act while on 
campaign. We must, of course, continue to resist the temptation 
to turn to the Odyssey, except for purposes of comparison (ef 
supra 19). 

The passage that tells us the most about rule at home is II. 
9.149-56, which mentions that Agamemnon is able to give away 
seven cities to Achilles, cities that will "honor Achilles like a 
god, and fulfill his ordinances under his scepter for his benefit" 
(9.1£). In other words, Achilles will be their absolute monarch; 55 

and the fact that Agamemnon can give them away indicates that 
at the moment they are under Agamemnon's absolute sway. He 
owns them just as he owns the tripods and horses and other 
gifts he is prepared to bestow. Achilles in the field does not rule 

54 For the eEpa1tOvn:~ se W. Donlan, "The Homeric therapon: Follower or 
Servant," APA Abstracts (1991) 93. 

55 It seems unlikely that he would even be under Agamemnon's suzerainty. 
Achilles is at the moment free of Agamemnon's dominance; if he goes home, 
he will surely be equally free; why would he be tempted by an opportunity to 
come under Agamemnon's political authority? When Peleus makes Phoenix 
the iiva~ over the Dolopes (9.484), we would expect the word to imply that he 
was not under Peleus' sway, even though Phoenix remained at least emo­
tionally bound to Peleus and seemingly continued to reside in his court so as 
to raise Achilles (9.483); however this confusing situation is clarified, Phoenix's 
moral relationship to Peleus is unlike Achilles' to Agamemnon. 



48 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

with more authority than this. Agamemnon's absolute rule of 
Sicyon and Corinth is strongly implied by 13.663-70 and 
23.296-99, where we read that Euchenor of Corinth and Eche­
polus of Sicyon paid, or might have paid, a fine to avoid serving 
in the Trojan War; the independent heroes had no stated 
obligation and had to be persuaded (see 51 infra). 

Peleus too is-or at least was-able to give away whole 
peoples: he assigned the Dolopes, dwellers in a remote part of 
Phthia, to Phoenix, who is their ava~ (9.482f). We do not pos­
sess much evidence for the internal structures of the other king­
doms. There is a passage, however, which suggests that Neleus 
is to be thought of as an absolute monarch in Pylos, before Nes­
tor came to the throne. Nestor as a lad once brought back the 
spoils of a cattle raid in Elis. These were apportioned by the 
leading men, TtYTl'top£<; avop£<;. who were owed a debt by the 
Eleans-but only after Neleus, who had not engaged in the 
fighting, had drawn off an enormous share for himself and had 
given the rest to the common stock to apportion (11.687-705). 
This smacks of total authority. 

We learn something of the internal structure of the Myrmi­
dons in II. 16, though part of what we see is not relevant to the 
situation at home. There are 2,500 men in all: they came over 
from Phthia and Hellas in fifty ships (2.685, 16.168), fifty men to 
a ship (16.170). They are divided into five (J'tlX£<;. presumably of 
500 men each, since the division and assignment of leaders were 
made for military rather than political reasons. We infer this 
from the fact that it was done by Achilles (16.171), not Peleus, 
and need not reflect geographical and political boundaries in 
Thessaly. The leaders of the (J'tlX£<; are called TtYE~OV£~ (16.171, 
198), and are probably a selection from the Ttrfl'tOp£~ ~OE ~EOOV­
't£<;-at least lines 155-67 give the impression of a larger number 
of the latter than five. This permits us to infer that the M yrmi­
don state, and not just the contingent, had a certain number of 
men who, though under the absolute authority of the monarch, 
were themselves in charge of other men. 56 

Moreover, the five TtYE~OV£~ are an impressive lot: we have al­
ready noted that two, Menesthius and Eudorus, have divine 
genealogies (6.174, 180-92); Pisander is the third best Myrmidon 
spear-fighter after Achilles and Patroclus; Phoenix will be 
offered equal rank with Achilles (9.616); and Alcimedon, best 

56 Van Wees (supra n.29: 287f) calls attention to the presence of T,y£~ov£C; in 
other contingents; we assume therefore that the Myrmidon structure is typical. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 49 

horsemen after Patroclus (17.475-78), is noble enough that we 
know his father's father (17.467). Patroclus too is evidently well­
born. 57 If men of this rank readily take orders from Achilles 
here in the Troad, orders that are political in import (whether to 
fight) rather than military (when, where, and how to fight), it is 
hard to imagine them any more independent back home. Of 
course the orders back home will presumably be given by 
Peleus, not Achilles, but the structure will be the same. 

As no Achaean warrior is ever said to do anything except fight 
and raid cattle, the chances are that Homer conceives of them as 
a warrior class; they are probably superior to others in society, 
such as the shepherd, plowman, and shield-maker that we hear 
of from time to time, men who have stayed behind (23.835, 
7.221, and the wheat, orchards, and herds of 14.121ff).58 It is use­
ful here to compare Odysseus in the Odyssey, who is an expert 
carpenter (5.243-62) and farmer (18.366-75). He is also an expert 
archer who says that he fought with the bow and arrow at Troy 
and boasts that the was second only to Philoctetes (8.215-20). 
This is not true in the Iliad, nor can we imagine Odysseus saying 
it there; the bow and arrow, despite their seeming effectiveness, 
were despised by the great Achaean heroes and employed by 
secondary fighters such as Teucer, Meriones on occasion, and 
the Locrians (ef Diomedes' harsh words in 11.385-90). Similarly 
it is difficult to imagine the Achaean heroes boasting of being 
able to plow a field exceptionally well. The Trojan warriors, to 
be sure, are mostly men with civilian peacetime occupations, as 

57 Patroclus' rank is surprisingly hard to determine. That we know his grand­
father is an index of stature; he is originally from Opoeis, a town subject to the 
lesser Ajax (2.531), whither Achilles would have brought him had he lived 
(18.326); Menoetius brought Patroclus to Peleus after he had killed a 
companion (23.85ff), suggesting that he was at least a man of means. 

58 If the Achaean warriors do nothing except fight and raid cattle, what 
about the Calydonian boar hunt (9.538-49)? Two points: I have no difficulty 
with the idea that a heroic warrior class should engage in a mighty hunt to 
protect orchards that it did not engage in cultivating; and the culture of 
Calydon looks very different from that of the Achaeans we see fighting on the 
Trojan plain, even when they are back home. Neleus, Nestor, Tydeus, Oeneus 
in other passages, and Peleus are presented as rulers, kings, so far as we can see 
absolute monarchs; but the real rulers in Calydon appear to be the Elders, 
who send the best priests to supplicate Meleager and are in a position to offer 
him a temenos of the richest land in the nation. True, Oeneus is a later 
supplicant, further along in the order of accession, but he makes no offer of his 
own, and seems to be acting strictly as a father. The hunt may be an initiatory 
hunt in any case, a rite of passage: see N. F. Rubin and W. M. Sale, "Meleager 
and Odysseus," Arethusa 16 (1983) 137-71. 



50 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

we shall see-cowherds such as Aeneas, shepherds such as 
Paris. But never is such a thing imputed to the Achaeans. We 
hear instead of an alarmingly large number of Achaean mur­
derers in exile: Epeigeus (16.571-74), Lycophron (15.430H), 
Medon (13.694ff, 15.333-36), Tlepolemos (2.661ff), even Patro­
clus, the most likeable of the Achaeans, who killed a childhood 
playmate in anger (23.84-90); all are men apparently quick to 
settle matters with the sword, a natural concomitant to a military 
society. 59 Hence it is appropriate to picture Achaean society as 
hierarchical: the monarch and his retinue (comparable to Achil­
les and Patroclus, or the np6Jluxo~ and his huipOt); the warrior 
class; and the tradesmen and farmers. 

Some of the contingents in the Catalogue of Ships suggest the 
possibility of alternatives to absolute monarchy. Of the twenty­
nine Achaean contingents, twenty have one leader, and it can be 
assumed that Homer thought of these twenty, at least, as struc­
tured exactly as the Mycenaeans, Pylians, and Myrmidons are, 
with the leader as monarch. The warriors of the Argive region 
(in the narrow sense) are led by three men, Diomedes, 
Sthenelus, and Euryalus (2.563-66); but Diomedes is specified as 
the one who "led all of them together" (2.567), and the other 
two are probably members of the monarch's retinue. Certainly 
in 9.32-49 Diomedes seems to speak for his contingent in threat­
ening to stay in the Troad even if the others go home. Six contin­
gents have two leaders. Of these six pairs, four are brothers: 
Ascalaphus and Ialmenus, sons of Actor (and Ares), leaders of 
the Minyans (2.512); Phidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus, 
leaders of Cos and the islands (2.678); Podalirius and Machaon, 
Asclepiads of Thessaly (2.732); and Schedius and Epistrophus 
sons of Iphitus of Phocis (2.517). Schedius appears, from 17.306, 
to have been more powerful than his brother Epistrophus (who 
indeed disappears from the text after 2.517), but it is not possible 
to guess how power was distributed between the members of 
the other pairs. Another pair, Polypoetes and Leonteus, also of 
Thessaly (2.740, 745) but not related by blood, likewise defy 
analysis. Of the sixth pair, Idomeneus appears to dominate 
Meriones (2.645, 650f); Meriones comes almost as an after­
thought in 651; he is Idomeneus' onacov (7.165, 8.263, 17.258, 
10.58) and 8Epa1tCOV (13.246,23.113, 124, 528, 860, 888), and he 

59 Phoenix too is in exile, for a lesser crime (9.447-80); indeed it is striking 
that no fewer than three of these exiles (Epeigeus, Patroclus, Phoenix) sought 
refuge with Peleus. If he was at all typical, the courts of the Achaeans were 
well-populated with wrongdoers. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 51 

occasionally fights with the bow and arrow (13.650). But he is 
second-in-command in 4.253, and he is among the nine who 
respond to Hector's challenge (6.166 ); Janko compares him to 
Patroclus and Sthenelus (in Kirk IV 78). It seems reasonably 
safe, therefore, to consider Idomeneus a monarch. 

The Epeans have four leaders in the Catalogue, Thalpius, Am­
phimachus, Diores, and Polyxeinus, each of them equal and 
independent (2.620-24).60 It is hard to know what political 
arrangement this implies. The Boeotians of the Catalogue have 
no fewer than five leaders, of whom two, Peneleus and Leitus, 
are the most prominent (2.494-510). The Boeotian contingent as 
given in the Catalogue is very large-6,000 men-and since the 
Catalogue and the rest of the Iliad agree that Agamemnon ruled 
the most people (but not that the Mycenaeans et al. were the 
largest contingent), it is reasonable to suppose that Homer 
imagined the Boeotians as divided into two (possibly five) 
units-especially as there is no indication that the Boeotian 
leaders were related to each other by blood (see also 55 infra). 
Presumably we are to picture each unit as a monarchy. 

Agamemnon is the most powerful ruler in Greece, and this 
may give him some edge over the others; but we never hear 
that any of the other rulers is subordinate, is a vassal, or acknow­
ledges the suzerainty of Agamemnon. Nestor tells Achilles and 
Agamemnon that he has consorted with "better men than you" 
(1.260); he speaks of cattle raids and quarrels with the Epeans, 
and the sufferings of the Pylians at the hands of Heracles, and 
never offers the slightest suggestion of a role for Mycenae in the 
political life or foreign affairs of Neleian Pylos, either in his life­
time or this father's (11.670f). The situation in Phthia is much the 
same. When the expedition to Troy was being mustered, Odys­
seus and Nestor went to Pyleus' kingdom to recruit Achilles; 
they feasted, and Nestor spoke to Achilles and Patroclus, invi­
ting (K£A£UW) them to join the expedition. "And the two of you 
were very willing, and they [your fathers] enjoined many things 
upon you both" (11.782). (I translate KEA£uw as "invite" because 
if orders had been given they would have been given to Peleus 
and Menoetius.) The en tire scene is quite lacking in coercion: 
there is no suggestion that the ava~ of Phthia owes anything to 

60 Elsewhere in the Iliad the Epeans, while retaining Amphimachus and 
Diores, seem to acquire also four different leaders: Meges, Amphion, Dracius 
(13.692; but these Epeans may be thought of as coming with Meges' father to 
Dulichium: see Janko on 13.685-88), and Otus of Cyllene (15.518; companion 
of Meges, and thus perhaps another Epean in Dulichium). 



52 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Mycenae. We may contrast the fate of Euchenor of Corinth, 
who would have had to pay a penalty (8w11) if he had not gone 
with Agamemnon (13.669), or that of Echepolus of Sicyon, who 
gave Agamemnon a mare as a penalty, and stayed behind 
(23.296-99). Both these places are assigned to Agamemnon in 
the Catalogue as part of his proper domain, so it is no wonder 
that Euchenor and Echepolus had to pay if they wished to 
remain behind. Language reinforces these observations: Nes­
tor, for example, is both the ava~ and the pamA£us of the 
Pylians, and he is the ava~ in Pylos as well as in the Troad 
(23.302, 2.54, 1.252). The words do not mean 'king', of course, 
but they do make it very unlikely that Nestor was vassal to 
another ava~ or paO'lA£u~. 

If we stand at a kind of aesthetic distance from all that we have 
said about the Achaeans, we may be able to summarize them as 
the social expression of the heroic code. Heroism (by which I 
mean the choice of a life, probably short, of KAEO~ a<p8twv) was 
deeply intertwined with the practice of honoring the hero with 
gifts and YEpa~; Book 1 of the Iliad is unintelligible unless we see 
Achilles as suffering overwhelming dishonor from the taking 
away of his yEpa~. Granted, this idea is virtually deconstructed in 
Book 9, where Achilles says that he does not need such honor 
as this, and speaks of being already honored by the alO'T]l of 
Zeus; he says this because he has called heroism into question 
and elevated other values, such as love and life, above it. 61 But 
such statements as this alienate him from Achaean culture, to 
which he never entirely returns; his penultimate speech to 
Agamemnon at 24.649-53 stresses his closeness to Priam and 
distance from Agamemnon and the others, and his tone mocks 
Agamemnon. In Book 1 he is still an Achaean and the code is 
still in place, only Agamemnon is trampling all over it. What I 
call the social expression of the code is the structure whereby 
each hero is also the head of a state, or perhaps the joint-head, or 
the companion of the head, or one of the companions. This 
social expression is embodied in Sarpedon's question to Glau­
cus: Why are we honored by the Lycians? Because we fight at 
the front of the battle, and win glory (12.310-21).62 The implica­
tion is that the heroic head of state is a man who ought properly 

61 Cf Sale (supra n.8) 86-100; Schein (supra n.S3) 105-10, with references to 
previous work. 

62 We must stress that the Lycians resemble the Achaeans and not the 
Trojans; there is no suggestion that they live in a polis. Indeed I cannot find 
any sign of a town; the Lycians come from Lycia by the Xanthus. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 53 

to be obeyed implicitly by the others: the heroic ~a<HAEU~ 
wields the sceptre and knows what is good for his people. The 
concept of heroism and of absolute monarchy are deeply inter­
twined in a single concept, the heroic warrior-king. 

It is reasonable to suppose that the oral epic tradition always 
sang about heroes and heroism, that these values go back to time 
immemorial. It would be perfectly natural for the essence of the 
Achaean society we see in the Iliad also to go back that far. I see 
no reason why this heroic society cannot be a reflex of the My­
cenaeans. The evidence suggests that the affairs of each Mycen­
aean state were directed from the palace by the palace-bureau­
cracy under the orders of the wanax; among those affairs are 
mili tary activi ties presided over by officials of high standing. 63 

Whether or not this wanax was an absolute ruler, he could 
readily have been transformed into one as poets began to create 
a heroic society. Of course we do not see the Mycenaean 
bureaucracy in Homer; it is not relevant to the action of the 
Iliad, and indeed the poets from the early Dark Ages on are 
likely to have left such matters out. But even if these features 
were preserved down to the time of the I had, the poem had 
little occasion to mention them. There were cattle to be raided 
by the warrior-class; cattle and sheep had to be tended, vines 
grown, shields made, and so on, all by those who were not mem­
bers of the warrior class; whether Homer imagined such econ­
omic activity as highly organized by a palace bureaucracy is im­
possible to say. What we can say is that the Iliad pictures a group 
of independent kingdoms, some of them relatively very large, 
led by powerful rulers who live in places back home (c1 e.g. 
11.768-88), who have under their supervision officers 0 high 
standing, and who are wealthy enough to support expedi­
tionary armies on prolonged campaigns and keep the econ­
omic wheels turning at home. This picture could be an idealiza­
tion of the Mycenaean kingdoms, a view of what the Mycen­
aeans might have looked like on campaign, and it does not suit 
well the societies of the Dark Ages. The little we see of the Ili­
adic Achaeans at home on the mainland is consistent with what 

63 Cf Hooker 88: "The decisive role of the palace as intermediary in the 
economic process is plainly brought out ... a named e-qe-ta is present with 
[each] detachment. If the e-qe-ta corresponds to the later Greek hepetas 
(,follower'), he is probably of high status: an inference in keeping with the 
occasional attachment of a patronymic to the name of an e-qe-ta." Other 
authorities could be cited; I have chosen l{ooker because he is much more 
skeptical than most. 



54 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

we know of the Mycenaeans (Hooker 136£). Two words of cau­
tion, though. The Mycenaeans for much of their existence were 
heavy traders, and-despite the appearance of extreme belliger­
ence-we cannot show that there was a warrior class such as we 
see in Homer. Naturally the presence of such a class in Homer 
can be an idealization of a society able to send large armies on 
campaign abroad. 64 

III. The Alliances 

If we are to compare the Achaean alliance with the Trojan, we 
first need to establish comparability in size. To do this, we must 
make some calculations, an activity that Homer, like other oral 
poets, invites us to indulge in.65 Everyone admires Agamem­
non's beautiful image of the Trojan wine-pourers pouring wine 
for decades of Achaean soldiers (2.123-30), or the equally fam­
ous picture of the Trojan fires like stars at the end of Book 8; 
from these lines we can calculate the relative sizes of the 
Achaean army, the army of Troy-city, and the absolute size of 
the army of the Trojan allies. It is as if the poet must sugar the 
numerical pill for an audience reluctant to calculate, though 
probably delighted when the calculations give them a lively 
picture. Homer says at 2.122 that there are more Achaeans than 
Trojans-plus-allies; he then leads up to the enumerations of the 
Achaean ships in the Catalogue by saying "Troy-city fields 

64 The impression that Mycenae makes upon modern scholars might well be 
identical with the impression left upon the poets. "From the end of the Middle 
Bronze Age, militarism was so congenial to the mainland temperament that 
both its aesthetics and its technology focused on the trained soldier with his 
equipment," E. Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago 1972) 260. Cf 
Lord William Taylour, The Mycenaeans 2 (London 1983) 135: "A strong 
impression created by the monuments is of the dominant accent placed upon 
war by the Mycenaeans. It would almost seem as if they loved strife for its 
own sake." 

65 The beauty of the imagery invites us; and we feel we have been invited 
after we accept the invitation and come up with consistent results. Avdo 
Medgedovich was also astonishingly accurate with numbers in The Wedding 
of Meho (tr. A. Lord [Cambridge (Mass.) 1974]). After much calculation of the 
number of ships, Kirk (on 2.509-10) bursts out: "Such calculations are, needless 
to say, of very little relevance," but does not tell us what they are irrelevant to. 
lf they are not relevant to poetry, why are we-Kirk and all the rest of us--en­
couraged by Homer to make them? If fact Kirk very acutely points out (on 
2.491 ff) that Homer has called upon the Muses in order specifically to tell 
"how many" troops there were (emphasis Kirk). 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 55 

fewer than one-tenth of the enormous contingent whose ap­
proximate size I am soon going to give you." He adds at 2.130ff 
that of course with their allies the Trojans are closer in size, and 
at 8.652f he tells us how many Trojans there are. 

And he does, with the Muses' inspiration, give the approxi­
mate size of the Achaean army, though we must do the calcula­
tions; the task of actually stating the total is apparently beyond 
the Muses' arithmetic capabilities. Instead they state the num­
bers of ships per contingent, in order to tell us the relative size 
and theoretical importance of each. We are allowed, for instance, 
to appreciate how Odysseus and Ajax had won their high 
positions as Councillors through their individual qualities (Odys­
seus as clever speaker-c/ 3.216-25-and Ajax as best fighter 
after Achilles, 2.768f); it must have been via such virtues, be­
cause it was not through the numbers of troops they com­
manded (twelve ships each). All we need to do is multiply the 
number of ships by the number of men per ship to get the size 
of the entire army. Unfortunately the Muses do not give us the 
default figure for men per ship: the Boeotians have 120, Philoc­
tetes has fifty, and Achilles (in 16.168ff) has fifty. The figure we 
want is very likely to be traditional, but even Thucydides was 
not privy to this tradition, because he had to guess that the 
figure was the mean between 50 and 120 (1.10.5). Kirk feels (168) 
that the figure of fifty is "realistic," and thinks it very likely to 
be the "standard complement" (on 2.509f); I find this persua­
sive. Weare somewhat thwarted by the fact that the Boeotians, 
with fifty ships at 120 men per ship (2.509f), seem to be more 
numerous than the M ycenaeans, 100 ships at fifty men per ship 
if we regard fifty as the default figure; yet Agamemnon is said to 
lead the most hosts (2.580). But we have seen the solution (supra 
51): the 5,000 Mycenaeans have just one leader, Agamemnon, 
while the Boeotians must distribute their 6,000 men among two, 
or possibly five, commanders. Inquietudes may remain-if fifty 
is the default figure, why does the Catalogue give it only apro­
pos of Philoctetes' contingent? Why does it give it at all? The 
fact remains that, using the default figure of fifty for all contin­
gents save the Boeotians, we come up with an army of 63,000 
(62,880) men, which is just perfect. It is enough more than the 
total figure for the Trojan alliance (50,000 in 8.562f) to justify 
Agamemnon's saying that they fight against fewer men (2.121£), 



56 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

yet not so many that it is incredible that the Trojans should 
nearly defeat the Achaeans in open battle in the Iliad. 66 

It is worth noting in passing that Mycenaean Greece was able 
to field an expeditionary force of 63,000. When Thucydides 
chose a figure of 85 men per ship, and rounded off 1,186 ships to 
1,200, so as to calculate the size of the Achaean host at 102,000 
men, he may have been trying to get as big a figure as he reason­
ably could; even then he found the total surprisingly small, so 
small, indeed, that it warranted explanation. Greece must have 
sent out considerably fewer troops than it was capable of 
sending. He is probably mistaken: Mycenaean Greece would 
probably have been hard-pressed to send an army of 102,000 
overseas. But an army of 63,000 seems altogether possible. Chad­
wick calculates at least 50,000 for the Mycenaean population of 
the kingdom of Pylos, and a nation of this size ought to be able 
to send 4,500 men overseas.67 And this is the size of Nestor's 
contingent in the Catalogue, at fifty men per boat. The city popu­
lation of Thebes was 6,000-9,000 ca 1300 B.C., and Boeotia was a 
major Mycenaean kingdom. If the ratio of Thebes' city popula­
tion to total Boeotian population was anything like what it was 
later, Boeotia at this time must have had at least 75,000 inhabi­
tants, and could easily have supplied 6,000 troops. 68 Now in 
legend, Thebes was destroyed shortly before the Trojan War (in 
fact the date appears to be around the middle of the thirteenth 
century, about the same time as the generally accepted period 
for the destruction of Troy VIla). And the Catalogue respects 
this legend, mentioning H ypothebes, the smaller settlement re-

66 It is characteristic of Homer to lead up to a total figure but to avoid 
stating it. "La, 1,000 fires burned on the plain, and beside each sat 50 [men] in 
the glow of the shining fire" (8.652f); in effect, "Please multiply 1,000 times 50" 
(and you will see that the army of the Trojan alliance contains 50,000 men). 
Similarly, "There were 50 swift ships which Achilles, dear to Zeus, had led to 
Troy, and in each there had been 50 men, his comrades, at the oarlocks. And 
10, he had appointed 5 leaders whom he trusted to give commands, and he 
himself was the ava.~ in supreme command" (16.168-72). In effect, "Please 
multiply 50 times 50; after that, divide the total by 5." The language may have 
difficulty stating large numbers intelligibly; even Thucydides uses the Homeric 
technique. He tells us to calculate the mean of 120 and 50, then multiply it 
times 1,200 (1.1 0.4, rounding off 1186), never stating his total of 102,000 (1.10.5). 

67 See ]. Chadwick, The Mycenaean World (Cambridge 1976) 68. 
68 S. Symeonoglou, The Topography of Thebes (Princeton 1985) 153f, 203-25. 

Symeonoglou gives a minimum population for Hellenistic Boeotia of 60,000, 
with a Theban population of around 4,000 and an army of about 15,000; I am 
arguing that a population for Boeotia as a whole of 75,000 ought to be able to 
send at least 40% of 15,000, or 6,000 men abroad. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 57 

maining after the destruction, but not Thebes. But even if we 
imagine that the city of Thebes was reduced to 2,000 inhabitants, 
it would still appear that the twenty-nine Boeotian settlements 
mentioned in the Catalogue could have raised an army of 6,000. 
Similar arguments can be used for Mycenae, with its territory 
stretching north through Corinth, Sicyon, and the southern 
coast of the Corinthian Gulf, and for Tiryns, with Argos, most 
of the Argive plain, and the Acte peninsula (with Nauplia, Her­
mione, Troezen, and Epidaurus). I have no desire to wed myself 
to the position that the Mycenaean kingdoms were in fact 
divided in this way; I only want to assert that in Mycenaean 
times these regions could probably have fielded as many troops 
as the catalogue allots to them. Nor am I claiming that Homer's 
figures were historically accurate, in the sense that 63,000 men 
actually fought under Agamemnon in the siege of Troy, and that 
1,186 ships carried them thither. But-at least as regards Pylos, 
Boeotia, Mycenae, and Tiryns-Homer was not exaggerating the 
size of an army that Mycenaean Greece could raise. If this figure 
is realistic (not necessarily historical) for the era that Homer was 
putatively describing, and if it is also the result of a reasonable 
calculation based on the numbers supplied by the poem, we 
ought to accept it as providing a sense of how many men were 
engaged in the Homeric battles, and also as providing access to 
the size of Homer's Troy. 

The Trojan army must number about 5,000. We learn this 
from the image of the wine-pourers: the Troy-city contingent is 
significantly less than one-tenth of the entire Achaean alliance 
(2.123-30). "Significantly less than one-tenth" is vague, of 
course, but (calculating 63,000 +10=6,300) we cannot be far off if 
we suppose that Homer pictures Troy-city as fielding around 
5,000 troopsY With 5,000 men, Troy-city accounts for a tenth 
of the entire army of Troy and its allies. This fits the Trojan Cata­
logue nicely, in that, besides the soldiers of Troy-city, there are 
fifteen other contingents supplying a total of 45,000 troops, 3,000 
troops per allied contingent on average. The Achaeans have 

69 With Thucydides' 102,000 we should have to give the Trojans about 9,000 
warriors (we need a number significantly less than 102,000 + 10), somewhat 
more than Agamemnon's 8,500 by Thucydides' reckoning (100 x85). Thucyd­
ides' 102,000 Achaeans is so much larger than 50,000 Trojans that, if we 
accepted it, we would probably have to accept into Homer's fictional land­
scape Thucydides' explanation for the length of time it took Agamemnon to 
conquer the city, i.e., that much of the Achaean force had to be continually 
diverted in the quest for food (1.9, 11). 



58 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

more contingents (twenty-nine to sixteen), but on the other 
hand Troy boasts some allies (such as the Phrygians and 
Lycians) who live in quite sizable spaces. This puts the entire 
population, men, women, and children, of Homer's Troy, both 
the city and its peacetime environs, at a minimum of 20,000; let 
us allot 10,000 to the city and 10,000 to the suburbs and surroun­
ding farms. 

The geographical area of the city must be large enough to gar­
rison an army of 50,000 (5,000 Trojans, 45,000 allies) plus the 
15,000 Trojan elders, women, and children. The acropolis con­
tains Priam's huge palace, the houses of Paris and Hector, the 
large temples of Athena and Apollo, some altars, and perhaps a 
temple of Zeus (22.172). The rest of the city we picture lying be­
low. Before Priam's doors there is a vast agora where the 50,000 
men of the entire army can assemble (7.348); this space must ad­
join the acropolis. Streets lead from Hector's house through the 
city to the Scaean gates (6.390ff). Along these and other streets 
must lie the houses where our conjectured 10,000 urban Trojans 
live, and where the 10,000 rural Trojans and the 45,000 allied 
soldiers are quartered; others presumably camp (22.47) in the 
agora (18.274). Homer is evidently picturing Troy as an enor­
mous walled city, the walls encompassing an agora, streets, and 
houses as well as the acropolis. 

Even here, though, we must hesitate to speak of Homeric ex­
aggeration. Homeric Troy, to be sure, cannot be modeled on 
the citadel of Late Helladic Troy, which is a walled acropolis 
whose population was no more than a thousand people. 70 Ho­
mer's acropolis alone would occupy most of this space. A much 
larger area south of the citadel, however, was enclosed by a re­
cently discovered ditch, presumably dug for defensive pur­
poses, within which 5,000 people may have lived (Korfmann 
[supra n.70])-giving a total population of 6,000. This is almost 
big enough for the Homeric city, provided we can picture an 
additional 10,000 Trojans living outside in peacetime. Mycenaean 
Thebes, which was walled, was about the same size as Korf­
mann's Late Helladic Troy. 

We can superimpose the Homeric acropolis on the four mod­
ern city blocks of Mycenaean Thebes between Epameinondas 
Street and Pelopidas Street, and between Antigone Street on the 

70 Page (supra n.38) 66; M. Korfmann, cited in Archaeology 46 (1993) 20, 
allots 900 to it. An updated report of Korfmann's excavation in Archaeology 
47 (1994) 18. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 59 

north and Dirke Street on the south. We can let Priam's palace 
be equal in size to the vast Second Palace, and fit the rest of the 
buildings of the Homeric acropolis in the area south of the 
palace. We can put the Homeric agora where the modern mar­
ket is. That probably leaves room within the walls as drawn by 
Symeonoglou (supra n.68: 30) for the streets and houses we 
need to accomodate 10,000 Trojans. (Symeonoglou [205] puts 
the actual population of Mycenaean Thebes at 5,760, a "conser­
vative estimate.") We can quarter here with their Trojan rela­
tives and guest-friends some of the remaining 10,000 who live 
outside plus a good many allied troops, and turn over the agora 
to the rest. Troy is larger than any polis Homer knew, but not a 
city that Homer need have considered unreasonably-or impos­
sibly-or mythically large (in the way that the men of the heroic 
age had the mythical strength to hurl huge boulders that men of 
our age could hardly lift). 

Let us feel free, therefore, to imagine an Achaean alliance of 
63,000 troops engaged with a Trojan alliance of 50,000. Let us 
picture the strength of Agamemnon's Mycenaean contingent as 
5,000 (l00 ships times fifty men per ship) and thus as approxi­
mately equal to the army of Troy-city, 5,000 men. It is vital to 
our understanding of the government of Troy that we keep this 
equation in mind: the population that acknowledges Agamem­
non's direct rule is about the same as the population of Troy­
city; each state is part of a total alliance much bigger than itself. 

Agamemnon is the Greek commander-in-chief over his alli­
ance, Hector the commander-in-chief for the Trojan alliance. 
We see Hector acting as commander-in-chief in Book 18, e.g., 
where he and Polydamas debate policy before the entire army, 
and the army approves of Hector's advice (18.310-13): 

Thus Hector spoke in assembly, and the Trojans shouted 
assent, 

The fools! for Pallas Athena had taken their wits away. 
For they concurred with Hector, whose planning was bad, 
And no one agreed with Poulydamas, who had offered 

excellent advice. 

The impression we are given, that the army could choose 
between the views of Hector and his chief of staff, suggests that 
Hector's authority is not absolute, that he must persuade the 
army, an impression that is reinforced by the statement that 
Athena went to the trouble of taking their wits away. Even if 
this is just a metaphor for 'they spoke witlessly', it tells us that 
the state of their wits was important. Indeed Hector gives en-



60 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

couragement fully as often as he gives orders: in 5.495 he 
"ranged everywhere throughout the army, stirring it up to 
fight," and in 11.64f "Hector appeared now among the first, at 
other times among the last, giving orders." On the first occa­
sion, Sarpedon has just chided him: 'I, your ally, am stirring on 
the Lycians and seeking to fight; you, who once said you 
needed no allies, are just standing around, not even giving or­
ders'. Later, after Sarpedon's death, his companion Glaucus 
threatens to abandon Hector and take the Lycians home, 
because Hector has run away from Ajax. Both Lycians are evi­
dently addressing their commander-in-chief in much the same 
way that Diomedes at 9.32-49 and Odysseus at 14.83-102 
address Agamemnon, as leaders capable of displaying consider­
able independence. Indeed Sarpedon's words to Hector contain 
echoes of Achilles' first tirade against Agamemnon (5.483f, 
1.152f). Neither Hector nor Agamemnon has the authority of a 
Scipio or a Napoleon, but when orders are given, they are the 
men who must give them. 

There are some important differences. Agamemnon is ex­
pected to listen to and be advised by his Council of Elders, but 
he is beholden to, answerable to, no one. Nor does he appear to 
take advice while actually engaged in battle. Hector, by contrast, 
has a chief of staff while he is fighting: he listens to Poulydamas, 
and follows his counselor does not. Moreover, he is beholden 
to political power within his own city. Not the power of Priam, 
but that of the Elders (y£poV't£~) of Troy, who "when I wished 
to fight at the prows of the ships, used to hold me back, and 
used to restrain the army" (15.722ff). In other words, the Trojan 
Elders even have power to direct action on the battlefield. At 
this point in the action Hector accuses the Elders of cowardice, 
and urges the troops upon the ships; previously he had been 
obedient, because "Zeus did injury" to the mental powers of the 
Elders and himself (15.724f). In Book 6 he says that he is going 
back inside the city "in order to speak to the Elders, the 
Councillors" (t13f). 71 In the event he does not do this; but we 

71 Reading £'{1tW zeugmatically, "in order to speak to the Elders, the Coun­
cilors, and to tell our wives to pray to the gods." I prefer this translation to the 
alternative, "to tell the Elders and our wives to pray," not so much because the 
Elders fail to participate in the ceremony, as because even the suggestion that 
they might do so seems inappropriate. Hclenus has told Hector in 6.86£ to 
have Hecuba assemble the women; and the ceremony of offering a peplos to 
Athena looks like a women's ritual. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 61 

can read his words as intending a normal process of consul­
tation. 

Hector's relationship to the Elders underlies two passages re­
ferring to Trojan support for their mercenary allies: in 18.290ff 
he reminds Poulydamas that wealth is flowing from the homes 
of the Trojans to Phrygia and Maeonia; and in 17.225f he re­
minds the allies that he "wears out his people for gifts and food" 
to give to them. It must be the homes of the Elders that are 
bearing the brunt of this, and Hector will have arranged with 
them to pay the allies this way. Agamemnon can offer his 
Achaean allies the fruits of plunder of towns near Troy; Hector 
must draw upon the wealthier Trojans to support and reward 
his allies. 72 

It is obvious that Agamemnon's YEPOV't£<; have much less 
authority than the Trojan yEPOV'tE<;. Naturally, since there is no 
real parallel between the two groups. The Trojan Elders are 
Trojans, citizens of Troy-city, part of a single state; as we shall 
see, they really are elder. None of the Achaean Elders except 
Agamemnon belong to Agamemnon's contingent; they are 
heads of different states who have formed a temporary Council 
to conduct the war; and for the most part they are not old. 

We have no convenient name for the Trojans and their allies 
collectively, comparable to "the Achaeans" or "the Danaans" or 
"the Argives," though Homer occasionally uses T pw£<; for the 
lot of them (e.g. 18.310). This leaves us convinced that the 
Achaeans, despite their three names, belong to a single nation­
ality, even though their individual states are independent, while 
the Trojans and their allies do not. The Achaeans all speak the 
same language; the allies of the Trojans are polyglot (2.803f; Ho­
mer sometimes forgets this fact, e.g. 18.245-313). The individual 
Achaean states all appear to rule themselves in the same way, 
absolute monarchy; the Trojan allies are diverse in their politics. 
The Lycians appear to be very similar to an individual Achaean 
state. They are ruled by two ~acrtAi1£<;, Glaucus and Sarpedon, 
who are looked upon as immortals, honored before all others, 
and have great holdings of land (12.310-14). Sarpedon suggests, 

72 J. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago 1975) 152f, puts for­
ward the attractive suggestion that it is the depletion of Troy's wealth that 
forces Hector to seek victory in the field and not fight a defensive war. The 
motivation of the allies was not entirely mercenary, though: Sarpedon 
encourages Glaucus to fight, not for the sake of Troy, or recompense from the 
Trojans, but for immortal glory (12.322-28)-and because if they do, the 
Lycians will continue to honor them (310-21). 



62 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

though, that this state of affairs might be altered if he and Glau­
cus were not brave warriors: "Why are we honored as we are? 
... Because we are honored, we ought to fight." Not entirely 
logical, but obviously implying that such honors might cease if 
the two of them proved cowardly. As we shall see, the Trojans 
of Ilios present a different picture indeed from this. But they 
live, of course, in a 1tOAu;. 

IV. The Government of Troy 

As leaders of the opposing war efforts, Agamemnon and Hec­
tor occupy roughly parallel positions. It is natural to ask whether 
their roles within their respective states are similar. Hector is 
never called either ava~ or ~a(HA£u<;, but that may be acciden­
tal, related to the metrical properties of his name. In one passage 
he suggests that he is a,!1 ava~: he prays that 'Acr'tuava~ may be 
as splendid "as I am" (WSE) with respect both to ~tTl and to 'IAtou 
lqn avacrcrElv (6.478).73 Because he is picturing Astyanax here in a 
purely military context, and we have seen that ava~ is a vague 
word, used of several leading Trojans-Helenus, Poulydamas, 
and Priam-we naturally take 'IAtou lqn avacrcrElv here to mean 
'be the leading warrior' in Troy. Hector, unlike some of his rela­
tives, has no peacetime occupation: Paris e.g. is a shepherd 
(24.29f), Aeneas (20.188) and Anchises (5.13) neatherds; but 
Hector, so far as we can tell, is a soldier. He has 'learned' to be a 
1tpOJ..Laxo<; (6.444); war is his concern especially (6.493), and he is 
consistently regarded as the best Trojan warrior. Hence the 
wish that Astyanax should follow in his footsteps is perfectly 
natural, however bizarre it seems to us that Hector should 
expect Andromache to rejoice at such a fate (6.481) after her 
earlier plea (6.431f). 

73 6.478, a difficult line. My translation makes the whole line epexegetic of 
apt1tp£1t£u TpW£(HJlV in the preceding line, with avaaaElv in 478 as an accusa­
tive of re~ect after ayuElov-'pre-erninent among the Trojans, viz. as splen­
did as I (robE) both in physical strength and in my position as powerfullivu~ 
in Troy.' Kirk does not discuss the line's relationship to what precedes, though 
he does take avaaa£lv with ayuElov. Leaf, Munro, and Ameis-Hentze make 
the line epexegetic, as I do, but take avaaaElv as an anacoluthon, "as though 
for avaaaov1:u" (Leaf). Instinctively we want to take the whole line with 
001:E-"grant ... that he be pre-eminent among the Trojans, and that he be as 
splendid as I in physical strength, and also that he be the powerful anax of 
Troy"; but the position of 1:E after ~tTlv makes such a construction very 
unlikely. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 63 

Indeed he claims no political authority. He is not superior to 
the Elders, but takes orders from them, as we have seen; he is 
not even an Elder himself, because he is not old enough: the 
Trojan DTII..loyEpovn:t; have ceased from war, because of old age 
(3.149f). Hector cannot force his brother to return Helen; when 
he upbraids Paris with the most appalling language at 356£, it is 
the Trojans in general, not Paris whom he accuses of inaction: 

No, the Trojans are great cowards, or they would surely ere 
now 

Have dressed you in a stone chiton for the ills that you 
have wrought.74 

This accusation would make little sense if Hector ran the state, 
but it sounds just fine if we suppose that some group of Trojans, 
or perhaps all of them, were responsible. Hector is silent in the 
Assembly at 7.368-78, where the Trojans decide to continue the 
war and not force Paris to return Helen, and where Priam 
makes the deciding speech. 

Hector's authority ceases off the battlefield; once inside the 
city, he ceases to be comparable to Agamemnon. Indeed the rea­
son why they hold their positions is very different. Agamem­
non is aptalOt; with respect to power, in that he rules over the 
most troops. Hector leads the most and the best (2.817); more­
over this is the siege of Troy, and we might expect the Trojan 
general to be the commander-in-chief. But why is Hector the 
Trojan general? He is apuJ'"coc; with respect to military prowess; 
is it this that makes him the commander? We are denied direct 
access to Homer's imagination here,· but it is hard to overlook 
the fact that Hector is a Priamid, and that Priam is in some sense 
~aO'lA£Ut; of the Trojans. Priam o.vacmEl them (24.202), and is 
their avas (2.373,4.18,6.451, etc.); Troy is the city of lord Priam 
(2.373; 4.18, 290; 7.296, etc.). Now, we shall see that Priam lacks 
overriding political authority, that his dominance is moral, re­
ligious, symbolic; he resembles Elizabeth II, not James 1. But it 
is possible that the poet pictures the ~aO'lAEu<; of Troy as leading 
the army, just as the ~aO'lAi1£<; of the Achaean states lead their 
armies. And just as some Achaean \)aO'tATtE<; (such as Peleus and 
Laertes) turn over their armies to their sons if they feel too old 
to fight, so too we might picture Priam as turning over the Tro­
jan army to Hector. This may be why Hector, unlike so many 

74 A problem in interpreting these lines is our ignorance as to whether 
Hector is proposing a stoning or is implying that they had the ordinary 
political power to execute Paris but were not using it. 



64 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

of his brothers, "learned to be a 1tp0J.1uX0C;» (6.444); he was 
being groomed for the generalship, and the general ought to be 
an excellent warrior. 75 Thus when Hector prays that this son 
may uvacrcrn as he does, he may be hoping that Astyanax will 
simply grow up to be the avu~ over the army, as his inherited 
right. 

The war effort, then, is directed by the Elders, who supervise 
Hector as commander-in-chief of the alliance, who occupies the 
office because he is the general of the army of Troy-city, a posi­
tion that may well be the hereditary right of the Trojan !3acrt­
A£\l<;. If Hector were !3ucrtAE'\)<;, he would presumably still be 
subject to the Elders. From this it is natural to suppose that 
Priam, right now, is subject to the Elders-or rather, that he is 
one of them, beholden to the opinion of the majority, or a con­
sensus, or whatever their procedure may be. Of course this is 
just a supposition so far, based on the conjecture that the 
!3uCHAEuC; of Troy is the hereditary leader of the army; but we 
shall find a good deal of evidence in the poem to confirm it, and 
nothing to contradict it. 

We begin the process of confirmation with a fundamental 
question: why are the Trojans fighting this war, and why do 
they not force Paris to give Helen back? Either they simply lack 
the political institutions to carry this out, as the Achaeans lack an 
institutional means to reconcile Agamemnon and Achilles early 
on, or their institutions are malfunctioning, or else they want to 
fight. Despite Menelaus' words at 13.620-39, the Trojans in gen­
eral are not war-loving (though it must seem that way to Mene­
laus, for they continue to fight in an unjust cause). At 3.11lf the 
Trojans rejoice over the prospect of coming to the end of war; 
Priam blames the "war with the Achaeans, with its many tears" 
not on Trojan eagerness or even Helen, but on the gods (3.164f); 
the days of peace, "before the sons of the Achaeans came," 
carry intense nostalgia (22.156), partly because they were days of 
prosperity (9.402f, 18.288f); even Hector can long for peace 
(22.111-21); the passages might be multiplied. The Trojans do 
not lack institutions: we have already seen that they have Elders 
who direct the course of the war even on the battlefield. These 
Elders form a Council-not that the word 130'UA.., is ever used, 
but we have !3o'UA,£'U'tui in 6.114, who are also in the passage 

75 Polites, too, is a Priamid who has had a military career, 2.798. If the 
generalship is hereditary, it is obviously a good idea that more than one 
brother should be trained to fill it. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 65 

called Elders, '1EPOV'tEC;. That the Elders are institutionalized is 
conhrmed by Hector's reference to an oath of the Elders ('1E p­
OUo-lOV) in 22.119. We see them in session (£Yaw, ~v'to ) in 3.149, 
153, where they are called by the more technical name of bll110-
'1EPOV'tE<;. The Trojans have not only a Council, but also an 
Assembly, an a'1op~ (7.345, 11.139,18.274). And Priam is a 
13a<:nAEu<; in some sense, despite the lack of analogy to James I. 

One or another of these institutions has failed. And we can 
spot the point of failure; it is brilliantly clear, even though we 
have to rely on inference to name the institution. The most 
important political decision ever made by the Trojans was made 
before the action of the Iliad begins. It is referred to in the Iliad, 
but only in passing, at 11.122-42; it is foreshadowed at 3.204-24. 
As I propose to lay a good deal of stress on these two short 
passages, a word of justihcation may be suitable. Not that there 
is anything we need that is not in the text; but because the impli­
cations of these passages have not been thoroughly observed 
among critics familiar to me, they must have seemed to others 
to be obiter dicta. It has long been noted that Book 3 recovers 
the feelings and circumstances of the first year of the war, when 
Priam would not have recognized the Achaean leaders, when 
Helen would not have known whether her brothers had come 
to Troy (cl 3.236-42), when a duel between Menelaus and Paris 
would have been thoroughly appropriate. Given what we know 
about the size of the repertoires of oral poets, there is every 
reason to think that Homer possessed a poem on the first year 
that he adopted to the needs of the Iliad. It is perfectly reason­
able to assume that this poem included the embassy of Menelaus 
and Odysseus that Antenor describes at 2.204-24, an embassy 
for Helen's sake, where the two spoke powerfully and persua­
sively at a meeting of the Trojan assembly (3.209). In 11.139 we 
hear of a Trojan Assembly at which a wealthy Trojan named 
Antimachus proposed that Menelaus be put to death, which 
could not happen, of course, unless Menelaus were right there, 
available for assassination. Surely this is the same Assembly; 
Homer is probably drawing again upon his earlier poem. This 
poem may well have included the Judgment of Paris, which 
Reinhardt has so effectively shown to be lurking in the back­
ground of the Iliad. 76 Now, we do not need to assume the exis­
tence of this poem in order to say what we need to say; the de-

76 K. Reinhardt, "Das Parisurteil" (1938), reprinted in Tradition und Geist 
(Gottingen 1960) 16-36. 



66 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

tails are all right there in the Iliad. But it is much easier to under­
stand Homer's failure to present this all-important occasion in 
the foreground if we assume that he is referring to a familiar 
event in the oral tradition that he has elsewhere described in his 
own way.77 

Antimachus, of course, did not persuade the Trojans to kill 
Menelaus. But-on this or a similar occasion-lured by the 
promise of a bribe from Paris, he "most of all did not allow the 
return of Helen" (11.123ff). That "most of all" (~aAlcr'ta) indi­
cates that others joined Antimachus in not allowing this. These 
must have been powerful men. For one thing, their voices car­
ried the day, on this day of days, and Helen's return was disal­
lowed. For another, as Paris cannot have bribed the entire Tro­
jan citizenry, he must have chosen a few men with great in­
fluence. 78 These men were worth bribing; if you bribe them, 
you will get what you want. 79 

77 For the reliance of the oral poet on his tradition, and indeed our inability 
to understand him fully if we do not possess that tradition, see Foley (supra n. 
35). 

78 It is probably not a good idea to bring in the Shield of Achilles to 
illustrate Troy, though there are plenty of similarities between Troy and the 
cities on the Shield. One of the similarities is that on the shield we have Elders 
"in session," "on polished stone in the sacred circle," and two talents of gold 
are set out between the litigants to give to the one who judges most fairly 
(18.503-08). It is a familiar suggestion that the litigants are responsible for the 
presence of the gold, which would then be a kind of bribe; not the buying of a 
particular Elder or Elders, as at Troy, but rather a necessary gift to the court. If 
you donate, you will not necessarily win, but if you fail to donate, you will 
lose. The parallel is not exact, but both situations include the venality of 
Elders. On bribery in Greece generally, see D. Harvey, " Dona ferentes. Some 
Aspects of Bribery in Greek Politics," in P. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey, edd., 
History of Political Thought 6 (London 1985) 76-117. 

79 Cunliffe offers a softer translation of aUK duax', "did not approve of the re­
turn of Helen," implying, I think, that the opinion of Antimachus cannot have 
been decisive. This rendering was made up by Cunliffe for this occasion, and 
is I suppose based on a preconception of how much power ought properly to 
be allotted to a man mentioned only thrice elsewhere (11.132,138; 12.188). In 
support he refers to 8.428, where Hera says to Athena, "No longer do I £00 us 
to fight for the sake of mortals in opposition to Zeus"; but the relationship 
between Hera and Athena permits, nay encourages, the translation 'allow' 
here. Cunliffe says (Place Names S.v. 'Av'tiIlUXO~) that Antimachus "corrupted 
by Paris opposed the restoration of Helen," which is a little stronger. When we 
reflect that Antimachus was worth corrupting, and when we examine all other 
uses of the verb with the negative and infinitive, we are justified in making it 
even stronger: the word taw implies that Antimachus together with the others 
who were bribed were in a position to disallow the return of Helen. H. W. 
N ordheider in LdfgF gives" nicht zuverlassen." 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 67 

Now, Antimachus is not the political head of the city of Troy. 
He and his cronies must exert their influence upon some larger 
political body or bodies. We have already (supra 65) identified 
the Assembly meeting mentioned at 3.209, at which Menelaus 
and Odysseus spoke, with the Assembly meeting of 11.139 
where Antimachus' unsuccessful motion to assassinate Mene­
laus was introduced. Perhaps Antimachus' successful motion, 
that Helen be retained, also belongs to that occasion. We might 
picture the Greeks (with Antenor's support) refusing, Antim­
achus' asking for Menelaus' death, Priam proposing a compro­
mise, and the Assembly assenting to Priam. But there could 
have been two occasions: one (11.125) a Council meeting, at 
which Antimachus was successful; and another (3.209, 11.139), 
definitely an Assembly meeting, at which he pleaded unsuccess­
fully for assassination in addition to refusal. Either picture sug­
gests that Antimachus and his allies were Elders, who could 
dominate the Council and therefore coerce the Assembly, but 
who could not lure it to murder. Before we explore this further, 
let us look at some other meetings of the Assembly and the 
Council. 

The assembly of the army in 18.246-313 includes the entire alli­
ance, and therefore can only suggest how the Trojan Assembly 
might work. Poulydamas and Hector speak; Hector proves per­
suasive, and under the influence of Athena all the soldiers shout 
assent to him. Unfortunately we have not the least notion as to 
what Hector would have done had the army opted for Poulyda­
mas' advice. Notc carefully that the assent of the army is not 
automatic: the members of the Assembly had enough indepen­
dent authority to make it worth while for Athena to take away 
their wits, and the poet dwells upon their folly: "They con­
curred with Hector and his bad advice; no one praised Poulyda­
mas, though his counsel was good" (18.312f). These lines give 
the firm impression that what the army decides is what will be 
done. 

The Assembly at 7.345-420 also includes the members of the 
alliance (see 7.348). Antenor speaks out for the return of Helen, 
Paris refuses and offers instead to return all the stolen property 
and more, Priam urges that Paris' message be conveyed to the 
Achaeans along with a proposal for a truce, and the listeners 
assent to this. Idaeus reports this result to the Achaeans, adding 
a wish that Paris had died young (7.390), and reporting that "the 



68 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Trojans, at least, bade" Paris to give Helen Up.80 Presumably 
there was considerable acclaim for Antenor's proposal. We have 
long known that the Trojans hate Paris and would be happy to 
betray him to Menelaus (3.454). In assenting to Priam they are 
going against their own wishes and assenting to necessity. They 
must realize that Paris cannot be forced to give Helen back, and 
we find out at 11.123ff why: Paris has bribed too many impor­
tant men. This suggests that the ordinary members of the As­
sembly cannot inaugurate action: they assent to, or dissent from, 
authority. And they must feel that if Priam says, or implies, that 
Paris cannot be compelled, then he cannot, and dissent from 
Priam is pointless. (More on Priam's role here infra.) There is 
another assembly of the whole army at 8.489- 542, where Hec­
tor urges them to remain outside the wall for the evening and 
take the appropriate precautions; there is no other speaker, and 
again the army cries out in assent. The Trojan Assembly meets 
at 2.788-808. 81 Unfortunately it takes no action, so we learn 
nothing of its power from this scene. 

Five assembly meetings (11.139-42,18.246-313,7.345-417, 
8.489-542, 2.788-808), taken together, convince us that the as­
sembly of the alliance (and probably the Trojan Assembly 
proper) has the power of assent or dissent, but no power to 
assert itself independently. And we have some evidence that 
their dissent is important: when Antimachus proposed the 
killing of Menelaus, the Assembly turned this down (no doubt 
assenting to some other speaker, but still probably expressing its 
own revulsion). 

We also notc that the speakers at the assemblies that we see 
first-hand (as opposed to the pre-war assembly) are all either 
Councillors-Antenor and Priam-or young men whose 
fathers are Councillors-Paris, Hector, Poulydamas son of Pan­
thoos, Polites son of Priam (Iris in disguise, 2.791). This suggests 
that Antimachus is a Councillor as well. We are never told this; 
he is not named among the eight 8TllloYEPOVH:C; mentioned at 
3.146ff, though we do not know how many were present. We 

80 The "at least" (y£) might mean "the Trojans but not their allies" (who are 
being paid to fight, 17.225f); but in a situation where Idaeus is calling attention 
to Trojan sentiment that has been thwarted, it probably means" the Trojans 
but not their leaders." 

81 I call this a meeting of the Troy-city Assembly because when Iris refers to 
the allies (803) she seems to be reminding Hector of their presence in the city, 
as if they were not present on this occasion; the emphasis here on their 
polyglot nature reinforces their separateness. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 69 

know that he is very wealthy (11.132f) and that he is too old to 
fight; and as we know that the 81l110YEPOV'tE<; are too old to fight 
(3.150), he is at least eligible for the Council. Moreover, he is one 
of the most powerful men in Troy; it was he who "most of all 
did not allow the return of Helen" (11.125). The very words 
"did not allow" (OUK duO'x') suggest that his power is not infor­
mal, that he occupies a position of authority. We shall see that 
the Council is in fact hopelessly divided on the question of the 
return of Helen, implying the existence of a faction favoring her 
retention-Antimachus would be a suitable member of this 
faction. Moreover, if he and the other bribe-takers implied by 
"most of all" (I.UiAlO'-CU) were not on the Council, we are con­
fronted by the existence of two bodies of influential Trojans. 
Now contemporary politics might have offered Homer a paral­
lel to this: some powerful aristocrats-comparable to Priamids 
and Antenorids-on a Council, and some very wealthy ar­
rivistes-comparable to Antimachus-who have amassed great, 
if informal, influence upon the Assembly. In Troy, we might 
picture the Antimachus group allied with certain disaffected 
aristocrats, such as Aeneas (13.460f). Such speculations are enter­
taining; but given that the Council is divided, it seems simrlest 
to imagine that Antimachus is an Elder and a member 0 the 
'retain Helen' faction. 

We shall return to this question after attempting to answer 
another: was the first decision to retain Helen taken at the As­
sembly of 11.339-42 or at a Council meeting? Let us look at the 
Council more closely. Its members are known technically as 
81l1l0yEpov'tE<;. Beyond 3.149, this term is found just once in the 
Iliad: in 11.372 it is used of Ilus, descendent of Dardanus, the 
eponym of Ilos and the grandfather of Priam, Lampus, Clytios, 
Hicetaon, and Tithonus. Ilus is the 7tUAUlOU 81l1l0YEpov'to<;, 
which means that Homer wants us to imagine the institution of 
Elder of the Community going back to the time of Priam's 
grandfather. Also, as Leaf notes (on 11.372), "the name thus indi­
cates the identity of royalty with the patriarchate of the village 
community." "Village community" is Leaf's translation of 8i1-
110<;, and "village" is not the mot juste, but the idea is sound: the 
~UO'lA£\)<; is a 81l110YEPWV or-if there are more than one, as there 
may have been in Homer's conception of nos' generation, and 
as there certainly are in his depiction of Priam's Troy-is a mem­
ber of the 81l110yEPOV'tE<;. The term also occurs at Eur. Andr. 300, 
where the Chorus refers to Cassandra's beseeching each of the 
elders to put the infant Paris to death. Obviously Euripides was 



70 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

enormously impressed with the importance of the Elders in 
Trojan politics, whether he read about them in the Iliad alone or 
had some other source, such as our hypothetical Homeric 
poem on the first year of the war. 

The <>llllOy£pov"m; are sitting at 3.146-49: 

Priam and Panthous and Thymoetes 
And Lampus and Clytius and Hicetaon 
And those with them, [and] Ucalegon and Antenor, both 

men of wise counsel, 
Were in session as <>llJ..l0Y£POV1£<; beside the Scaean gates.82 

In Greek: Ot uJ..lcpt fIptuJ..lov KUt fIuv800v T1<>£ 8uJlot'tllv 
OUKUAiyroV 1£ KUt 'Av'tTtvrop ... c'lu'tO <>llJ..loy£pov't£<;. 

As commentators and lexicographers have handled these 
words in various ways, we must take a moment to discuss them. 
Cunliffe (Place Names s.v. uJlcpt) gives "Ot u. nvu, a person and 
those with him, a group of which the person named is the chief 
... With several persons named r 146." That is, Priam is not dis­
tinguished from any of the others in the accusative; they are all 
chiefs. Munro in his note on these lines agrees: "The phrase Ot 
UJ..lcpt nvu<; (plur.) implies a group, of which the persons [sic] 
mentioned are the most important: cpo 4.295ff." For Leaf too, 
the phrase "means 'the party consisting of' Priam and the 
others. "83 Mazon concurs: "Or, Priam, Panthoos et Thy-

82 This is probably the most literal translation. I shall discuss the oi UIlCPt con­
struction presently; as for O\l1<:<lt..iyrov tIC (" and Ucalegon," implying an in­
definite number of 0llIlOYEPOvt£<;), rather than "both Ucalegon," (implying just 
eight), I take my cue from the half-parallel with other such strings: KmvEa t' 
'E~aOl6v tIC Kat avti8wv nOt..UCPllIlOV (1.264) must be rendered, "Caeneus and 
Exadius and god-rivaling Polyphemus." But the parallel is imperfect, because 
putting Ucalegon and Antenor in the nominative (thus taking them out of the 
olu~l construction except as appositives to ot) may also take them out of the 
string. Munro says no, the "change to the nominative in 1. 148 has no sig­
nificance. Cpo 15.301." In 15.301 there are no names in the nominative, but 
Munro apparently means, 'Translate as you would 15.301', so that we get, " ... 
Hicetaon and Ucalegon and Antenor and those with them," giving the same 
picture as my translation. Similarly, Leaf feels that the last two names arc put 
in the nominative merely "for the sake of variety." Ameis-Hentze and Will­
cock apparently think otherwise, as they refer to only seven Councilors (they 
omit Priam, on which see infra); Kirk does not make his view clear. Mazon's 
translation (given in the next paragraph) suggests, by its dashes and use of 
"sont la qui," that more than these eight are present. 

83 He continues: "so that Panthoos etc. arc all included among the Olllloyi­
pOVt£~"; Leaf cannot quite bring himself to utter what his own logic compels 
him to say, that Priam is also one of the Olllloyipovt£~. Ironically, his note ends 
"olllloyiprov recurs only A372, and there it is used of a king." Yes; and on 
Leaf's own interpretation of the passage it is so used here as well. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 71 

moites-Lampos et Clytios et Hiketaon, rejeton d' Ares­
Oucalegon ct Antenor, deux sages-sont la qui siegent, en Con­
seil des Anciens, pres des portes Scees." All five of us agree on 
the two most important points: Priam is one of the ()THlOY£POV­
'tEl; and he is not elevated above the others mentioned, though 
he catches our attention by being mentioned first. 

The other scholars I have consulted, however, go in different 
directions. Hans-Friedrich Bornitz, in the LfgE, groups it under 
the heading "B II 1 ... Lebewesen ... sitzen rings urn eine Per­
son herurn [emphasis Bornitz'sJ" and quotes it in Greek about as 
I have done, only omitting Ucalcgon and Antenor. He pre­
sumably translates, "The Elders, Ucalegon and Antenor, were 
sitting around Priam and Panthous, etc. " This would mean that 
Priam, Lampus, Clytius, and Hicetaon were not ()llJloy£pov'm;, 
even though their grandfather Ilus (20.238) was one (7.362), and 
the relative outsiders Antenor and the mysterious Ucalegon 
now are. This seems bizarre, even though Doderlein (cited by 
Leaf on this passage) also argued that Ucalegon and Antenor 
were the only ()llllOy£povn:<;, and were representatives of an anti­
Priam party (el 7.747).84 Willcock varies this approach, saying 
that "by a slight illogicality, five of the seven [sic] councillors 
who were with Priam are attracted into the accusative with 
him," which means that he must want to translate, "Those 
around Priam, viz. Panthoos and Thymoetes '" and Ucalegon 
and Antenor, were sitting .... " (He cannot mean, "Priam and 
those around him ... were sitting," because that gives us eight 
Councilors.) The Ot (Wq>t idiom is lost; and an interpretation that 
requires us to accuse the author of illogicality is not persuasive if 
good alternatives exist. Ameis-Hentze (on 3.149) also speak of 
seven Councilors, though they refer us (on 3.146) to 2.445, 
where they say, "ot ()' UJlq>' 'Arpdwva, den Atriden mit einbegrif­
fen"; Priam thus ought to be included, and we ought to have 
eight Councilors. 

84 He considered them tribuni plebis, and their opposition, Priam, Panthous, 
Thymoetes, and Priam's three brothers Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon as 
royalists. This is probably making too much of the shift to the nominative, 
and suggests that Priam has more political authority than he turns out to 
possess; but it is true that at 7.347 Antenor speaks out for Helen's return, and 
Priam does not endorse him. In the rest of the Teichoscopia Antenor and 
Priam seem friendly enough, though when Antenor says that he entertained 
Menelaus and Odysseus and learned their counsels (3.207f) he may be saying 
that he was on their side, that he wanted I Ielen returned then as well as now, 
while Priam appears to have waffled. Antenor accompanies Priam for the oath­
taking, as if here too the feeling is that both sides need to be represented. 



72 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Those who take the third direction feel that the lines should be 
read according to the Attic idiom, "so-and-so and those around 
him (them),» but want to translate, "Priam and those around 
him (sic), namely Panthous and Thymoetes ... and Ucalegon and 
Antenor ... were sitting as ()THlOyEpovn:<;.» Thus Kirk, LSI, and 
Chantraine (88). This at least makes Priam one of the ()lll.lOyEP­
OV't£<;.85 But why does Homer put Panthous and the others in 
the accusative, Ucalegon and Antenor in the nominative? Does 
this not specifically place Priam on the same level as the others 
in the accusative? The difference is subtle, since if Priam is in­
cluded with the rest among the ()lll.lOyEPOV'tE<;, there is a leveling 
effect in any case. But if Priam were the only one in the accusa­
tive, we would feel that he was definitely primus inter pares po­
litically. Homer could have put the others into the nominative; 
that is certainly the more obvious and the easier construction; 
he seems to have avoided doing that in order to avoid singling 
out Priam, in order to make him primus inter pares only by vir­
tue of being the first one mentioned, the one to arrest our atten­
tion, to give us our bearings in the midst of less familiar and un­
familiar names. 86 

Let us look at some parallel passages. If we translate 15.301ff 
by the model, 'So-and-so and those around him (them),' it 
comes out, "Ajax and Idomeneus, Teucer, Meriones, and Meges 
[all these names are in the accusative in Greek] and those around 
them, summoning the [other] leaders, formed a battleline.» With­
out using this model, we render, "Those around Ajax and Ido­
meneus '" summoning the leaders, formed .... » Both make 
sense; what does not make sense is to translate, "Ajax and those 
around him, viz. Idomeneus, Teucer, etc.» Idomeneus, Meri­
ones, and Meges are not part of Ajax's entourage. Similarly there 
is no temptation to translate 4.294ff, "arranging his companions 
and urging them to fight, namely, tall Pelagon and those around 
him, viz. Alastor and Chromius and Haemon the mighty (KpEOV-

85 At least it should, although Kirk goes on to say that "these are the Trojan 
elders and Priam's contemporaries, Orll.lOyEpOVtf.~." leaving us confused as to 
whether he includes Priam among the Elders. 

86 It is only fair to ask, "Why are any of the names in the nominative?" 
Ameis-Hentze (on 3.148) think that Ucalegon and Antenor are deliberately 
stressed because of the important role of Antenor in the ensuing scene, and 
this can hardly be wrong; indeed Antenor and Priam are paired both in the 
Teichoscopia and oath-taking. For K. Stanley, the nominative emphasizes the 
contrast between the 'perceptive' Antenor and Ucalegon (='heedless'), sym­
bolizing the overall Trojan ability to grasp reality, together with their inability 
to act accordingly. See The Shield of Achilles (Princeton 1993) 66. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 73 

'ta) and Bias, shepherd of the hosts." Why should Haemon and 
Bias, especially in view of their epithets, be part of Pelagon's en­
tourage? In both passages, however we take them, it is clear that 
all the names in the accusative are on the same level. At 6.435 it 
is especially clear: Andromache refers to an assault by o'i apur-rot 
allCPt Atav't£ 8um Kat eX),aKAU'tov 'I801l£vila 1)8' eXIlCP' 'A'tp£i8a<; 
Kat Tu8EO<; eXAKlJlOV {nov, which no one would translate, "their 
best, the two Ajaxes and those around them, viz. Idomeneus, 
and the two sons of Atreus and those around them, viz. 
Diomedes." First, it is exceedingly bizarre to reduce "those 
around them" to one person each time. Second, we cannot 
single out the Ajaxes as the aptcr'tot from a list including 
Agamemnon; we cannot even single out the Ajaxes and the 
Atreidae here in Book 6, where Diomedes is so much the 
superior Greek warrior that the Trojan women have just prayed 
for release from his valor. Nor can it mean, "the best men 
around the Ajaxes ... ," as if it were not the Ajaxes and Ido­
meneus and the Atreidae and Diomedes who were the best 
men. We must of necessity translate, "the best men, the two 
Ajaxes and Idomeneus and those around them, and the Atreidae 
and Diomedes and those around them." 

Render Ot aJlcpt idiomatically, or do not; it never singles out the 
first in a string of accusatives. Hence in 3.146-49 both logic and 
the parallel passages require, "Priam and Pan tho us and Thy­
moetes ... and those about them, and Ucalegon and Antenor 
[or, "both U calegon and Antenor"J, were sitting .... " Doubtless 
Kirk, LSJ, and Chantraine would have translated it this way if it 
had not been for a preconception: we all know that Priam is the 
king of Troy; surely it is improper to put a ~a(JtA£UC; on the 
same rank as the other 8TlIlo),EPOY't£C;. 

Of course he is the ~a(JlA£UC;; in a sense he is not on the same 
rank. That is why, in order to show us that Priam does not have 
exceptional political power, Homer must use this striking con­
struction, the succession of accusatives: Priam and Panthous and 
Thymoetes etc. In the company of the 8TlJlO),EPOV'tE<;, Priam is 
merely one of a number of them. Not that he is powerless; 
unlike Elizabeth II, he sits with the ruling body. But he is only 
one member. The one most familiar to us, no doubt; the one we 
are most interested in, which is why he is mentioned first. But 
no more powerful politically than the others. 

With Mazon I have given the phrase £Yaw 8TlJlO)'EpOYUC; 
(3.149) an institutional translation, "were in session," though it 
could, of course, be rendered, "were sitting [by the Scaean 



74 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

gates], Elders"; I prefer the interpretation, "were sitting as El­
ders, " partly because the word 8TlJ..loyrpov'tE~ has the feel of a 
technical term, and a technical term is appropriate if they are 
actually in session; and partly because the repetition of ~v"C' at 
3.153 seems to lay such stress on their being leaders who sit: 
"COlot [like clear-voiced cicadas sitting on a tree] (ipa Tpwwv ilrft­
"COpEt; ~v"C' btl. 1tUpYWt (3.153), and such stress is appropriate if 
ther are actually engaged in leading. Also, this third book is our 
rea introduction to Troy-city; up to now we have heard about 
Troy from the Achaeans, seen an Assembly react to the ap­
proach of the Achaean army, and met the army of the Trojan 
alliance. It would make sense for Homer to put before us now 
the people responsible for the decision to fight this war, and to 
be exposed to their reasoning as they engage politically. If we 
take it as a formal Council meeting, then we are watching Troy 
being governed; and even if we do not, we are still in the pres­
ence of the governors of Troy, the yrpov"CEt; and ~ouAEu"Ca[ who 
elsewhere determine battle strategy for the Trojans. If it is a 
meeting, we do not know why it was summoned to meet; but 
when Helen appears, she becomes the agenda if she was not so 
already. When the Elders look at her, their minds are divided 
(3.156ff): 

No blame befalls the Trojans and Achaeans with their 
excellent shin-guards 

For suffering woes so long a time for such a woman; 
Her face bears dread resemblance to immortal goddesses. 

That is the judgment of half the Elders, or of half the minds of all 
of them. But (159f): 

Even so, though she is such, let her go home in the ships; 
May she not remain, a calamity for us and our children. 

That is the judgment of the other half. However we interpret, 
the Council is exactly divided, and that is why Helen remains in 
Troy. And that is why we have a Trojan WarP 

87 The importance of the Trojan Council, and indeed of politics in the Iliad, 
is well brought out by W. Nicolai, "Rezeptionssteuerung in der Ilias," 
Philologus 127 (1983) 3-12. It is a pity that Nicolai does not discuss the 
difference between the Achaean and Trojan Councils, and that he con­
centrates so much on individual error that he does not do full credit to 
institutional failure; but his sense of the dual purpose of the poet, to set forth 
heroism in the traditional mode, and to offer his own political insight and 
criticism, corresponds roughly to my sense that the poem is about the tragic 
growth of Achilles and the tragic death of Troy. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 75 

Such an interpretation allows us to see why Priam tells Helen 
that he does not blame her, but the gods, for the war (3.164f). 
The division on the Council reflects a real moral dilemma. A 
woman as beautiful as Helen is simply worth fighting for; but 
the war is disastrous for the nation. The first position is highly 
romantic, and we may doubt whether it could have been main­
tained in any real society, except one where an absolute mon­
arch was also the lover; even in fictional Troy such a stance 
requires the support of bribery. But one of the things we like 
about the fictional Trojans is they can feel that intense human 
beauty has a quality of divinity in it ("her face bears dread resem­
blance to immortal goddesses"), and that for this one ought to 
fight. We are never told, but we feel that Priam either agrees 
with this, or at least feels the force of the dilemma. If he did not, 
he could not very well talk of the gods' responsibility for the 
war; responsibility would lie with an errant son and a corrupt 
Council. The gods are responsible because they gave a woman 
godly beauty that one must fight to possess, and gave it to a 
woman from another nation. 

Putting together now what we know for sure: years ago, Paris 
bribed certain men, including Antimachus; the Council is still 
hopelessly divided; Helen is retained and the war goes on. 
Surely the easiest way to link these facts is to suppose that it was 
Council members whom Paris bribed, that Antimachus who 
"did not allow the return of Helen" (11.1243ff) is an Elder, a 
Councilor, someone in a position not to allow things. The other 
possibility, that Paris bribed some influential Trojans, not Elders, 
who were able to dominate the Assembly, looks unattractive in 
view of the division on the Council that we observe in Book 3. 
It is really making matters too complicated to think of idealistic 
Councillors who are pro-Paris and the erotic value-choice, 
allying themsleves in that Assembly with a party of greedy 
nouveaux whom Paris has gotten to. 

We still have not answered the question whether it was an 
Assembly meeting or a Council meeting at which Helen's re­
turn was rejected. Menelaus and Odysseus request it from the 
Assembly (3.209), but if we agree that Antimachus was an Elder, 
and as such did not allow Helen's return, we feel that the Coun­
cil must have met first, and then taken its position to the As­
sembly. It is a small point, perhaps, but if we attribute a decisive 
Council meeting long ago to our hypothesized poem on the 
first year of the war, we can see in the Council meeting in Book 
3 yet another borrowing from-another imitation of an event 



76 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

in-that poem. Book 3 does not mention Antimachus, because 
his role belongs strictly to the past. Moreover, here towards the 
beginning of the Iliad, Homer wants to give an idealized picture 
of Troy; her hamartia can unfold in due course. 

That is speculative; but that Homer pictured Antimachus and 
his group as Elders is not just speculation, and it is virtually 
certain that he regarded the Elders, the 81lJloy€poV't£<;. whether 
meeting in Councilor in Assembly, as the rulers of Troy. We 
are already prepared for this: we have heard the Elders giving 
orders to Hector (15.721ff), we have heard Hector propose to 
consult with them at 6.114; we know of the oath of the Elders at 
22.119. When we add the deadlocked meeting in Book 3, and the 
power of Antimachus et al. to force Troy to go to war, we 
complete a consistent and reasonable picture. 

This confirms our conjecture (supra 63f), that Priam is a weak 
king, an Elder whose political power is subject to the consensus 
of the other Elders. A weak king, and a very gentle man, but not 
a weak one. The man who can go to the Greek camp and en­
counter Achilles with humility and pride in Book 24, as a father 
to a son, a human being to a human being, and return successful, 
is not a weak person. Nor is the man who can tell Helen that he 
does not blame her for the war (3.164), or who can openly ac­
knowledge that he loves his son Paris too much to look on his 
probable slaughter at Menelaus' hands (3.306). Menelaus per­
ceives him as strong: he wants Priam to witness the oaths in 
Book 3, not on the grounds that he is the ~a<HA,£'\)<; of Troy, but 
because old men "look before and after, so that far the best 
things may befall" (109f). 

Priam takes no step thereafter to justify Menelaus' faith in him; 
he cannot. In the assembly of the Trojan alliance before Priam's 
palace in Book 7 Antenor, who had witnessed the oath-taking in 
Book 3 along with Priam, says that the Trojans are fighting 0 P -
Kta 1tl<J"Ca 'IjI£'U<JaJl£VOl (7.351f)-having falsified their sworn 
oaths, having broken the treaty. Paris, who speaks next, might 
have argued that the oaths specified that there would be peace, 
and Helen would be returned, only if he died 0.284-91). He 
does not, and we are relieved; this would be an equivocation, 
and we prefer to have the Trojans admit their guilt. Paris merely 
exclaims that Antenor is crazy if he thinks that he will give 
Helen back (7.360), and then offers financial restitution-double 
restitution. Priam, who speaks last, makes no effort to refute An­
tenor's charge of treachery. Nor does he attempt to dissuade 
Paris. He merely urges the Trojans to take their dinner, and 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 77 

Idaeus to tell the Greeks what Paris has offered and suggest to 
them a truce for burial. 

The effect on us, I think, is that Priam can do nothing. 88 Paris 
is holding all the cards, and if he says he will not return Helen, 
Priam is helpless. We have already been told why: the Council 
of Elders, which rules Troy, is divided. Later we shall learn 
more: Antimachus and others are "not allowing" the return of 
Helen. The initial audience may well know this second fact al­
ready, but we must be patient. We know enough, though, to 
rule out certain possibilities. We do not conclude that Priam is a 
bad man, perfectly willing to break his own oath, indifferent to 
the wishes of his people (3.454, 7.393), able but unwilling to in­
struct Paris that the crown demands the return of Helen. Nor 
do we conclude that though he is a good man, sensitive to his 
oath and to Trojan popular opinion, free to constrain Paris, he is 
too weak to do so. Indeed Homer warns us against drawing any 
such wrong-headed conclusions by preceding Priam's speech 
with the words 8£oqnv ,.l.'rlO"'twp (h6)\'uv'toc;, 0 mptv d) <ppOVEWV.89 

88 His powerlessness is in fact foreshadowed by Zeus'. Hera savagely de­
mands that the truce be broken; Zeus protests his love and honor for Troy and 
for Priam, but yields (4.43-68). Zeus cannot override Hera, and Priam cannot 
override the wishes of Paris and the Elders who support him. I stress the 
human source of Priam's frustration. Of course we can say that Hera bedevils 
him through Pandarus' arrow shot at Menelaus, but it is un-Homeric to let 
events proceed simply from Olympus. Beauty, talent, riches are the gifts of the 
gods; but all the major decisions of the poem are made by mortals, usually 
without divine intervention: Agamemnon's rejection of Chryses and seizure of 
Briseis; Achilles' withdrawal (even his failure to kill Agamemnon is a free 
choice inspired by deity); the Embassy; Achilles' decision to go home and his 
reconsideration; Patroclus' re-entry into battle and Achilles' assent to it; Achil­
les' re-entry; Hector's two decisions to remain outside the walls. Even Achilles' 
decision to return the body of Hector is free; it might have gone awry, and he 
have U sinned against the commands of Zeus" (24.586), if he had not taken 
measures to protect himself from his own anger. It might well seem to Priam 
that an arrow fired at Menelaus by a misguided Zeleian (or perhaps Lycian) 
had to have been inspired by a hostile god; but Priam cannot thereby avoid 
responsibility for the breaking of the truce, any more than Agamemnon can 
(or wishes to) avoid it by claiming that Zeus must somehow be responsible for 
his calamity. If Priam has the power to uphold his oath, he must exercise it. 
And if he is powerless, then there must be a human reason for it. As we have 
seen, there is-the nature of the Trojan constitution. 

89 Nicolai (supra n.87: 4 n.6) calls attention to this "positive 'auktoriale' Wur­
digung des Sprechers," and in its light gives four possible reasons for Priam's 
backing of Paris: sympathy for Helen (but Helen has conveyed a willingness 
to return, 3.176), proud self-assertion against the hostile demand to surrender 
(but Amenor's suggestion was not hostile, and the Achaeans have not made a 



78 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

We see the limitation on Priam's power again when he cannot 
force or persuade Hector to come inside the city in Book 22. 
This is not the result of personal weakness: he uses every imagin­
able argument, culminating in a reference to his own genitals 
(22.75), pleading as a father, just as Hecuba then bares and holds 
out her breast, appealing as a mother (22.80). The one thing 
Priam does not do is to order him, as his ~aalAd)<;; only the 
Elders collectively can give such orders. Even when Priam ap­
peals to duty-"Come inside and rescue the Trojans" (22.56)­
he speaks as a father, and calls Hector [1l0Y 't£KO<;. 

Priam, as ~aalAE'\)C;, still retains a good deal of authority, only 
not political. He says that the gods drove war on him (1l0l, 
3.165), perhaps identifying himself with the Trojans as a ~aal­
AE1>C; identifies with his people. As he should: he is the ~acrlAEuc;, 
his is the "city of Priam"; similarly we refer to 'Victorian Eng­
land'. At 7.345 Idaeus tells us that the Trojans "bade Paris to 
return Helen," and yet Priam is able to persuade them to accept 
his refusal, to "listen carefully and obey"(7.379). This does not 
sound like blind obedience, but rather a recognition that Priam 
can do nothing and that therefore nothing can be done. If Priam 
really could intervene but is too bad or too weak to do so, we 
would expect some expression of dissent-or might expect 
Athena to be taking their wits away. Instead they are trusting 
him, as Menelaus did in Book 3, because he is trustworthy. Late 
in Book 7, when the Trojans are collecting their dead upon the 
battlefield, Priam "does not allow his people to cry out" in 
mourning (7.425). Here he is the ~a(HAEUC;, in action if not in 
name, but his authority is of a religious or moral, not a political 
nature. In Book 21, Priam has been watching from the tower as 
the Trojans come streaming in flight towards the city; he rushes 
down and orders the guards to open the gates, which they do 
(21.526-38). This is a practical, a military decision; Priam, as one 
of the Elders (who have, after all, stated military authority over 
Hector) would naturally have the right to give such orders, and 
we would not have been astonished if some other Trojan elder 
had given it. In Book 24, Priam tells his citizens to gather timber 

demand), honoring his son's wilfulness (but why should he, in view of its con­
sequences for them all?), and religious scruples against deportation (but what 
about scruples over violating one's oath?). Nicolai later (10) calls attention to 
the failure of the Trojan Council, accusing it of collegial'" laissez-faire"; is 
"'honoring his son's wilfulness" an example of this? In any case, Nicolai has 
missed the importance of Paris' bribery. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 79 

for Hector's funeral; he does this partly as father of the beloved 
hero, and partly as a man of moral and religious authority. 

These are all the public actions he takes; but there is an inter­
esting reference to his status in Book 20. Achilles asks Aeneas if 
he hopes to be master of the dignity of Priam in the eyes of (or 
among) the Trojans, Tpwmo"lv avaSElv l1t1tobaJlOlO"l 'tlJllle; Tile; 
TIptaJlOU (20.180f). Let him not hope for this, "because Priam 
has sons." My translation is from Cunliffe, and agrees exactly 
with Munro and Leaf, and very nearly with Ameis-Hentze ("in 
den Besitz der Konigswurde gelangcn"). We cannot take TPWEO"­
mv as the object of ava~Elv, because 'tlJlllC; cannot then be con­
strued; I can find no parallel for Mazon's "avec Ie rang," nor 
does any commentator I have consulted. 90 For 'tlJlT) M. W. Ed­
wards says "power, prerogative," which is unattractive. Not that 
Priam lacks power-we have seen examples of it in the pre-

90 He is followed by Benveniste, though, in a very unsatisfactory discussion 
of tlllTr E. Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, tr. E. Palmer 
(Miami 1973) 342; earlier (336) Benveniste translates "and win the rank which 
Priam holds." I say "unsatisfactory" not merely because no attention is paid to 
the views of commentators and lexica on individual passages, but because so 
many apparent confusions lurk. For example, on this passage, he says, "the 
expression associates the ttllT] with the exercise of royal power." Now no one 
will dispute that there is an association between tlllT] and power; but Ben­
veniste goes on to assert that Hill, comprises royal power, as if power were 
denoted by the term. Again, in the same discussion he claims that 'ttf.LTl. or at 
least this notion of ttf.Ll, (he is not clear on this matter) is of divine origin. He 
cites 2.197, where Odysseus says that the HilT] of a king comes from Zeus, and 
says that there are more examples-puzzlingly, because we think back to 
1.278f, which he has indeed discussed, and where Nestor connects the ~aol­
A£\><; and ttllT] but says that Zeus gives Kubo<;. not tlllT]. Or we think of 12.310-
21, which he has just cited, and where Sarpedon asks, "Glaucus, why are we 
above all honored with a special seat, and meat, and full cups, in Lycia? And 
why do all men look on us as gods? ... Therefore we must take our stand 
among the first-fighters ... so that Lycian warriors will say, 'Our ~aOtA.~E<; are 
not without glory, they eat and drink well, but look, their strength is also 
noble, since they fight among the first-fighters'" (I have compressed slightly; 
Benveniste's translation [337J is more elaborate, but the difference is not impor­
tant here). Now the beings who are doing the honoring here are clearly 
mortals; it is mortals who look upon Sarpedon and Glaucus as gods; and the 
answer to the question "Why?" is not, "Because these are privileges that be­
long to us because we are kings." Sarpedon might have said, "Because a scepter­
holding king has a greater share of ttll~" (1.278f), but he did not. The implied 
answer to his question is, "They treat us this way in the expectation that we 
will fight among the first; therefore let us live up to their expectations." I would 
not dream of using this passage to refute the view that tlllT] is of divine origin; 
but the assertion that it is requires a careful consideration of this passage that 
Benveniste does not give. 



80 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

ceding paragraph, and wealth confers power. And even the 
specifically political power of a very wealthy 01l1l0"(EProv might 
well be coveted by an outsider, a poor cousin, a Dardanian who 
makes his living herding cows and has long resented Priam 
(13.460f). But 'ttlll) does not really mean 'power' in Homer, 
though the possession of a certain kind of dignity can also entail 
the possession of power. Power (of various sorts) is Kpa'to<;, 
KPCl'tEro. If by 'prerogative' we mean the physical objects that 
accompany 'ttlll) a better word is "(E pa<;. Thus Achilles' loss of 
'ttlll) in Book 1 is not a loss of power but of standing, dignity, self­
respect, which has come because Agamemnon has seized his 
"(Epa<; (1.352-56). But Bellerophon's receipt of half the royal 'ttlll) 
in 6.193 carries with it a certain amount of power (so too 2.197; 
9.616; 15.189; Od. 1.117; 11.495, 503; 24.30, the other places 
where Cunliffe allows the possibility of the translation 'preroga­
tive'). Willcock's "rule over the domain of Priam" changes the 
meaning of 'ttlll) even more. I labor this point because it seems 
to me that the words, "be master of the dignity of Priam," as 
given by Cunliffe, Leaf, and Munro are so very apt. Priam is a 
king, as Elizabeth II is a queen, without much royal power, but 
with immense status-and immense wealth, to which Achilles 
goes on to refer (20.182). 

The real rulers of Troy, then, are the 01lJlO,,(EpOV't£<;. one of 
whom is the ~a(JlA£u<;, who meet in Council and are the 
speakers at the Assembly. The Elders determine foreign policy, 
in that they let the nation go to war over Helen (11.125); they are 
involved in determining the strategy of the commander-in-chief 
of the Trojan alliance, Hector (el 6.113f, 15.721ff). One swears 
the solemn «oath of the elders" (22.119; perhaps the Council has 
the legal power to enforce this oath). Grounds for membership 
in the council, apart from age, are not clear. The names in Book 
3 that we recognize all clearly mark out the old aristocracy: An­
tenor, Panthoos, Priam, and his brothers; but we do not know 
enough about Antimachus to know whether to speak of aristoc­
racy or oligarchy. Troy bears an obvious resemblance to the city 
at peace on the shield of Achilles, with its elders in session to ad­
judicate a case of restitution for homicide; we do not, however, 
hear of any such action on the part of the Trojan 01l1l0,,(EpOV't£<;. 

V. The Economy of the Trojans 

In discussing the Achaeans at home, we called attention to the 
sidelights upon their lives that we get from time to time and 
noted that a good many Achaeans were murderers in exile. To 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 81 

this the Trojans offer startling contrast. In the vignettes of their 
pre-war lives we hear not of crimes but of occupations that 
were) or could be) pursued in time of peace: Phereclus the car­
penter and shipbuilder whom Athena loved (5.59-64);91 Paris 
the shepherd (24.29f)) trader (6.289-96)) and home builder 
(6.314f) and see infra); Lycaon, a chariot-maker (21.37); Melanip­
pus (15.547f)) Aeneas (20.188)) and his father Anchises (5.313), all 
cowherds;92 Bucolion (6.22, the father of two Trojan warriors) 
and perhaps Iphidamas the Antenorid (11.221) 245)) both shep­
herds;93 Antiphus and Isus, Priamids who, like Aeneas) followed 
their flocks even in wartime (11.106); Helenus, also a Priamid, 
the seer (6.75); and Scamandrius the huntsman (5.50f). (I do not 
include here such men as Phorbas, who are merely described as 
rich in flocks, 14.490; I am including only those who perform 
the labor.) 

The Achaean culture has all or most of these pursuits) but they 
are engaged in by other men, not by warriors, many of whom 
are said, or presumed, to be back home; Calchas the Achaean 
seer, for example, does not fight, though Helenus the Trojan 
seer kills and is wounded. The Achaeans raid cattle) but they are 
not seen tending cattle. It is important to note the high rank of 

91 The passage could be read so that Phereclus' father, not Phereclus, built 
the ships; Kirk (on 5.59-64) goes in this direction, while Leaf, Munro, and 
Ameis-Hentze go in the other. Ameis-Hentze refer to 2.872 and 5.44, where 
the pronoun must jump over the name of the father in order to find its 
antecedent, and until this parallel is refuted I prefer to follow them. Even if we 
go along with Kirk, and as a result cannot say that Homer calls Phereclus a 
carpenter, we are left with the impression that he must be one, as the 
carpenter's son. And grandson, as I and most others read the passage. Kirk 
wants 'tE1('tOVOc; to be lower-case, thus eliminating a generation, but this 
suggests that we need to be told that a man named Harmonides is a carpenter. 

92 The latter two are Dardanians, not Trojans, but they are cousins of Priam, 
and Aeneas of course is destined to rule the Trojans (20.307). Aeneas goes into 
battle accompanied by Antenorids (2.823), which makes the tie even closer. 

93 11.245 speaks of goats and sheep, 'ta Ot a<J1t£'tu 1tOtlluivov'to where the 
dative can mean either "by him" or "for him." Even if it means "by him," we 
assume that he had assistance. Iphidamas came back to his native Troy from 
Thrace Ilna l(AEOc; 'AXmiOv (11.227), "pursuing the report of the Achaeans," 
with Leaf and Ameis-Hentze (not "looking for glory from the Achaeans," 
Lattimore); he died "apart from his wife, helping his fellow-citizens" (242). 
The pathos of his death depends upon the contrast between it and the young 
wife and the flocks he had left behind, the gentleness and vitality of peace and 
the brutality of war. We therefore do not see him as essentially a warrior, a 
man who regularly spends his time fighting, while others tend his flocks. 
Hence I am inclined to count him as a shepherd, but of course line 245 
remains ambiguous. 



82 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

most of the Trojans we have mentioned; the ordinary Trojan 
aristocrat had another job besides fighting. We must be very 
careful not to suppose that Hector is typical: he resembles 
rather his Lycian ally Sarpedon in his self-definition as a warrior­
hero (6.446, cf 12.310-28). 

The picture of the sons of the royal and enormously wealthy 
Priam occupied with flocks, sea-trading, and house building is a 
startling one, but it is not to be gainsaid. Perhaps it is appropriate 
to recall the Odyssey here, not to prove anything, but merely to 
reassure. Not only do we see Odysseus build a ship with his 
own hands (5.229-61) and hear about how he built his bed 
(23.189-201), but we hear him boast of his prowess at harvesting, 
plowing, and fighting, as if all three accompishments were 
equally honorable (18.366-86). As with Odysseus' skill at the 
bow, a weapon he does not use in the Ilia d (he borrows 
Meriones' bow [10.260J, against what contingency we never 
learn), we have features here that markedly distinguish the Odys­
sean Odysseus from the Iliadic;94 but the concept of the aristo­
crat who works with his hands at tasks that other cultures have 
seen as menial is perfectly familiar to the Iliad. And the Trojans 
embody it. 

We had a close look (supra 46) at the Achaean warrior class 
who do not work with their hands, for whom "always it is dis­
graceful to wait long and return home empty-handed» (2.298), 
for the upper crust of whom, at least, "winning honor and glory 
alone makes a brief life meaningful.» Most of the Trojans, even 
the aristocrats, do work with their hands. Troy cannot therefore 
have a warrior class in the same sense; its values must be more 
pluralististic: winning honor and glory cannot alone make a brief 
life meaningful. They were a nation at peace before the 
Achaeans came (9.403, 22.156). Therefore we expect them to 
look different when they go to war. And indeed they do. As the 
armies are approaching each other (3.1-9), 

N ow after all the units had been arranged in order together 
with their leaders, 

94 For other differences, cf P. Pucci, Odysseus Polytropos (Ithaca 1987) 25 
n.19, 41. I do not recall a reference to the bow in Pucci, but it would be in the 
spirit of his book to say that of course Odysseus must borrow Meriones' bow, 
as we all know from Od. 21 that he left his own at home. But he has left 
behind his persona as archer as well; in the Iliad he could hardly boast to be 
an archer in battle better than all the others except Philoctetes (Od. 8.215-21), 
as Teucer and Meriones might attest. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 

The Trojans came on with clamor and shouting, like birds, 
As when the clamor of cranes arises in the face of heaven. 
Now after they flee the bitter winter and dread storm 

snowstorm, 
With a clamor they fly to the streams of Oceanus 
Bringing murderous death to the Pygmaean men. 
And 10, high in the air they carry forth their horrible strife. 
But look, the other side came in silence, the Achaeans 

breathing energy, 
Eager in their hearts to come to each others' aid. 

83 

The Trojans are noisy, the Achaeans quiet. 95 The Trojans move 
independently, and attack instinctively; the Achaeans have mas­
tered the tactics of fighting cooperatively. The Trojans are ama­
teurs, the Achaeans professionals. We expect this of the Trojans 
here in Book 3 where, as we saw (supra 65), we are frequently 
back in the first year of the war. It is arresting that the Achaeans 
are already professionals; but such is the nature of a warrior 
class. Again (4.422-39): 

As when upon the shore rich in echoes the waves of the sea 
Are stirred up one after another as the west wind moves 

down upon them. 
On the sea they first rise in crest, but afterwards 
Broken by the dry land they give out loud cries, and going 

around the capes 
Curved, they come to a head, and spit out the foam of the 

sea, 
So then, one after the other the ranks of the Danaans were 

stirred up 
Unceasingly to battle. for each leader was giving orders 
To his own men; but the rest came on in silence, and you 

would not have thought 
That so great a host, with speech in its chest, could follow 
In silence, fearing their officers. And about them all 
Shone their intricate armor, the clothing they wore as they 

marched. 
But as for the Trojans, just as sheep in the court of a man 

rich in acquisitions 
Stand in the tens of thousands, giving white milk 
And bleating incessantly, hearing the voices of the lambs, 
Thus the shout of the Trojans arose throughout the wide-

spread army, 

95 See L. Muellner, "The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies," l-lSCP 93 (1990) 
59-102. 



84 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

For the ~peech of them all was not the same, nor was there 
one VOIce, 

But their languages were mixed together, for the men were 
summoned from all over. 

And Ares stirred the Trojans, and grey-eyed Athena the 
Achaeans. 

The Achaeans are like waves: just as each individual wave crests, 
and breaks loudly, and forms a head and spits foam, so each indi­
vidual unit changes as it moves, as the leaders give orders; but 
just as the succession of waves is wholly regular, each resem­
bling the one before it, so each unit resembles the one before it, 
the masses moving silently in response to their leaders' com­
mands. The incessant silent movement of the men answers to 
the incessant regular movement of the waves. The Trojans, on 
the other hand, are like noisy sheep crowding irregularly into a 
courtyard. The silence of the Achaeans, their ability to move so 
regularly, is obvious testimony to their training and discipline; 
each Trojan unit seems to have its own movement, uncoor­
dinated with its neighbor's except that the mass as a whole 
moves, when it moves, in the same direction, and makes a great 
deal of irregular noise as it does. The Trojan army-that is, the 
army of the alliance-is hampered by its variety of tongues, but 
this alone cannot account for their clamor, for if they were as 
well disciplined as the Achaeans, only their leaders would have 
to make noise. Homer is pinpointing a major difference 
between the Trojan and Achaean armies, and the difference is 
that the Achaean troops are silent, and resemble the regular 
movement of waves; the Trojans are noisy, and resemble the 
movements of cranes and sheep: the whole mass moves to the 
same place, but the units are not coordinated with each other. 

Such images as these absolutely rule out the explanation, fre­
quently offered, that the difference between the Trojans and the 
Achaeans is merely the difference between the defense and the 
offense. It is not a feature of defensive warfare to be especially 
noisy, or to engage in significantly less disciplined and less regu­
lar maneuvers. The difference, rather, lies in the fact that the 
majority of the Trojans proper, and no doubt many of their 
allies, are not professionals; they have civilian occupations. The 
Achaeans belong to a warrior culture, the Trojans do not. When 
Menelaus accuses the Trojans of being "insatiate for battle,» he is 
speaking from his own aggrieved position (13.621): because the 
Trojans need only have returned Helen and the property to him 
as victor in the duel in Book 3, and yet chose war instead, they 
must, it would seem, love war. The adjective qnA01t'toAEJ..lO<; is 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 85 

used of the Trojans three times: once Achilles uses it when cau­
tioning Patroclus (16.90); once Hector (one side of whom really 
does love war, or at least the glory that comes with it) uses it in 
his foolish boasting over the dying Patroclus, in order to stress 
his own valor ("I am conspicuous even among the war-loving 
Trojans,» 16.835); and once Homer uses it while speaking from 
Hector's perspective (17.294).96 But the behavior of the Elders 
in Book 3, of Antenor in Book 7, of Priam and Paris throughout, 
together with the civilian and peacetime occupations of so many 
other Trojans, all combine to refute Menelaus' inference. And 
even Hector at times values fighting as a defense of the father­
land rather than a source of immortal KAEOs. the only rational 
justification for loving war (12.243, 15.496ff). 

As for the Trojan women: when we first meet Helen, she is 
weaving a purple robe, and introducing the battles being fought 
for her (3.125f); when we encounter Andromache (22.440f), she 
too is weaving such a robe; Hector urges her to such a task at 
6.490f. 1 am not aware of any reference in the Iliad to an 
Achaean woman weaving; if Chryseis or Andromache are taken 
to Greece in captivity, they can expect to work at the 100m of 
another woman (1.31, 6.456). But our opportunites for seeing 
Achaean women is so slight that it may be best to avoid inferring 
a difference and merely stress that the female Trojan aristocrat, 
at least, was employed. She supervised others, of course (6.324, 
491; 22.442ff), but she worked with her own hands just as her 
husband did. We assume that she made the really elegant woven 
objects for the household (certainly what Helen is weaving in 
Book 3 requires the very highest art).97 

96 It is hard to give the epithet a convincing meaning in this line, since the 
Trojans are being asked by Hector to take his old armor back to Troy-city, an 
action to which love of war seems irrelevant. I cannot hear the implication, 
"These Trojans were so fond of fighting that they resented leaving the fray for 
even an hour," especially since these men were already engaged in taking 
Patroclus' (i.e., Achilles') armor back to Troy. I find no refuge in the fact that it 
is a generic epithet in the dative plural for a number of peoples and therefore 
supposedly not meaningful; only the epithets that are inherently vague and 
general (e.g. btos) lend themselves to being downplayed, and then not always. I 
suspect therefore that Homer chose the epithet here in order to recall the 
occasion of Hector's boast over Patroclus: that boast is followed by Patroclus' 
prediction of Hector's death; the recollection here, as he puts on Patroclus' 
armor, is followed by Zeus' prediction of Hector's death. 

97 It goes without saying that this art is exactly paralleled by Homer's art, 
that in the Iliad he too is weaving the battles fought for Helen's sake, so that 
Helen and Homer are in effect paying each other compliments; I would not 
call attention to this, except that I do not find it mentioned in any of the 
commentators I have consulted on 3.126ff. 



86 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Theano, the priestess of Athena, is the wife of Antenor and 
therefore highly placed in Trojan society. H. L. Lorimer's re­
marks are worth citing as an example of how an Analyst reading 
can lead to conclusions different from my own: "She holds her 
office by appointment of the Trojans, an improbable method in 
a city governed by a king. No other priestess is mentioned in 
either Iliad or Odyssey. "98 This is one of several places that 
cause Lorimer to label the Supplication in its present form post­
Homeric, an Athenian addition: "There is no justification for the 
presence of the goddess in the city of which she is a bitter and 
consistent enemy and where she never again appears" (442). 
Kirk's reply (on 6.88) is true, if incomplete; he points out that 
Athena is by nature a city-goddess, that she became hostile only 
at the Judgment of Paris, that in the Epic cycle she was present 
in the city in the Palladium, and that in the Troy of the seventh 
century there was a temple on the acropolis. But this is not 
likely to be enough to resolve Lorimer's inquietudes about the 
seeming contradiction within the poem; we need a deeper liter­
ary analysis. First, if it is really an "improbable method" for the 
Trojans to appoint a priestess in a city governed by a king, then 
that is grist for our mill: Homeric Troy is not governed by a 
king. 99 Second, along with the elevation of the Trojans, Homer is 
universalizing the Olympian gods, and for both reasons Athena 
must have a temple in Troy.loo He cannot ignore the myth of 
Athena's anger, nor is there any particular reason to; the gods 
have no trouble getting angry with and devastating their own 
worshipers. Witness the Caledonian boar (9.533-46); witness 
Apollo's wrath in Book 1. (Apollo is not punishing a people that 
does not worship him: they have sinned, but when they make 
compensation, he is satisfied, 1.446, 474, 479; this is an Achaean 
god, for "0 father Zeus, Athena and Apollo" is an Achaean 
prayer, 2.372, 4.288, 7.132, 16.97; and yet he fights for the Tro­
jans.) Witness countless Delphic responses. Just so, Athena is 
angry with her people, the Trojans. Paris has elevated the value 
of erotic love, Aphrodi te' s sphere, over her own realm­
whether we see that as heroism in war, or domestic destiny and 
the sacredness of the household-and the Trojan nation has 

98 H. L. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (London 1950) 442. 

99 From Archaic times on, the community normally appointed priests; see 
W. Burkert, Greek Religion, tr. J. Raffan (Cambridge [Mass.] 1985) 96. 

100 On the universalizing of the Olympians, cf W. M. Sale, "Homeric Olym­
pus and its Formulae," AJP 105 (1984) 1-28, with references to earlier 
scholarship. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 87 

backed him up. Hence the temple and the priestess are 
throughly appropriate. 

Apart from the seer Helenus and the priestess Theano, we al­
so hear of a priest of Hephaestus (Dares, 5.10) and a bird-seer 
(Eurydamas, 5.149f), both too old to fight, as well as a priest of 
Scamander (Hypsenor, 5.76-83), and a priest of Idaean Zeus 
(Laogonos, 16.604). As I read the text, the last two do fight and 
indeed fall in battle, in which case there are three religious 
figures, Helenus in addition to these, who fit the pattern of Tro­
jan warriors with civilian occupations. 10l But even if this reading 
is mistaken, we observe a large number of Trojans, six, who are 
deeply involved in-who are identified with-matters religious, 
if we may call the Idaean priest a Trojan. (It makes sense, 
because dwellers on Ida will be Dardanians, cousins of the Tro­
jans, or Zeleians, who are Trojans, 2.826). Moreover the temple 
of Apollo on the Trojan acropolis (5.446, 7.83) is presumably 
served by a priest, though no priest is mentioned. Religion 
forms a considerable segment of the Trojan economy. 

Not only do aristocratic Trojans engage in civilian occupations, 
but the city also has specialized artisans who can help them. 
Paris, we have said, can build a house, and an elaborate one at 
that, fancy enough for him to dwell in; but he has professional 
help (6.313ff): 

He made it himself (au"Cos with his own hands), together 
with 

The best craftsmen of the time in the fertile Troad, 
Who made him a bedroom, a house and a courtyard. 

It is legitimate to consider Paris an amateur-though not to dis­
regard his willingness to work with his hands-but his associates 
must have been paid professionals. They resemble Phereclus 
the carpenter, son of a carpenter and (as most read the passage) 
grandson of a carpenter, who is probably not an aristocrat at all: 
his father's name is Tecton, his grandfather's Harmon, named 
after their profession, like Smith and Baxter and Wainwright. If 
so, he must have been paid. 

101 Though it is possible to read the last two passages as identifying the fa­
thers of the Trojans who die as the priests. The construction is exactly the 
same as with Phereclus; I am reading here, as there, the relative pronoun as 
jumping over the father to the son (see supra n.91). Leaf, who takes the Pherec­
Ius passage as I do, changes his procedure with 5.149 and 16.604 on the 
grounds that priests in Homer do not fight. This is not only question-begging, 
but false, unless we can argue that in a technical sense Helenus is an 
oi(j)vo1t6Ao~ (6.76) and seer (7.43-53) but not a priest. 



88 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

This observation allows us to make the concept of the aristo­
cratic working-man a little more intelligible. The house-builders 
who helped Paris, the metalsmiths and potters we do not hear 
about but who must have been there, and Phereclus the ship­
builder, are people who sell (in some sense) goods they pro­
duce. But we do not imagine that the Trojan princes raised live­
stock for anyone other than their own households, or that their 
wives sold the products of their looms. There were, it would 
seem, gentlemen's and ladies' occupations-animal husbandry 
and weaving-alongside the tasks performed by an artisan 
class-house-building, ship-building, metal-working. Some occu­
pations are pursued by both classes: war is fought by Phereclus 
and by Hector; houses are built by Paris and by house-builders. 
Again we may compare Odysseus in the Odyssey, whose car­
pentry, and whose archery, are comparable to Paris' house­
building and arrow-fighting. (While we have the Odyssey open, 
let not overlook a striking difference between it and the Trojans 
of the Iliad: Odysseus is a farmer who is served by herdsmen, 
the Trojans are herdsmen who belong to a social class that, we 
shall see, seems to be served by farmers). 

The high birth of the Trojan herdsmen suggests strongly that 
Homer did not imagine them living, or living solely, inside the 
walls of Troy-city. Admittedly, in the small Dark Age commu­
nities it was not unusual to have people living in the central vil­
lage and working outlying farms, and indeed Priam has an or­
chard outside the city (21.36); but the flocks of a shepherd or 
cowherd require much more land, so that a rural steading and an 
adjoining dwelling-place seem inevitable. And in the case of 
Paris we are told in so many words that he had a stable in the 
countryside: the goddesses, presumably Hera and Athena, were 
abused by him in his J.l£aaUuAo~. a word used only of a herds­
man's steading; and Paris certainly did not keep his herds near 
his house on the acropolis, at least in peacetime (Cunliffe, Lexi­
con s.v. J.l£aauuAo<;). The stables of Aeneas and Anchises were 
on Mt Ida, probably in the region called Dardanie (20.216). Their 
city house will presumably have been in L yrnessos, not llios, 
for that is where Aeneas ran in flight from the assault of 
Achilles. 

There is one occupation that we hear very little about and 
would like to have heard more: agrarian farming. We do hear of 
plowland and orchards, but, unless I have missed a reference, 
we get no clear indication of who works them (7.421; 20.185, 
22M; 21.63 [owned by Priam], 77, 232, 405). Similarly we hear of 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 89 

plowland and orchards in allied states: Paisos (5.612), wherever 
that is exactly, and Lycia (12.314). It is tempting to take this 
paucity of references together with the large number of Trojan 
herdsmen as suggesting that the economy is to be thought of as 
primarily pastoral rather than agrarian, but we ought not to yield. 
Trojan farming may well have been the prerogative of the lower 
orders. The picture of agriculture on the Shield of Achilles could 
very well reflect what Homer imagined as the Trojan practice. 
We have first a large number of plowmen plowing a single field 
(18.542), then hired farm-hands (€pt90t, 18.550) harvesting while 
a l3acrwu~ stands and watches (18.556£), finally grape-bearers 
and carriers, young men and maidens "with childish feelings" 
active in a vineyard to the tune of a young singer (18.566£). If 
Trojan agriculture resembled this, then we can easily understand 
why no Trojan aristocrat, and probably no Trojan warrior, 
would be a farm-worker. The harvesters certainly, the plowmen 
most likely, will not be high enough up the economic scale to be 
able to supply themselves with arms; and the youthful grape­
bearers and carriers in the vineyards seem to be here for the 
occasion, are probably amateurs, and the men among them 
probably too young to be on the battlefield. The depiction of 
the herdsmen at 18.577-86, on the other hand, gives a different 
impression: there are only four of them, and they are con­
fronted with marauding lions. We cannot, of course, infer that 
these four neatherds, or anyone of them, belonged to the upper 
strata; but the relatively low number, and the risk that their 
work entails, is certainly compatible with our seeing at least one, 
and perhaps all, of them as being high-born.102 

We saw above that the Achaean value-system is very closely 
related to their military economy. The variety of occupations 
pursued by Trojan warriors argues, in contrast, for pluralism. 
Heroism, embodied especially in Hector, is certainly ap­
preciated. But the arts of peace are valued highly as well: not just 
the feminine art of weaving, but the masculine arts of animal 
husbandry, carpentry, and home-building. If princes of the 
royal blood elect to pursue a certain calling, then it must, in the 
eyes of society, be a good thing to do. The contrast between the 
two brothers, Hector and Paris, reinforces this pluralism. Hec-

102 To complete the picture of the Trojan occupations, we might add the 
heralds, 1(~p1)K£~, whose duties seem to be the same as the duties of the 
Achaean heralds. They are performers of tasks that are neither menial nor 
military (mule-drivers, e.g., at 24.149 etc.). They have e£pO.n:ov't£~ as well, 
mostly to be chariot drivers. 



90 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

tor pursues heroism, and is loved; Paris pursues eros, and is 
hated. But though the sinner may be hated, the 'sin' is not; half 
the Elders, let us remember (or half the minds of all the Elders), 
find it impossible to blame the Trojans for fighting for a woman 
as beautiful as Helen. Whether these men were bribed or not, 
they can say publicly that the values that Paris lives for are 
honorable. 

VI. The Trojans and History 

Homer's Troy, in sum, is governed formally by a Council of 
Elders, which includes in its membership the ~aO'lA£u~ and his 
brothers. It has a popular Assembly that meets in a designated 
place to discover the decisions of the Council; to hear views put 
forward by members of the Council, by members of their 
families, and perhaps by other wealthy men whose power chal­
lenges the Council; and to express assent or dissent. Its econ­
omy is diverse: its leading citizens are expert at weaving, house­
building, chariot-making, animal husbandry, and war; it has an 
artisan class known to be skilled at ship-building, and probably 
good at metal-working. Its values are pluralistic. 

We have reached the point now where we can ask what his­
torical society or societies, if any, the Trojans reflect. We have 
already mentioned the physical similarities between the Trojans 
and an eighth-century polis: the city-walls surrounding the large 
residential areas as well as the acropolis and agora, the temples 
on the acropolis, and the seated statue in one of them. For the 
first three of these I shall let Scully speak (supra 17f); on seated 
statues see 98f infra. City walls on such a scale are not, of course, 
confined to the eighth-century, for they are found at Mycen­
aean Thebes and Gla (the walls at Mycenae and Tiryns have 
much smaller perimeters); they may have existed in Mycenaean 
Troy as well, adjunctive to Korfmann's ditch, though he has so 
far found none (supra n.70). For us it is not vastly important 
whether Troy's long walls existed in the tradition from the 
beginning or came later; we care only that they may indeed be 
found in the eighth century, that they are contemporary. The 
temples on the acropolis, though, seem to be more particular to 
the eighth century and later; and a seated statue of a god in a 
temple is certainly an innovation. A peacetime population of 
20,000, far too large for the eighth century, may belong to the 
epic tradition or come from Homer's imagination; and Priam's 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 91 

palace is much too big for the eighth century and is almost 
certainly as traditional as his nineteen wives. 

On the principle of individual subordination to the welfare of 
the city, the principle of the polis, I shall again defer to Scully. 
The question for us is whether or not the government and the 
economy of Troy belong to the eighth century.10) Evidence for 
the existence of a Council of Elders in a Greek state in the eighth 
century is somewhat scanty; historians ordinarily use the Iliad as 
a source, and we are avoiding this procedure. The Spartan Ger­
ousia appears to go back at least to the early seventh century: the 
case against the genuineness of the Great Rhetra (which men­
tions the Gerousia) and against a date this early appears to me 
weak, and certainly the reference to YEpovn:<; in Tyrtaeus attests 
the existence of the Gerousia, whatever its powers may have 
been. Drews in fact pushes the date of the Spartan eunomia back 
to around 750. 104 As the Spartan ~acrtA£t<; were members of the 
Gerousia, and Priam a member of the Council, the Spartan con­
stitution gives a useful possible parallel to Troy if Drews' (rather 
speculative) date is right. Granted, these ~acrtAEt<; cannot be 
monarchs, for there are two of them; granted too that they have 
political power independent of the Gerousia, as Priam does not. 
Still, the positions are similar. The Spartan kings led armies to 
war; as we suggested above, Hector may owe his position as 
general in command of the Troy-city forces to his being the 
king's son, so the parallel may be reasonably close. Sparta is an 
ethnos, not a polis, and bears little physical resemblance to Troy; 
but we are not trying to say that Sparta was Homer's precise 
model, only that it reflects a political form that can be found in 
the eighth century. 

The Areopagus at Athens existed before the time of Solon, 
who reformed it, but we do not know how long before, nor do 
we know exactly what its powers were before the So Ionic 
reformation; it may have been merely a homicide court. 105 The 
earlier governing council may have been the Prytaneum, and 
this may indeed have been an advisory board for the ~aatAEu<; 

103 The following argument would be much easier if we could accept van 
Wees' seventh-century date for the Iliad (supra n.lO) and claim a seventh­
century model for Troy. But quite apart from whether one accepts the evi­
dence for eighth-century composition, it would obviously be must incautious 
to wed the argument to the later date. 

104 R. Drews, "Phoenicians, Carthage and the Spartan Eunomia," AJP 100 
(1979) 45-58. 

105 R. W. Wallace, The Areopagus Council (Baltimore 1989) 3-47. 



92 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

before the annual archonship began in 682. But we are on very 
uncertain ground. We have some reason to think that the Coun­
cil of the Aesymnetae at Megara was in existence in the eighth 
century, because there is evidence for Aesymnetae at the 
colony of Megara Hyblaeus, founded in the eighth century.10(, 
We also have some reason to think that there was a ~a(J\AEuc; 
whose power was overthrown when the Council of the Aesym­
netae was established; the word ~a<HA£UC; is used of an epony­
mous magistrate as early as the beginning of the seventh century 
(Legon [supra n.l06] 55). But the relationship between this ~acrt­
AEUC; and the Council is unknown, and of course an eponymous 
magistrate is a very different thing from a ~a(J\AEuc;. In Crete the 
law of Dreros in the late seventh century mentions kosmoi 
holding office periodically, and as we know from Aristotle that 
Cretan cities had Councils of Elders consisting of ex-kosmoi, it 
is reasonable to suppose that Dreros had a Council of Elders in 
the seventh century. A city in Crete is thought to have been the 
model for Lycurgus' reforms in Sparta (i.e., for the constitution 
of the Rhetra); Paula Perlman makes out a very good case for 
Lyctus as the Cretan city most likely to have been regarded as 
Sparta's inspiration. Whether it actually was or not does not 
matter for our purposes, only whether we can trust our sources 
enough to believe that the Lyctian constitution was in fact the 
same as the Spartan (which seems very likely) and was at least 
old enough to make it possible that the Spartans based a seventh­
century reform upon it. If it was, and if Aristotle (Pol. 1272a3) is 
right in saying that the Cretan Council of Elders was the same 
size as the Spartan, we can plausibly put a Council of Thirty 
Elders in Lyctus in the eighth century. 

The most tantalizing information concerns Chios, one of the 
places mentioned as Homer's birthplace. We hear of a Council 
there actually called the bTlllocrl:'1 ~OA:Tl around 575. Historians 
have taken this to mean a Council of the People and to imply 
the existence of another Council, a body of aristocrats, and that 
may well be. 10l Since in 575 it had fifty members from each tribe 
and thus probably between 150 and 300 members, it would 
appear to be too large for a Council of Elders, if that means high­
born and/or wealthy men too old to fight. We have seen, how-

106 See R. P. Legon, Megara (Ithaca 1981) 56. 
107 L. H. Jeffrey, "The Courts of Justice in Archaic Chios," BSA 51 (1956) 

166; J. H. Oliver, "Text of the So-called Constitution of Chios," AJP 80 (1959) 
2%-301. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 93 

ever, that the prefix <>T)1l0- need not mean 'popular' in 
Horner-or at least not 'popular as opposed to aristocratic'-as 
the term <>T)lloy£prov is used of ~aO'lAEUC; nus as well as the royal 
and aristocratic members of the Trojan Council. It is at least 
theoretically possible that a person who served on a <>T)1l00'lT) 
~oAft would be called a <>T)lloy£prov. And there is no reason why 
the Chian Council could not have been enlarged in the course 
of time, and have been a small group of aristocrats once. Of 
course we cannot show that this Council was in existence in the 
eighth century. And even if we take it to be a popular council 
and assume the existence of another, aristocratic council, we 
cannot safely push the latter back to the eighth century-we 
simply do not know enough. 

Chi os in 575 also possessed ~aO'lAElC;, who appear to have been 
magistrates with specific duties; it is not clear whether any of 
them were on the Council. We hear of a King Hector on Chios, 
but he seems to have belonged to the same generation as Cod­
rus' sons, traditional leaders of the Ionian migration; he falls six 
generations after Theseus (Drews [supra n.46] 22). If he existed, 
he was already ruling on chios when the various Codrids (if 
they existed) carne to Ionia, some 200 years before the eighth 
century opened. During those years, Chios no doubt went 
through changes of government that we cannot trace. We know 
of a (probably) seventh-century ~aO'lAEuc; named Hippoclus 
who was almost certainly not a monarch and who might well 
have been one of a number of such as those referred to on the 
inscription of 575, as Drews suggests. A building on the acrop­
olis of Emporio can plausibly be called the house of a ~aO'lAEUC;, 
if we may take the term to refer to a leader of a relatively small 
local community. But none of this gives a satisfactory model for 
Priam as ~aO'lAfu<; and <>T)1l0YEProV because it does not point to 
established royalty. 

There are other ~ouAal and colleges of ~aO'lAfl<;, but none that 
I know will give more precise potential models for Homeric 
Troy than these. As for Assemblies: we know of early ones at 
Sparta and Lyctus, accompanying the Councils already 
mentioned. The Chian inscription refers to the 'demos 
assembled'. That there was an Assembly at Athens in the time of 
Solon seems reasonably clear, however much scholars may 
dispute the extent of Solon's political reforms. lOS Pursuit of the 

108 Aristotle (Alh. Pol. 7.3) says that Solon limited the role of the Thetes to 
the Ecclesia and Dicasteria, and (Pol. 1274a16ff, 1281 b32-35) assigned election 
and audit of the rulers to the demos, processes that can only have occurred in 



94 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

actual evidence here (which is slightly less than one would wish) 
is probably not necessary, because most historians, reasonably 
enough, assume that popular Assemblies existed when poleis 
began to form. Even if they had no power at all, there had to be 
a way in an oral culture for the populace to be informed; and it 
was surely helpful for the rulers, in turn, to be informed about 
the feelings of the people they ruled.109 

We have therefore seen enough to make it probable that when 
Homer talked about a Trojan Council of Elders, consisting 
largely of aristocrats, governing a city together with a weak j3uO't­
Ad)<; and an Assembly, he was referring to institutions familar to 
his audience in their own experience, even if they knew of no 
one polis that matched Troy point for point. Turning to the 
economy of the eighth century, we go, in part, to a different 
source, the similes. These are necessarily drawn from, or could 
have been drawn from, the world contemporary with Homer. 
It is in the nature of a Homeric simile to use the generalizing 
present or aorist tenses, usually with the particle 'tE, to add 
meaning to the narrative set in the distant past, the long-ago time 
when men threw rocks that we could barely lift. Some of the 
similes are no doubt traditional, and may even be quite old. But I 
do not think that any of them could refer to events or situations 
that could not be found in the poem's present; they function to 
bridge a gap between our time and the age of the heroes, 
between a world mostly at peace and a world at war. Naturally 
we shall also employ archaeological evidence to reinforce what 
the similes tell us. 

a formal Assembly. For the dispute over the actual power, and a sensible 
defense of Aristotle's testimony here, see Wallace (supra n.105) 53ff with notes. 

109 I have refrained from calling attention to states governed in the eighth 
century by one aristocratic family that ruled as a family (e.g. Corinth, Lesbos), 
because the Priamids of Troy, though certainly very powerful, are not the only 
source of olHwY£POVt£<;. The Antenorids are also powerful, and Antenor is on 
the Council. Even states governed by more than one such family (e.g. Athens, 
Sparta) may not be precisely parallel, since there is a good chance that Homer 
thought of Antimachus as a orUlOytpwv, and we do not know whether he was 
aristocratic or just wealthy. Moreover, we have no reason to regard Phereclus 
as of lower political status than any other Trojan warrior, though he comes 
from an artisan family. Still, the impression we have is that power is largely in 
the hands of aristocrats and indeed that the Priamids dominate. These are not 
quite comparable to the Bacchiads, but they dominate more than do anyone 
of the Eupatrids, Eteobutads, Alcmeonids, Eumolpids, or other Athenian 
clans. On the existence of an Athenian clan named EultatpiOal see the 
persuasive discussion of F. Jacoby, Atthis (Oxford 1949) 263 n.156. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 95 

The commonest source of similes in the Iliad is the world of 
the herdsman. A rough count gives over thirty-five of these, in­
cluding similes drawing upon the lion-hunt (e.g. 5.476, 12.41-48, 
17.133-36,20.164-73), which is undertaken to protect the herds; 
without the lion-hunt, there are about thirty-two pastoral 
similes (e.g. 2.469-75,478-83; 3.11, etc.). The life of the herds­
man is presented as difficult and dangerous, a constant battle 
against predators; the herdsman-hunter is a domestic hero, and, 
though the class status of a herdsman is never given, it would 
not be surprising if it were high. There are over twenty similes 
that pertain to agrarian farming, counting the hunting similes that 
include the boar (e.g. 11.292f [boar or lion], 11.413-18 [boar]), 
who is threatening the orchards and grain (as well as providing 
edible meat); without the boar hunt I have counted twelve 
farming similes (2.147f; 5.87-92, 499-502; 10.5-8, etc.). The pre­
ponderance of pastoral similes arises partly because the lion 
descending on the herd gives a more precise parallel to events in 
battle than a boar ravaging an orchard, and a boar is normally not 
a threat to standing livestock. Still, we should note that this 
imbalance also matches the preference of Trojan aristocrats for 
the pastoral life, and the virtual absence of any mention of Tro­
jan agrarian farming even though we are reminded often enough 
of their having plowland and orchards. It would certainly make 
sense to imagine that Homer's audience included a number of 
aristocratic herdsmen who could readily respond to similes re­
lating the perils of their lives to the risks run by heroes of old­
particularly if some of those old heroes were also herdsmen, and 
if they were on occasion warriors. For we must not forget that 
the Trojan aristocratic herdsman is a fact of the Iliad, not a 
conjecture; the conjecture resides only in the hypothesis that 
they were drawn from real life, from the everyday world of the 
eighth century. As for the Trojan agrarian farmer, who is not a 
fact of the Iliad, we and Homer's early audience have the Shield, 
where the multitudes plow and the ~acrlAEuc; looks on, to 
explain the poet's silence. 

Archaeology can affirm that animal husbandry and agrarian 
farming were certainly practiced in the eighth century. Snod­
grass, following Thalia Howe in part, has offered the theory that 
the Mycenaean Greeks had large amounts of meat in their diets, 
that this remained the practice in the early Dark Ages, but that 
with the Geometric period came a shift to a more vegetarian 



96 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

diet, with grain replacing meat.110 This theory almost cries out 
for another theory: the Iliad, with its upper-class Trojan herds­
men, is no doubt earlier than the Odyssey, where Odysseus the 
experienced agrarian farmer is served by herdsmen-slaves, and 
this progression imitates history. This could be true, but even 
Snodgrass' theory is not proven, and has been criticized-not 
decisively, in my opinion-by Coldstream. 111 Moreover, we 
have seen good reason why Homer might have conceived Troy 
as highly agrarian without mentioning the fact; the farmers may 
belong to the lower orders, men too poor to provide armor for 
themselves. If we argue a progression, we apparently have to 
speak not only of a shift from animal husbandry to agrarian 
farming, but also of a class-shift: the farmer has risen in the social 
scale, the herdsman has fallen. But the situation in the Odyssey 
is sufficiently topsy-turvy to block convincing analysis: Eu­
maeus is a king's son, and is called OPXallos av<>pwv, an epithet 
also used for Philoetius; Philoetius was in a position to take his 
flocks to someone else had he chosen to (Od. 20.218-23); both 
distinguish themselves in the fighting against the Suitors. There 
is much material here for literary interpretation, but historical 
inference is risky. We are able to say that the archaeological 
evidence reveals that animal husbandry was certainly practiced 
in the eighth century; but as far as I can see it does not reveal 
whether or not aristocrats practiced it. 

The Iliad also includes similes from hunting such food-animals 
as boar, stag, and goat (e.g. 3.23-26 [stag or goat], 12.146-50 
[boars], 15.579ff [fawn], 22.189-22 [deer]). This reminds us of the 
career of the Trojan Scamandrius, who could kill all manner of 
wild beasts (5.50ff). There are hunting scenes on Late Geometric 
objects; some are orientalizing, but others seem local in 
inspiration (Coldstream 198). 

The similes also include chariot-making (4.482-87), the activity 
practiced by Lycaon (21.380). Chariots were especially used in 
burial in the eighth century: see Coldstream 350; Snodgrass 
(supra n.12) 433. Ship-building occurs in at least six similes (3.60-
63, 13.389ff, 15.410ff, 16.482ff, 17.742-45, 18.161£), reminding us 
of the Trojan Phereclus (or his father) at 5.59-63. I do not know 
how to point to real artisans who are counterparts to Phereclus, 

110 Snodgrass (supra n.11) 378ff; T. P. Howe, "Linear Band Hesiod's Bread­
winners," TAPA 89 (1958) 44-65. 

t t t J. N. COLDSTREAM, Geometric Greece (New York 1977: hereafter 
'Cold stream') 314. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 97 

but they must have existed, because there are plenty of pictures 
of ships, and because the eighth century had to have ships for 
trading and colonization. As Chios is one of the places named as 
Homer's birthplace, it is interesting to note eighth-century ex­
ports of wine from Chios attested at Old Smyrna. Homer 
speaks of the wine of Maron, i.e., Maroneia, an early colony of 
Chios in Thrace (Od. 9.196ff; Thracian wine is mentioned also at 
I/. 9.71£).112 The Chians therefore had ships, and shipbuilding (as 
well as vineyards). Seafaring occurs in at least three similes (7.4-
7, 15.624ff, 19.375-78), reminding us of Paris' voyage. Home­
building is mentioned by one simile (16.212-23), recalling Paris 
and his assistants (6.314ff). That the eighth century had house­
builders goes without saying, since they had houses; but 
whether individuals built their own houses and hired profes­
sional assistance is not clear from any evidence I have seen. A 
~a.crtA.£U~ is mentioned in a simile, a man who owns a horse and 
will receive a purple-stained ivory cheek-piece; the dyeing is 
done by a Carian or Maeonian woman, suggesting that the ~a(H­
A.EUC; lives in southern Asia Minor and therefore near Homer 
(4.141-45). 

Finally, though almost all the similes draw upon a world at 
peace, two of them mention war on a city (18.207-13, 219f). 
These do not say anything about the occupations of the war­
riors, so we turn to other evidence, and here we encounter a 
difficult problem of dating. The citizen warrior of the polis, with 
his civilian occupation is an obvious model for the civilian occu­
pations of Trojan warriors. And this model was clearly in place 
by the beginning of the seventh century, the time of the so­
called hoplite revolution, when warfare was conducted in 
massed infantry formations requiring a relatively large percen­
tage of the citizen body. Archaeologists are not in agreement as 
to whether such formations came into being in the seventh 
century, or had long existed. Snodgrass, among many others, 
argues for the beginning of the seventh century; Morris puts it 
much earlier, saying that "as far back as it can be traced Greek 
warfare always relied on massed formations of infantry. "113 If 

112 See C. Roebuck, "Chios in the sixth century B.C.," in J. Boardman and 
C. E. Vaphopoulou-Richardson, edd., Chios (Oxford 1986) 81-86. 

113 A. M. Snodgrass, Arms and Armour of the Greeks (Ithaca 1967) 45-49; 
Morris (supra n.14) 25. Morris derives much of the support for his position 
from J. Latacz, Kampfparanase, Kampfdarsteltung und KampfwirkLichkeit in 
der lLias, KaLLinos und Tyrtaios (Munich 1977) and W. K. Pritchett, The Greek 
State at War, Part IV (Berkeley 1985). Some important criticism of Latacz and 



98 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Morris is right, and we can imagine a large percentage of the pop­
ulation of Old Smyrna, say, fighting in massed formation, aristo­
crats and wealthier artisans side by side, the resemblance to 
Troy is clear. Snodgrass (supra n.12: 415f) paints a convincing 
picture of the community of Old Smyrna cooperating in 
building the fortification walls and the houses, and leading in the 
development of the polis; we add to this their fighting side-by­
side. We would like to imagine this, because we have conceived 
of a large percentage of the Trojan population engaged in battle; 
to suppose a Trojan army of 5,000 as a small proportion of a 
huge population, 50,000 or more, most of them engaged in non­
military activity, feels wrong. 

But it may not be wrong; and it may also be true that eighth­
century warfare was more haphazardly fought, with a relatively 
small percentage of the population. Still, it was surely true that 
the warriors were mostly the wealthy landowners. And it seems 
improbable that these warriors formed a class that was other­
wise unoccupied: such a social organization in a settled com­
munity requires more wealth and power than most cities of the 
eighth century appear to possess. Wealthier landowners will of 
course have had people working for them, but they will have 
been occupied with their farms or pastures even if they did not 
actually plow or tend the herds. 

Most of the Trojan religious institutions are replicated in the 
polis, though the dates are not always easy to establish, and the 
similes are of no help on this point. The cult of Athena Polias, 
with its priestess and seated statue on the acropolis of Athens, 
probably goes back to the eighth century;114 an offering of a pep­
los to the statue dates to at least 566/565, when the Greater 
Panathenaia was established, and may well be much older; 115 the 
temple is mentioned by Homer at 2.549. The seated Athena at 
Lindos probably belongs to the eighth century, as Lorimer, who 

Pritchett is offered by van Wees, (supra n.10). See also A. M. SNODGRASS, 
Archaic Greece (Berkeley 1980: hereafter 'Snodgrass, AC') 100-07. 

114 Kirk on 6.90ff (p.168); D. D. Feaver, "The Priesthoods of Athens," YCl5 
15 (1957) 132; see also Burkert (supra n.99) 90; ] Herington, Athena Parthenos 
and Athena Polias (Manchester 1955) 22; H. W. Parke, Festivals of the 
Athenians (Ithaca 1977) 17. 

115 See W. Burkert, Homo Necans, tr. P. Bing (Berkeley 1983) 156 n.92; 
Parke (supra n.114) 33. L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Hildesheim 1966) 30, 
denies that the handing over of the peplos was older than the institution of the 
Greater Panathenaea. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 99 

would not wish it so, admits (supra n.9S: 144). The seated Hera 
of Tiryns, later housed in the Argive Heraeum, was served by a 
priestess at least as early as the seventh century, and probably 
earlier (Lorimer 114). Pausanias (2.17.Sf) says that this was one of 
the oldest images in existence, presumably because of its ex­
tremely primitive appearance; he "has a real feeling for early 
Greek art" (Herington [supra n.114] 17), and his testimony 
makes an eighth-century date not unlikely. A peplos was of­
fered to the seated statues of Hera at Olympia and at Argos; we 
do not know the founding dates for these festivals, though they 
easily could be very ancient. 116 The standing Apollo at Amyclae 
also received a peplos (Paus. 3.16.2, 19.2). 

A priest of Hephaestus is attested in Lemnos: the date is very 
late, but the priesthood may well be as old as the city of He­
phaestia and go back to pre-Greek times. There were priests, or 
at least tEP01tOtOl, of Hephaestus at Athens in the fifth century, 
but the date of his introduction to Athens is not known (Deub­
ner [supra n.115] 212f). He is virtually neglected elsewhere on 
the mainland, and though his worship must have been wide­
spread in Asia Minor and the eastern islands, it was mostly con­
fined to private cult, and therefore lacked priests. I can find no 
trace of a polis with a cult of Hephaestus in the Archaic period, 
and it seems most probable that Homer knew of the worship of 
Hephaestus from the pre-Greek inhabitants of Lemnos, his 
Sin ties (Il. 1.594). Apollo is another matter: he has a temple in 
Eretria just after 750, another in Corinth around 700, another 
(probably Apollo's) at Dreros 725-700, and perhaps one in 
Thermon. 117 

Religion as an economic activity was certainly prominent in 
the Archaic period (Snodgrass, A G 131). It was becoming so 
earlier; in the words of Coldstream (317): 

As prosperity gradually returned to the Greek world, the 
gods received an increasingly generous share of its fruits. 
During the ninth century, hardly more than a dozen sanc­
tuaries had been receiving votive offerings, and at none of 

116 See ]. V. O'Brien, The Transformation of Hera (Lanham [Md.] 1993) 
137, 143,232; Burkert (supra n.115) 16lf. Speculations on the origin of the 
Athenian rite are recorded by Stanley (supra n.86) 416f; they seem incon­
clusive, but testify to a general scholarly tendency to attribute high antiquity to 
the practice. 

117 For Thermon sec Snodgrass (supra n.11) 409, and the reports of I. A. Pa­
papostolou's excavations in To "EpyoV'tT]r; 'ApX. 'E'tutpEiur; (Athens 1992) 41-
52, (1993) 44ff. 



100 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

these places can we be sure that the resident deity was 
honoured with a temple. By 700 B.C. we know of at least 70 
places of worship all over the Greek world, of which nearly 
half already possessed temples. 

This corresponds well with the amount of religious activity we 
have noted among the Trojans: the two temples on the acrop­
olis, one with a named priestess and the other assumed to have 
at least one priest; the hve other religious hgures: priests of 
Zeus, Hephaestus, and Scamander, and two prophets. 

It is a commonplace that the eighth century was a time of vig­
orous commerce, though Snodgrass warns us (AG 136) not to 
exaggerate its importance even in Archaic Greece. To the aristo­
crat Paris as trader, and to nameless traders who amassed Troy's 
fortune in times of peace, we may compare such men as Demar­
atus of Corinth (Polyb. 6.11a.l0) and Colaeus of Samos (Hdt. 
4.152.1). They belong to the seventh century, but they probably 
had counterparts in the eighth; the Corinthians at that time were 
so active in commerce that it is unthinkable that the Bacchiads 
should not have been prohting from it. l18 To hnd an exact paral­
lel to the 1tE1tAOl that Paris brought from Sidon can hardly be our 
portion, since they are perishable; and eastern Greeks-more 
likely as models for Homer-were less in touch with the Levant 
than the others. Still, Lindos and the Heraeum at Samos are rich 
in North Syrian ivories and bronzes, some of which belong to 
the eighth century. Where there is trade, there are ships, and 
ships must be built by someone. 

There is a good deal more evidence from the eighth century 
that we could sift through, but this should be enough to show 
that Homer's Troy owed a great deal to that century, both politi­
cally and economically, and especially to the emergent polis. By 
the same token, the Achaeans do not seem contemporary. Not 
only are their form of government and their economy different 
from that of the polis, but they retain an epic distance; their cul­
ture is out of the heroic past. As individuals, to be sure, they are 
recognizably human, though it is legitimate to wonder how 
many members of Homer's audience could have felt the imme­
diacy of Achilles' wrestling with the heroic code in Book 9. 
Indeed in Books 20-21 Achilles transcends humanity altogether, 
becoming more than ourselves, and also, in his brutality, less (at 
least than we like to think); it is the Trojan l3a<HAEU~ in Book 24 
who makes him human again. No Trojan, least of all Hector, 

118 Coldstream 187f with references to Strabo. 



WILLIAM MERRITT SALE 101 

achieves Achilles' remoteness. Naturally, as Homer wants the 
city to seem human, to seem familar, so that this audience can 
sympathize with it: politically and economically it resembles 
cities it knew. 

Not merely familiar; a rusty lawnmower and a worn doormat 
are familiar. By putting shrines and temples and a statue of Zeus, 
Apollo, and Athena on the Trojan acropolis, Homer is showing 
his audience something familiar, but also majestic. Majestic not 
merely because no acropolis he knew can have been quite so 
grand as this, but because these are the gods the Achaeans wor­
ship and that the audience worships, the universal gods, God; a 
majestic familiarity. Priam is a not very powerful ~acrtA£u<;, a 
frustrated and (as he pleads with Hector) pitiable human being, a 
thing familiar to us; but he conquers Achilles out of his love for 
Hector, and this elevates him to the level of a universal gentle 
father. The picture of Helen weaving is a common enough do­
mestic sight, but her extraordinary subject matter, and her 
extraordinary ability to weave it into the loom, raise domesticity 
to the height of creative genius. The ability of Astyanax and An­
dromache to soften Hector so that he can speak kindly of his 
brother and entertain hope for his city (6.521-29), though earlier 
he was abusive (3.39-57) and dwelt at cruel length on impending 
disaster for his wife (6.447-65)-this too is creative genius in a 
domestic setting. 

There are, of course, some real differences between Troy and 
the eighth century. Its population, and the area enclosed within 
the walls, is greater than that boasted by any eighth-century 
polis. It-or at least Priam-is richer, and the size of Priam's 
palace far exceeds that of any dwelling the audience was likely to 
be familiar with. No polis could match the two temples on the 
acropolis. But after all, the tragic hero, though not unlike our­
selves, should be someone more elevated, more splendid, and it 
is altogether fitting that Troy should be grander than the cities 
known to the audience. 

We said at the outset (supra 12) that one reason why the inter­
pretation of Troy set out in this paper had gone unobserved, or 
at least unstated, before, was that scholars had neglected the 
intellectual force of the creation of the polis. This is a structure 
that the mind must create, whatever social forces it may be ac­
commodating as it does so. Even as a physical entity, Old Smyr­
na is a product of new thought: its citizens collectively created a 
new thing, a city. The result is that the mind is now aware of the 
difference between the city, the polis, and what came before it. 



102 THE GOVERNMENT OF TROY 

Homer was the first, or in the first generation, of the poets who 
were in a position to appreciate this difference. It was this that 
enabled him to see heroic society as a structure capable of flaws. 
This does not mean that in depicting Troy Homer was guilty of 
anachronism. He may very well have supposed that the city of 
Troy in olden times was much as he describes it, and that the 
recent creation of the city and the polis was a re-creation. He 
could have said to himself, "My predecessors saw Troy as Mene­
laus sees it [at 13.620-39] because they stayed outside the walls. 
If we go inside it, we shall find it immensely wealthy-for the 
wealth of Priam is legendary. We shall find a large popula­
tion-for there had to be enough people to hold off an army of 
63,000 for ten years. Troy must have been a city, not an over­
grown village, or a place surrounded by a few houses and fields. 
A city is a city; and though Troy was larger and more magni­
ficent than Old Smyrna and the other cities around us, it must 
have been essentially the same."119 

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

December, 1994 

119 Many people over the years have helped to mould this paper, and I hope 
not to seem ungrateful to the others if I single out just a few here: John Lenz 
(Drew), Ann Perkins (Webster), James Redfield (Chicago), Nancy Symeon­
oglou (Washington/St Louis), and Keith Stanley (Duke).