Homer the Preclassic

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Chapter Seven: Conflicting claims on Homer

II 71. The tomb of Achilles and the topography of the Troad

II§42 The Aeolians had their own motives for claiming the territory of Sigeion as their very own Iliadic space. The tomb of the hero Achilles was understood to be located in Aeolian territory, specifically in the environs of Sigeion. As we are about to see, the Aeolians connected this poetic territory, this Iliadic space, with epic references to the tomb of Achilles. And so too did the Athenians. Such conflicting claims on Iliadic space stemmed from conflicting claims on Homer himself.

II§43 In order to make this argument, I need to start by returning to two points I stressed earlier:

  1. The city of Mytilene in Lesbos was supposedly representing all Aeolic-speaking Hellenes when it claimed the Iliadic territory of Aeolian Sigeion.
  2. The motive of the Athenians in counterclaiming for themselves the territory of Sigeion was predicated on this previous claim of the Mytilenaeans.

II§44 So far, I have noted that the territory of Sigeion was understood to be the site of the tomb of Achilles. But there is more to it. Achilles was worshipped as a cult hero at this tomb. Both the tomb and the hero cult of Achilles in the vicinity of Sigeion in the Troad had been for the Aeolians a metonymy for the Iliad—that is, for their epic tradition about the Trojan War. The objective of the Athenians was to appropriate for themselves a comparable metonymy.

II§48 How, then, is such a Thessalian connection relevant to the imperial interests of the Athenians? These Aeolians on the Helladic mainland were the notional prototypes of the Aeolians on the island of Lesbos and, by extension, of the Aeolians on the Asiatic mainland. Thessaly was understood to be the point of origin for the Aeolian Migration, that is, for the colonization of the Aeolian cities on the island of Lesbos and, by extension, of the Aeolian cities on the Asiatic mainland. While the Athenians on the Helladic mainland figured themselves as the prototypes of the Ionians of Asia Minor and of its outlying islands, they figured the Thessalians as the prototypes of the Aeolians of Asia Minor and of its outlying islands, especially of Lesbos.

II§51 There is also a second direct reference to this promontory. This time, it is in the Iliad. After the spirit of the dead Patroklos tells Achilles to build a tomb that will be shared by the two heroes after Achilles too is dead (Iliad XXIII 83–84, 91–92), a funeral pyre is prepared: men are sent out to the slopes of Mount Ida to chop down trees for timber to fuel the fires of cremation (110–124). Then the men bring the timber to the site where the tomb will be located:

IIⓣ5 Iliad XXIII 125–126

κὰδ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐπ’ ἀκτῆς βάλλον ἐπισχερώ, ἔνθ’ ἄρ’ Ἀχιλλεὺς
φράσσατο Πατρόκλῳ μέγα ἠρίον ἠδὲ οἷ αὐτῷ.

They [= the Achaeans] placed them [the logs] in a row on the promontory [aktē] where Achilles
had marked out the place of a great tomb [ērion] for Patroklos and for his own self.

II§52 After the body of Patroklos is cremated, Achilles says that the bones must be placed inside a golden urn and that a tomb must be built to house the urn. This tomb, made for the urn containing the bones of Patroklos as the other self of Achilles, will be incomplete until the bones of Achilles himself are placed inside the same urn, at which time the process of building the tomb will be completed:

IIⓣ6 Iliad XXIII 245–248

τύμβον δ’ οὐ μάλα πολλὸν ἐγὼ πονέεσθαι ἄνωγα,
ἀλλ’ ἐπιεικέα τοῖον· ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὸν Ἀχαιοὶ
εὐρύν θ’ ὑψηλόν τε τιθήμεναι, οἵ κεν ἐμεῖο
δεύτεροι ἐν νήεσσι πολυκλήϊσι λίπησθε.

I [= Achilles] command that you [= the Achaeans] make a tomb [tumbos], not very big,
just big enough for now. Later, this same tomb you Achaeans
must make very wide and very high—those of you who, after me,
will be left behind, you with your ships that have many benches.

II§53 The Achaeans who survive Achilles are pictured here as a seafaring people, and the hero’s words prophesy that the tumulus built for his tomb will have a special {150|151} meaning for them. That special meaning is made explicit in the passage I quoted from the Odyssey, which likewise describes the tumulus built for the tomb of Achilles. This tumulus, situated on a promontory overlooking the Hellespont, is a sacred lighthouse flashing its selas ‘gleam’ of salvation for sailors.

IIⓣ7 Iliad XIX 368–379

          δύσετο δῶρα θεοῦ, τά οἱ Ἥφαιστος κάμε τεύχων.
          κνημῖδας μὲν πρῶτα περὶ κνήμῃσιν ἔθηκε
370    καλὰς ἀργυρέοισιν ἐπισφυρίοις ἀραρυίας·
          δεύτερον αὖ θώρηκα περὶ στήθεσσιν ἔδυνεν.
          ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄρ’ ὤμοισιν βάλετο ξίφος ἀργυρόηλον
          χάλκεον· αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα σάκος μέγα τε στιβαρόν τε
          εἵλετο, τοῦ δ’ ἀπάνευθε σέλας γένετ’ ἠΰτε μήνης.
375    ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἂν ἐκ πόντοιο σέλας ναύτῃσι φανήῃ
          καιομένοιο πυρός, τό τε καίεται ὑψόθ’ ὄρεσφι
          σταθμῷ ἐν οἰοπόλῳ· τοὺς δ’ οὐκ ἐθέλοντας ἄελλαι
          πόντον ἐπ’ ἰχθυόεντα φίλων ἀπάνευθε φέρουσιν·
          ὣς ἀπ’ Ἀχιλλῆος σάκεος σέλας αἰθέρ’ ἵκανε

          He [= Achilles] put it [= his armor] on, the gifts of the god, which
               Hephaistos had made for him with much labor.
370    First he put around his legs the shin guards,
          beautiful ones, with silver fastenings at the ankles.
          Next he put around his chest the breastplate,
          and around his shoulders he slung the sword with the nails of silver,
          a sword made of bronze. Next, the Shield [sakos], great and mighty,
          he took, and from it there was a gleam [selas] from afar, as from
               the moon,
375    or as when, at sea, [
14] a gleam [selas] to sailors appears
          from a blazing fire, the kind that blazes high in the mountains
          at a solitary [
15] station [stathmos], as the sailors are carried unwilling
               by gusts of wind
          over the fish-swarming sea [pontos], far away from their loved ones. {151|152}
          So also did the gleam [selas] from the Shield [sakos] of Achilles reach
               all the way up to the aether.

II§55 I highlight the word stathmos ‘station’ which refers here to the solitary tumulus situated on the coastal heights. In another Homeric passage involving the Shield of Achilles, we see a revealing attestation of this same word in collocation with two related words:

II§58 In the Iliad, the word klisia refers to the abode that a hero like Achilles frequents in life: his klisia is his shelter, which marks the place where his ship is beached on the shores of the Hellespont during the Trojan War (VIII 224, XI 7, and so on). In later poetry we see a related use of stathmos (plural stathma) with reference to the places where the ships of Achaean heroes are beached on the shores of the Hellespont (“Euripides” Rhesus 43); these places are also called naustathma ‘ship stations’ (Rhesus 136, 244, 448, 582, 591, 602, 673). Among these stathma ‘stations’ lining the coast of the Hellespont is the heroic space occupied by Achilles.

II§59 According to the Iliad (VIII 220–226 and XI 5–9), the ship of Achilles is beached farthest to the west on the coastline of the Hellespont, while the ship of Ajax is beached farthest to the east. I will explain presently how we know about the west-to-east alignment of this Iliadic visualization. For the moment, it is enough for me to highlight the simple fact that the station of Achilles on the coast of the Hellespont is marked by the space where his klisia ‘shelter’ stands at the beach (again, VIII 220–226 and XI 5–9). In the narrative topography of the Iliad, the hero’s stathmos ‘station’ is imagined as the abode he frequents in the heroic time of the Trojan War. But it is also imagined as the abode that the hero frequents after death, in the future time of audiences listening to the story of the Trojan War. As I have argued, the stathmos of Achilles is pictured as his tomb, situated on the heights overlooking the space where his ship had once been beached. As we will see later, this solitary stathmos is pictured as a sacred space haunted by the spirit of the solitary hero after death.

II§60 In Strabo’s description of the Troad, the word naustathmon ‘ship station’ is used with reference to a space in the immediate vicinity of Sigeion:

IIⓣ9 Strabo 13.1.31–32 C595

Μετὰ δὲ τὸ Ῥοίτειον ἔστι τὸ Σίγειον, κατεσπασμένη πόλις, καὶ τὸ ναύσταθμον καὶ ὁ Ἀχαιῶν λιμὴν καὶ τὸ Ἀχαϊκὸν στρατόπεδον καὶ ἡ στομαλίμνη καλουμένη καὶ αἱ τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου ἐκβολαί. συμπεσόντες γὰρ ὅ τε Σιμόεις καὶ ὁ Σκάμανδρος ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ πολλὴν καταφέροντες ἰλὺν προσχοῦσι τὴν παραλίαν καὶ τυφλὸν στόμα τε καὶ λιμνοθαλάττας καὶ ἕλη ποιοῦσι. κατὰ δὲ τὴν Σιγειάδα ἄκραν ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Χερρονήσῳ τὸ Πρωτεσιλάειον καὶ ἡ Ἐλαιοῦσσα, περὶ ὧν εἰρήκαμεν ἐν τοῖς Θρᾳκίοις. Ἔστι δὲ τὸ μῆκος τῆς παραλίας ταύτης ἀπὸ τοῦ Ῥοιτείου μέχρι Σιγείου καὶ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως μνήματος εὐθυπλοούντων ἑξήκοντα σταδίων· ὑποπέπτωκε δὲ τῷ Ἰλίῳ πᾶσα, τῷ μὲν νῦν κατὰ τὸν Ἀχαιῶν λιμένα ὅσον δώδεκα σταδίους διέχουσα, τῷ δὲ προτέρῳ τριάκοντα ἄλλοις σταδίοις ἀνωτέρῳ κατὰ τὸ πρὸς τὴν Ἴδην μέρος. τοῦ μὲν οὖν Ἀχιλλέως καὶ ἱερόν ἐστι καὶ μνῆμα πρὸς τῷ Σιγείῳ, Πατρόκλου δὲ καὶ Ἀντιλόχου μνήματα, καὶ ἐναγίζουσιν οἱ Ἰλιεῖς πᾶσι καὶ τούτοις καὶ τῷ Αἴαντι. {153|154}

II§62 In the passage of Strabo concerning the sights to see in the immediate vicinity {154|155} of Sigeion, I highlight two other relevant points of interest besides the mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles. The first is something called the naustathmon ‘ship station’, and the second is ‘the harbor [limēn] of the Achaeans’ (ὁ Ἀχαιῶν λιμήν). Elsewhere in his work, Strabo mentions both these points of interest for a second time, and, this time around, he attempts to equate one with the other:

IIⓣ10 Strabo 13.1.36 C598

Καὶ μὴν τό γε ναύσταθμον τὸ νῦν ἔτι λεγόμενον πλησίον οὕτως ἐστὶ τῆς νῦν πόλεως, ὥστε θαυμάζειν εἰκότως ἄν τινα τῶν μὲν τῆς ἀπονοίας τῶν δὲ τοὐναντίον τῆς ἀψυχίας· ἀπονοίας μέν, εἰ τοσοῦτον χρόνον ἀτείχιστον αὐτὸ εἶχον, πλησίον οὔσης τῆς πόλεως καὶ τοσούτου πλήθους τοῦ τ’ ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ τοῦ ἐπικουρικοῦ· νεωστὶ γὰρ γεγονέναι φησὶ τὸ τεῖχος (ἢ οὐδ’ ἐγένετο, ὁ δὲ πλάσας ποιητὴς ἠφάνισεν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν)· ἀψυχίας δέ, εἰ γενομένου τοῦ τείχους ἐτειχομάχουν καὶ εἰσέπεσον εἰς αὐτὸ τὸ ναύσταθμον καὶ προσεμάχοντο ταῖς ναυσίν, ἀτείχιστον δὲ ἔχοντες οὐκ ἐθάρρουν προσιόντες πολιορκεῖν μικροῦ τοῦ διαστήματος ὄντος· ἔστι γὰρ τὸ ναύσταθμον πρὸς Σιγείῳ, πλησίον δὲ καὶ ὁ Σκάμανδρος ἐκδίδωσι διέχων τοῦ Ἰλίου σταδίους εἴκοσιν. εἰ δὲ φήσει τις τὸν νῦν λεγόμενον Ἀχαιῶν λιμένα εἶναι τὸ ναύσταθμον, ἐγγυτέρω τινὰ λέξει τόπον ὅσον δώδεκα σταδίους διεστῶτα τῆς πόλεως, ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ πεδίον νῦν προστιθείς, [25] διότι τοῦτο πᾶν πρόχωμα τῶν ποταμῶν ἐστι τὸ πρὸ τῆς πόλεως ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ πεδίον, ὥστε εἰ δωδεκαστάδιόν ἐστι νῦν τὸ μεταξύ, τότε καὶ τῷ ἡμίσει ἔλαττον ὑπῆρχε.

And here is another thing: the naustathmon, as it is still called, is so near the city [= New Ilion] as it exists today that one could reasonably wonder at the mindlessness of the people on one side [= the Achaeans] and the cowardice of the people on the opposing side [= the Trojans]. I say “mindlessness” if in fact they [= the Achaeans] had that thing [= the naustathmon] unwalled for such a long time while the city [= the old Ilion] was so near and with such a large mass of population on the inside and of allied population on the outside. For the Poet [= Homer] says that the wall [= the Achaean Wall] had only recently come into existence. Or it never existed at all, and the Poet made it up [plattein] and then made it disappear, as Aristotle [F 162 ed. Rose] says. [26] And I say “cowardice” if in fact they [= the Trojans] could do battle at the wall when the wall came into existence and could even penetrate it and reach the naustathmon itself, and yet, when it [= the naustathmon] was still unwalled, they could not have the courage to besiege it, even though it was such a short distance away. I say this because the naustathmon is in the vicinity of Sigeion and, quite near it [= Sigeion], the Scamander has its outlet—at a distance of twenty stadia from Ilion. And if one were to say that the “harbor [limēn] of the Achaeans,” as it is now called, is the same thing as the naustathmon , one would be speaking of a place that is even closer, at a distance of twelve stadia from the city [= Ilion], now adding in one’s calculation a plain by the sea. I speak this way because this entire seaside plain in front of the city [= Ilion] is an alluvial de-{155|156} posit of the rivers [= Scamander and Simoeis]. So if the space in between [= the space between the “harbor” and the city] is a distance of twelve stadia in the present, then it would have been only half that distance in the past.

II§63 As we see from this passage, Strabo knows not one but two traditions about the location of the naustathmon. According to one tradition, the place that is ‘still’ called the naustathmon is at a distance of twenty stadia from Ilion. Strabo adds that this place is quite near another place—where the river Scamander (its Turkish name today is Menderes) flowed into the sea in his time. But then he goes on to report an alternative tradition, according to which the naustathmon is the same thing as the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, which he says is at a distance of twelve stadia from Ilion. In terms of the first of these two alternative traditions, the naustathmon is the equivalent of a modern harbor. I say “modern” only in the sense that Strabo elsewhere actually uses the word naustathmon with reference to harbors as they existed in his own time: for example, at 4.1.9 C184, 4.1.10 C185, 4.5.2 C199, etc. In the case of the second of these two traditions, however, Strabo equates the naustathmon not with a functional modern harbor but rather with an epic harbor, that is, with a harbor that had once existed in the epic past but exists no more. Strabo here is showing his awareness of epic connotations: the very term ‘harbor of the Achaeans’ refers to the time of the Trojan War. In a comparable context, Strabo describes Nauplía in the Argolid as the naustathmon ‘ship station’ of Argos—that is, as the city’s ancient harbor (8.6.2 C368 τὸ τῶν Ἀργείων ναύσταθμον). [27]

 



Map 1. Map of the Trojan Bay area at the time of the traditional dating of the Trojan War, ca. 3250 B.P.

 

Map 2. Map of the Trojan Bay area in Strabo’s time, ca. 2000 B.P.

II§67 The reconstruction shown in Map 2 highlights a difference between the two traditions reported in the last passage I quoted from Strabo. According to one tradition, as we saw, the naustathmon was the same thing as the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, which Strabo says was located at a distance of twelve stadia from Ilion. Measuring that distance on the map, we see that the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’ would have to be located at some point near the center of the coastline as it curves around the bay.

II§68 Map 2, however, follows only the second of the two traditions reported by Strabo, according to which the naustathmon was not the same thing as the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, which was located at a distance of twelve stadia from Ilion. Rather, the alternative naustathmon was located at a point farther to the west on the map. That point, according to the measurement of Strabo, was at a distance of twenty stadia from Ilion. Next to that point, as Strabo notes, was where the river Scamander flowed into the Trojan Bay in his day. Geologists have tracked through time the variations in the flow of the Scamander across the Trojan Plain, and their findings verify that the trajectory of the flow shifted farther and farther to the west with the passage of time. [31] The difference between the distances—twenty as opposed to twelve stadia separating ancient Troy from the outlet of the Scamander—reflects this westward shift in the path of the Scamander from earlier times to the later time of Strabo. Map 2 indicates this shift. To be contrasted is the opinion of Strabo about the location of the Scamander’s outlet at the time of the Trojan War. To repeat, the geographer thinks that the outlet into the bay should be located at the predesignated point where the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’ was traditionally located, even though this outlet was not to be found at that predesignated point in his own time and had evidently shifted farther to the west along the coastline of the bay.

II§69 Like Strabo, Pliny the Elder recognized that the path of the river Scamander in the time of the Iliad had been different from the river’s path in his own time (first century CE). He refers to the Iliadic course of the Scamander—also called Xanthos in the Iliad—as the Palaeoscamander as opposed to the Scamander of his day:

IIⓣ12 Scholia T for Iliad VII 339b1 (exegetical scholia)

ἐν δ’ αὐτοῖσ<ι> πύλας ποιήσομεν”: μία μὲν ἦν ἱππήλατος ἐπὶ τὸ ἀριστερὸν τοῦ ναυστάθμου πρὸς τὸ Ῥοίτειον, “νηῶν ἐπ’ ἀριστερά, τῇ περ Ἀχαιοί | <ἐκ πεδίου> νίσοντο σὺν ἵπποισιν”· ἄλλας δὲ πυλίδας εἶχον πρὸς ἄλλας χρείας.

We will make the gate there” [quotation from Iliad VII 339]: There was one chariot causeway to the left of the naustathmon , facing in the direction of Rhoiteion. “To the left of the ships, where the Achaeans used to return | from the battlefield with their chariot teams” [quotation from Iliad XII 118–119.] They had other smaller gates, used for other purposes.

II§79 In the Iliad, the location of the Scamander’s outlet corresponds to Strabo’s locating of the naustathmon at a distance of twelve rather than twenty stadia from Troy. A case in point is a battle scene in Iliad XI, where the narrative concentrates on a north-to-south counterattack by the Achaean hero Ajax against the Trojans (489–497); meanwhile, the Trojan hero Hector is said to be ἐπ’ ἀριστερά ‘to the left’ in the battle, positioned at the banks of the Scamander (498–499), where most of the fighting is concentrated (499–500). Standing on the stern of his beached ship, Achilles has been observing the ebb and flow of the battle (XI 400). [48] What he sees is the action to the right, that is, toward the west: at first the right wing of the Achaean forces is routed, but then Ajax comes to their aid and proceeds to counterattack, moving rapidly southward. [49] The narrative now highlights a detail about the action: Hector, who is at the far ‘left’ of the battlefield, does not notice the onslaught of Ajax, who is counterattacking at the other side of the battlefield (XI 497–499). That is, Ajax is counterattacking at the far right. At this point in our reading, we can catch a precious glimpse of the epic scene from a comment in the Homeric scholia for the relevant verse in Iliad XI (499). There we find this comment about the expression ἐπ’ ἀριστερά ‘to the left’ in that verse: [ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ] σημείωσαι ὅτι ἀριστερὸς τοῦ ναυστάθμου ἐστὶν ὁ Σκάμανδρος ‘note that the river Scamander is to the left of the ship station [naustathmon]’. [50] As we are about to see, the idea that the Scamander is ‘to the left of the naustathmon’ means that the Scamander is immediately to the east of the naustathmon. Or, to reverse the point of reference, the naustathmon is immediately to the west of the Scamander. {163|164}

II§82 Here I pause to offer a brief reassessment of the overall Iliadic visualization of the battles taking place on the Trojan Plain between the Achaeans and the Trojans. A primary Iliadic point of reference is the river Scamander, flowing south to north through the Trojan Plain. [55] In the narrative of the Iliad, most of the action takes place in the part of the plain that is situated to the west of the Scamander—so long as the anger of Achilles is in force. From the very start of our Iliad, the Trojan warriors are crossing at will from the east bank to the west bank of the Scamander, chariots and all; throughout the Iliad, they are fighting the Achaeans on the expansive west side of the Trojan Plain. [56] On this battleground, which is pointedly suitable for {164|165} chariot fighting, the Trojans are attacking from the south, while the Achaeans to the north are defending the Achaean Wall and the ships behind it. This battleground is delineated by the Scamander to the east, and the focal point of the battle is the central ship station of the Achaeans to the northeast, immediately to the east of which is the Scamander’s outlet into the bay. This central station is defended by the left wing of the Achaean forces, on the east side, facing the attacks of the right wing of the Trojan forces led by Hector, on the east side. Because Hector is so consistently on the attack, he gravitates toward the east side of the battlefield, immediately to the south of the naustathmon. Facing north and flanked by the Scamander immediately to the east, he is positioned so far toward the east side of the battlefield that there are times when he fails to notice what is happening toward the west side of the battlefield, as we saw earlier in the battle scene of Iliad XI (497–499). [57]

II§83 Having rethought the topography of the Troad by way of combining the external evidence about what geologists call the Deep Bay with the internal evidence of the formulaic system that visualizes the Achaean ships stationed along the coastline of this bay, I am now ready to focus on a single most telling detail about the positioning of the ship of Achilles in relation to the positioning of his tomb.

II§87 In the Heroikos of Philostratus, the same word kolōnos refers to the structure that the Achaeans built over the bodies of Achilles and Patroklos: it is envisioned as a tumulus situated on a headland overlooking the Hellespont—and matching the tumulus of Protesilaos on the other side of the strait: {166|167}

IIⓣ13 Philostratus Heroikos 51.12–13

τὸν μὲν δὴ κολωνὸν, ξένε, τοῦτον, ὃν ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου τῆς ἀκτῆς ὁρᾷς ἀνεστηκότα, ἤγειραν οἱ Ἀχαιοὶ ξυνελθόντες, ὅτε τῷ Πατρόκλῳ ξυνεμίχθη ἐς τὸν τάφον, κάλλιστον ἐντάφιον ἑαυτῷ τε κἀκείνῳ διδούς, ὅθεν ᾄδουσιν αὐτὸν οἱ τὰ φιλικὰ ἐπαινοῦντες. ἐτάφη δὲ ἐκδηλότατα ἀνθρώπων πᾶσιν οἷς ἐπήνεγκεν αὐτῷ ἡ Ἑλλὰς οὐδὲ κομᾶν ἔτι μετὰ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα καλὸν ἡγούμενοι χρυσόν τε καὶ ὅ τι ἕκαστος εἶχεν ἢ ἀπάγων ἐς Τροίαν ἢ ἐκ δασμοῦ λαβών, νήσαντες ἐς τὴν πυρὰν ἀθρόα παραχρῆμά τε καὶ ὅτε ὁ Νεοπτόλεμος ἐς Τροίαν ἦλθε, λαμπρῶν γὰρ δὴ ἔτυχε πάλιν παρά τε τοῦ παιδὸς παρά τε τῶν Ἀχαιῶν ἀντιχαρίζεσθαι αὐτῷ πειρωμένων, οἵ γε καὶ τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς Τροίας ποιούμενοι πλοῦν περιέπιπτον τῷ τάφῳ καὶ τὸν Ἀχιλλέα ᾤοντο περιβάλλειν.

II§88 Elsewhere in the Heroikos, in a passage describing an ancient yearly custom observed by Thessalians who sailed to Troy and performed sacrifice at the tomb of Achilles, the word kolōnos refers, once again, to the tomb of Achilles, and in this context it is used in collocation with another revealing word, sēma ‘tomb’ (53.11).

IIⓣ14 Philostratus Heroikos 53.8–14

τὰ δὲ Θετταλικὰ ἐναγίσματα φοιτῶντα τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ ἐκ Θετταλίας ἐχρήσθη Θετταλοῖς ἐκ Δωδώνης· ἐκέλευσε γὰρ δὴ τὸ μαντεῖον Θετταλοὺς ἐς Τροίαν πλέοντας θύειν ὅσα ἔτη τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ καὶ σφάττειν τὰ μὲν ὡς θεῷ, τὰ δὲ ὡς ἐν μοίρᾳ τῶν κειμένων. καταρχὰς μὲν δὴ τοιάδε ἐγίγνετο· ναῦς ἐκ Θετταλίας μέλανα ἱστία ἠρμένη ἐς Τροίαν ἔπλει θεωροὺς μὲν δὶς ἑπτὰ ἀπάγουσα, ταύρους δὲ λευκόν τε καὶ μέλανα χειροήθεις ἄμφω καὶ ὕλην ἐκ Πηλίου, ὡς μηδὲν τῆς πόλεως δέοιντο καὶ πῦρ ἐκ Θετταλίας ἦγον καὶ σπονδὰς καὶ ὕδωρ τοῦ Σπερχειοῦ ἀρυσάμενοι, ὅθεν καὶ στεφάνους ἀμαραντίνους ἐς τὰ κήδη πρῶτοι Θετταλοὶ ἐνόμισαν, ἵνα, κἂν ἄνεμοι τὴν ναῦν ἀπολάβωσι, μὴ σαπροὺς {167|168} ἐπιφέρωσι μηδ’ ἐξώρους. νυκτὸς μὲν δὴ καθορμίζεσθαι ἔδει καὶ πρὶν ἅψασθαι τῆς γῆς ὕμνον ἀπὸ τῆς νεὼς ᾄδειν ἐς τὴν Θέτιν ὧδε ξυγκείμενον·

Θέτι κυανέα, Θέτι Πηλεία,
ἃ τὸν μέγαν τέκες υἱόν,
Ἀχιλλέα, τοῦ θνατὰ μὲν ὅσον
φύσις ἤνεγκεν,
Τροία λάχε, σᾶς δ’ ὅσον ἀθανάτου
γενεᾶς παῖς ἔσπασε, πόντος ἔχει.
βαῖνε πρὸς αἰπὺν τόνδε κολωνὸν
μετ’ Ἀχιλλέως ἔμπυρα …
βαῖν’ ἀδάκρυτος μετὰ Θεσσαλίας,
Θέτι κυανέα, Θέτι Πηλεία.

προσελθόντων δὲ τῷ σήματι μετὰ τὸν ὕμνον ἀσπὶς μὲν ὥσπερ ἐν πολέμῳ ἐδουπεῖτο, δρόμοις δὲ ἐρρυθμισμένοις συνηλάλαζον ἀνακαλοῦντες τὸν Ἀχιλλέα, στεφανώσαντες δὲ τὴν κορυφὴν τοῦ κολωνοῦ καὶ βόθρους ἐπ’ αὐτῇ ὀρύξαντες τὸν ταῦρον τὸν μέλανα ὡς τεθνεῶτι ἔσφαττον. ἐκάλουν δὲ καὶ τὸν Πάτροκλον ἐπὶ τὴν δαῖτα, ὡς καὶ τοῦτο ἐς χάριν τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ πράττοντες, ἐντεμόντες δὲ καὶ ἐναγίσαντες κατέβαινον ἐπὶ τὴν ναῦν ἤδη καὶ θύσαντες ἐπὶ τοῦ αἰγιαλοῦ τὸν ἕτερον τῶν ταύρων Ἀχιλλεῖ πάλιν κανοῦ τε ἐναρξάμενοι καὶ σπλάγχνων ἐπ’ ἐκείνῃ τῇ θυσίᾳ (ἔθυον γὰρ τὴν θυσίαν ταύτην ὡς θεῷ) περὶ ὄρθρον ἀπέπλεον ἀπάγοντες τὸ ἱερεῖον, ὡς μὴ ἐν τῇ πολεμίᾳ εὐωχοῖντο. ταῦτα, ξένε, τὰ οὕτω σεμνὰ καὶ ἀρχαῖα καταλυθῆναι μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν τυράννων φασίν, οἳ λέγονται μετὰ τοὺς Αἰακίδας ἄρξαι Θετταλῶν, ἀμεληθῆναι δὲ καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς Θετταλίας·

The Thessalian sacrificial offerings [enagismata] that came regularly to Achilles from Thessaly were decreed for the Thessalians by the oracle at Dodona. Evidently the oracle ordered the Thessalians to sail to Troy each year to sacrifice [thuein] to Achilles and to slaughter some sacrificial victims as to a god, while slaughtering other victims as for the dead. From the very beginnings, the following was the procedure: a ship sailed from Thessaly to Troy with black sails raised, bringing twice seven sacred ambassadors [theōroi], one white bull and one black bull, both tame to the touch, and wood from Mount Pelion, so that they would need nothing from the city [= New Ilion]. [66] They also brought fire from Thessaly as well as water drawn from the river Sperkheios for libations. As a consequence [of these practices], the Thessalians were the first to institute the custom of using unwilting garlands [stephanoi] for the funerary rituals [kēdos plural, in honor of Achilles], in order that, even if the wind delayed the ship, they would not wear garlands [stephanoi] that were wilted or past their season [hōra]. [67] {168|169} And evidently they found it necessary to put into the harbor at night and, before touching land, to sing from the ship a hymn [humnos] to Thetis, which is composed of these words:

Thetis, sea-blue Thetis, consort of Peleus,
you who bore the great son
Achilles. The part of him that his mortal
nature brought him
was the share of Troy, but the part of him that from your immortal
lineage was drawn by the child, the sea [pontos] has that part.
Come, proceed to this steep tumulus [kolōnos]
in the company of Achilles [to receive] the offerings placed over the fire.
Come, proceed without tears in the company of Thessaly,
you, sea-blue Thetis, you, consort of Peleus.

II 72. The tomb of Achilles as a landmark for the festival of the Panathenaia

Figure 1. Attic black-figure hydria: Achilles dragging the body of Hector. Attributed to the Antiope Group. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 63.473. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel.

Figure 2. Attic black-figure hydria: Achilles racing on foot around the tomb of Patroklos, whose

psukhē


(labeled as “ΦΣΥΧΕ”) hovers over the tomb. Attributed to the Leagros Group. Münster, Wilhelms-Universität, 565. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel. {171|172}

II§91 Both Black Figure paintings, as we see them on the Boston Hydria and the Münster Hydria, depict an athletic event known as the apobatōn agōn, which means ‘contest of the apobatai’ or ‘apobatic contest’. [76] This event was part of the athletic program of the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, and it featured a spectacular sudden-death moment of athletic bravura. We can imagine all eyes focused on the action that leads up to that moment when the competing athlete, riding on the platform of a four-horse chariot driven at full gallop by his charioteer, suddenly leaps to the ground from the speeding chariot. The term for such an athlete is apobatēs, meaning literally ‘one who steps off’. [77] At the death-defying moment when he literally steps off the platform of the speeding chariot, the apobatēs is fully armed as a warrior. The various attested representations in vase paintings show the apobatēs armed with helmet, breastplate, shin guards, spear, sword, and shield. [78] Weighted down by all this armor, the apobatēs must hit the ground running as he lands on his feet in his high-speed leap from the platform of his chariot. If his run is not broken in a fall, he continues to run down the length of the racecourse in competition with the other running apobatai, who have made their own leaps from their own chariots. [79] In one of the two paintings that I will be considering, as well as in other paintings, the athletic event of this apobatic contest is correlated with an epic event that takes place in the Homeric Iliad. The hero Achilles, infuriated over Hector’s killing of his dearest friend Patroklos, tries to avenge this death by dragging behind his speeding chariot the corpse of Hector (XXII 395–405, XXIV 14–22). [80] In the painting on the Boston Hydria, we see Achilles at the precise moment when he cuts himself off from the act of dragging the corpse of Hector. This moment is synchronized with the precise moment when he leaps off, in the mode of an apobatēs, {172|173} from the platform of the chariot that is dragging the corpse. The leap of Achilles here is the leap of the apobatēs. This moment, captured in the painting we see on the Boston Hydria, is what I will call the apobatic moment. I argue that this moment can be understood only in the context of the poetic as well as athletic program of the Panathenaia.

II§92 The first time that the Iliad pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector, the event is witnessed by the dead hero’s mother, father, and wife: Hecuba, Priam, and Andromache together lament the terror and the pity of it all (XXII 405–407, 408–429, 430–436, 437–515). As in the Iliad, the lamenting figures of Hecuba and Priam are pictured on one of the two Black Figure vases that presently concern me, the Boston Hydria (Figure 1). This vase, like the Iliad, pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector—while the lamenting figures of Hecuba and Priam view this scene of terror and pity from a portico.

II§93 The next time the Iliad pictures Achilles dragging the corpse of Hector behind his chariot, we see this chariot being driven three times around the sēma ‘tomb’ of Patroklos (XXIV 14–18). At an earlier point in the narrative of the Iliad, this tomb is described as incomplete: it will not be complete until Achilles himself is buried there together with his friend Patroklos (XXIII 83–84, 91–92, 245–248).

II§94 As in the Iliad, this tomb of Patroklos is pictured on the Boston Hydria. The chariot of Achilles is shown furiously circling around the tomb, with the corpse of Hector in tow, and we see the hero at the very moment when he leaps off the speeding chariot, with his fierce gaze fixed on the portico where Priam and Hecuba lament the cruel fate of their son.

II§96 In the Iliad, a council of the gods is convened, and they express their collective moral disapproval of Achilles for his attempt to mutilate the corpse of Hector by dragging it behind his chariot (XXIV 22–76). Just before, we see that the god Apollo miraculously prevents the actual mutilation of the corpse (18–21). But now the council of the gods, headed by Zeus, decides to go one step further: the dragging of the corpse by Achilles must stop altogether. The divine course of action in stopping Achilles is explicitly said to be indirect: Iris as messenger of the gods is sent off to summon Thetis (74–75), who will be asked by Zeus to persuade her son to return the corpse of Hector to Priam (75–76); then Iris is sent off to Priam, who {173|174} will receive from the goddess a divine plan designed to make it possible for him to persuade Achilles to return the corpse of his son (143–158).

II§97 By contrast with the narration of the Iliad, the divine course of action narrated by the painting on the Boston Hydria is explicitly direct: the goddess sent from on high will personally stop the dragging of the corpse of Hector by Achilles. The painting shows the goddess in flight, just as she reaches the moment of her landing on earth: her feet, gracefully poised as if in a dance, are about to touch ground at the center of the picture, and her delicate hands make a gesture of lament evoking pity as she looks toward the lamenting Priam and Hecuba, whose own hands make a parallel gesture of lament evoking pity as they look toward Achilles. The fierce gaze of the furious hero is at this precise point redirected at Priam and Hecuba, who take their cue, as it were, from the gesture of lament shown by the goddess. The gaze of Achilles is thus directed away from the figure of Patroklos, who is shown hovering over a tomb that for now belongs only to him but will soon belong to Achilles as well. The charioteer of Achilles, oblivious to the intervention of the goddess, continues to drive the speeding chariot around the tomb, but, meanwhile, we find Achilles in the act of stepping off the platform. And he steps off at the precise moment when he redirects his fierce gaze from his own past and future agony to the present agony of Hector’s lamenting father and mother. Here is the hero’s apobatic moment.

II§98 The pity of Achilles for the parents of Hector in the painting of the Boston Hydria is achieved by way of a direct divine intervention that takes place while the dragging of the corpse is in progress. Once Achilles steps off his furiously speeding chariot, the fury that fueled that speed must be left behind as he hits the ground running and keeps on running until that fury is spent.

II§99 To be contrasted is the pity of Achilles for the father of Hector in the Iliad as we have it. This pity cannot be achieved by way of any direct divine intervention while the dragging of the corpse is in progress. In this case, the divine intervention is indirect: it is only after the gods guide Priam behind enemy lines to the tent of Achilles that the lamenting father succeeds in evoking the pity that the Iliadic hero will ultimately get to feel in Iliad XXIV.

II§100 The convergences between the painted and the poetic versions of the narrative far outweigh the divergences, and I infer that the internal logic of the Iliadic narrative that we see at work in the visual medium of the Boston Hydria is morphologically parallel to the internal logic of the Iliadic narrative that we see at work in the verbal medium of the Homeric Iliad.

II§103 In the case of the Black Figure images we see on the Boston Hydria (Figure 1), the medium of the painting is evidently referring to a specific context, that is, to the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens sometime within the last two decades of the sixth century BCE, featuring the athletic event of the apobatic contest. The same can be said about the Black Figure painting we see on the Münster Hydria (Figure 2). In this second painting, Achilles is represented as engaging in a personalized apobatic race with himself. In the narrative of the Münster Hydria, Achilles is seen running alongside the speeding chariot. He has already leapt off its platform. Meanwhile, the psukhē of Patroklos—which can double for the psukhē of Achilles—is shown hovering over the hero’s tomb or sēma, which occupies the dead center of the picture. This psukhē of Patroklos, labeled as ΦΣΥΧΕ in the painting, is running in the air—a miniature version of the running Achilles who is racing at ground zero in a re-enactment of the race being run by the other self who is running in the air.

II§104 In the Münster Hydria, as in the Boston Hydria, a goddess directly intervenes. The figure of this goddess, just barely visible on the fragmentary right side of the picture, is standing in the way of the onrushing chariot. Meanwhile, a council of the gods is in session on high—in a picture framed on the shoulder of the vase, situated above the main picture framed along the body of the vase.

II§107 So we have seen that the Black Figure paintings on the Boston Hydria and on the Münster Hydria are both referring to a specific context: that is, to the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens sometime within the last two decades of the sixth century BCE, featuring the athletic event of the apobatic contest. But we must not forget that this festival also featured an all-important poetic event: competitive rhapsodic recitations of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. Just as the Black Figure paintings focus on a single moment in the athletic program of the Panathenaia, so also they are focusing on a single moment in the poetic program of the same festival. That moment is what I have been calling the apobatic moment. At the quadrennial Panathenaic festival held in the year 510 BCE (and the same could be said about the earlier festivals of 514 BCE and before, or about the later festivals of 506 BCE and thereafter), the version of the Iliad performed in that era could have featured the same apobatic moment featured in the Black Figure paintings that art historians date back to the same era. It is the moment when the apobatēs steps off his chariot and runs the rest of the course on foot. The killer instinct of the fired-up athlete may now run itself out in the full course of the time it takes for him to run to the finish line.

II§108 This is also the apobatic moment when Achilles steps off his chariot and keeps on running until his fury finally runs out. Then he may finally engage with the feeling of pity—and re-engage with his own humanity.

II§110 Hipparkhos left his mark in defining the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens not only by way of instituting the Panathenaic Regulation. He actually died at the Panathenaia. As we noted earlier, he was assassinated on the festive quadrennial occasion of the Great Panathenaia held in the year 514 BCE, and his death is memorialized by both Thucydides (1.20.2 and 6.54–59) and Herodotus (5.55–61).

II§111 In short, the apobatic moment for Achilles as athlete goes back to this era, the late sixth century BCE, in the evolution of Homeric poetry as performed at the Panathenaia.

II 73. Two tombs for Achilles

II§112 By now we have an answer to my question about the way the tomb of Achilles was imagined—back in the days when Sigeion was still in its full glory. I asked that question in the first place because the political situation had changed so drastically by the time of Strabo. The geographer goes out of his way, as we have seen, to describe the city of Sigeion as completely ‘demolished’ in his own time, and his wording makes clear that no stone was left in place (Strabo 13.1.31 C595 κατεσπασμένη πόλις). So, since Strabo pairs the city of Sigeion with the tomb of Achilles at Sigeion (13.1.31–32 C595), we may well ask about the status of this tomb in Strabo’s time. As we are about to see, the rival tomb of Achilles that was situated farther south, at the southern end of the Sigeion Ridge, was still functional at this time. As for the tomb of Achilles that Strabo associates with the demolished city, which was situated at the northern end of the Sigeion Ridge, it too was still functional in Strabo’s time. We are about to see how and why.

II§113 Here I must return for a moment to the early history of the struggle between Athens and Mytilene over the possession of Sigeion. By now we can see more clearly what was at stake in that struggle. To possess this city was not only to control access by sea to the Hellespont and beyond. It was also to control access by land to the epic space of the Trojan War, featuring as its premier Iliadic landmark the tomb of its premier Iliadic hero. {177|178}

II§114 The ongoing war between Mytilene and Athens over the sacred space of Achilles in particular and over the Iliadic territory of Sigeion in general was at one point settled by arbitration, and the arbitrator chosen by the two sides was Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Here I return to my analysis, in Chapter 6, of what is said by Herodotus (5.94.2) about the claims and counterclaims of Mytilene and Athens: in the course of describing the arbitration between the warring cities, the historian says that the Mytilenaeans were at that time occupying a space called the ‘city of Achilles’, polis Akhílleios (or Akhillēios in the Ionic dialect used by Herodotus), whereas the Athenians occupied the city of Sigeion. The terms of arbitration set by Periander specified that the two parties were to keep the territories they occupied at the time of the arbitration, so that the Mytilenaeans got to keep ‘the city of Achilles’ while the Athenians got to keep Sigeion (Herodotus 5.95.2).

II§115 Here I draw attention to a most precious piece of information. It is provided by Timaeus of Tauromenium (fourth and the third centuries BCE). According to this Timaeus (FGH 566 F 129), the tyrant Periander of Corinth used the stones of old Ilion in fortifying what was called the ‘space of Achilles’, Akhílleion, as a countermeasure against the Athenians and as a help for the Mytilenaeans led by Pittakos. This testimony of Timaeus is reported by Strabo (13.1.39 C600) through the mediation of Demetrius of Scepsis (F 27 ed. Gaede).

II§116 Strabo goes on to reject what Timaeus is claiming here; instead, he supports a claim made by Demetrius, who went out of his way to argue that this space known as Akhílleion was not fortified with the stones of the old Ilion. That negative claim is linked with another negative claim: Demetrius, followed by Strabo, rejects the idea that Periander, as the chosen arbitrator of the dispute between the Mytilenaeans and the Athenians, fought against the Athenians. But the reasoning here is flawed. Periander was not fighting against the Athenians: as an arbitrator, he simply made a ruling that went partly against the interests of the Athenians. His ruling stipulated that the Athenians could not have this space called Akhílleion. On the other hand, the ruling of Periander also went partly in favor of the Athenians, since it stipulated that they could keep the city of Sigeion.

II§119 The tomb of Achilles that Strabo locates ‘at Sigeion’ (13.1.31–32 C595) is not to be confused with the tomb of Achilles that he locates at Akhílleion (13.1.39 C600). This other tomb is situated on the promontory of the Bay of Beşike, some ten kilometers farther south along the Sigeion Ridge. In what follows, I will at long last explore the reasons for the coexistence of two separate tombs of Achilles at a distance of ten kilometers from each other.

II§120 From what we have seen so far, I conclude that Strabo rejected the testimony of Timaeus concerning the fortification of Akhílleion because of a misinterpretation. Strabo—or his source, Demetrius—misinterpreted the motive of Periander in initiating the fortification. If I am right in understanding the arbitrator’s motive as a sanctioning of the right of the Mytilenaeans to protect what they were allowed to retain after arbitration, then it follows that the fortifying of Akhílleion is parallel to the building of the walls of Sigeion—an earlier event also reported by Strabo.

II§121 In Strabo’s report of this earlier event, we find another misinterpretation: he says that the stones of the old Ilion were used to build the walls of Sigeion because the old Ilion had been totally destroyed in the Trojan War and therefore rendered useless (13.1.38 C599). The underlying assumption is this: only the total destruction of Troy could justify the reusing of its stones for the purpose of building something new somewhere else. Strabo here is following the view of Demetrius of Scepsis (F 23 ed. Gaede), who maintained that the site of the old Ilion was not New Ilion, as claimed by that city’s inhabitants, but a place known as ἡ τῶν Ἰλιέων κώμη ‘the vil-{179|180} lage [kōmē] of the people of Ilion [Ilieis]’, which was located some thirty stadia away from New Ilion, in territory belonging to the city of Scepsis (13.1.35–36 C597–598; also 13.1.25 C593). As Strabo says explicitly, following Demetrius, there was no trace of any ancient city at this kōmē ‘village’; on that basis, he claims that the stones used for the building of Sigeion must have been transported from there, so that no trace of the old Ilion was left behind (13.1.38 C599). In line with this reasoning, Strabo rejects the claim made by the inhabitants of New Ilion, who maintained that their city had not been completely destroyed by the Achaeans in the Trojan War and that it had never been left completely abandoned (13.1.40 C599). Strabo mentions this claim in the context of highlighting a counterclaim: if Troy had not been completely destroyed, there would have been no practical reason for the stones of this old city’s walls to be transported to Sigeion for the added fortification of that city’s walls.

II§123 The same kind of symbolism is inherent in the name of another Aeolian city on the Asiatic mainland, Neon Teikhos, which means ‘New Wall’. In this case as well, the naming of the new structure is a functional metonym of the old Ilion.

II§124 Before the intrusion of the Athenians into the Troad, the Aeolian city of Sigeion had been marked by two Iliadic features: (1) its city walls were built from the stones of the old Ilion and (2) it controlled what was considered to be the tomb of Achilles, located some ten kilometers farther south at the other end of the Sigeion Ridge. After the intrusion, the Aeolians lost the city of Sigeion but kept this tomb of Achilles, which they turned into a rival city fortified with walls built from the stones of the old Ilion. In the meantime, the Athenians must have adduced their own version of the tomb of Achilles—at Sigeion.

II§126 This reconstruction matches, at least in part, the description of Strabo (13.1.32 C596): he refers to a mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles at a hieron ‘sacred space’ of Achilles that he locates πρὸς Σιγείῳ ‘at Sigeion’, but then he adds that there were also mnēmata ‘tombs’ of Patroklos and Antilokhos, and that the people of New Ilion offered sacrifices to these three heroes as also to a fourth hero, Ajax.

II§127 Strabo’s mention of the tomb of Ajax in this same additional remark is most telling. Whereas the tomb of Achilles was located at the already extinct city of Sigeion on the promontory to the northwest of the Trojan Bay of the Hellespont, the matching tomb of Ajax was located near the still extant city of Rhoiteion, on the promontory to the northeast of this bay. As we have already seen, Strabo (13.1.30 C595) refers to a mnēma ‘tomb’ of Ajax at a hieron ‘sacred space’ of Ajax that he locates near the city of Rhoiteion.

II§131 An Aeolian version about an Achaean landing at the Bay of Beşike would make for a different kind of Iliad. Some archaeologists prefer to envision such an Iliad, featuring the Bay of Beşike as the site for the beaching of the Achaean ships, but the Iliad we have simply cannot accommodate such a vision. Instead, our Iliad crowds all those ships into the Trojan Bay—that is, into the reduced space of what the bay had become by the first millennium BCE. The far more expansive space of the bay as it appeared in the second millennium BCE had already long been forgotten. The crowding results in the stacking of beached ships along the south shore of the Trojan Bay, one horizontal row after the next.

II§133 The epic prestige of the older Aeolian vantage point is generally evident in the place names of the Troad. A case in point is the name of Sigeion itself. Even after the Athenians lost, through arbitration, the tumulus of Achilles at the south crest of the Sigeion Ridge, they managed to hold on to the name that refers metonymically to such a tumulus, which is the name of the city of Sigeion itself, Sígeion. The meaning of this name can be connected with the presence of the tomb of the hero Achilles in the environs of that city. Such a connection is confirmed by comparative evidence. In another part of the Greek-speaking world, at the city of Taras (the Latin Tarentum, modern Taranto) in Magna Graecia, there was a traditional explanation for the naming of the city after a sacred space of Achilles that was called Sígeion by ‘the Trojans’ who had once lived there:

IIⓣ15 “Aristotle” De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On amazing things heard) 840a6–15

Ἐν Τάραντι ἐναγίζειν κατά τινας χρόνους φασὶν Ἀτρείδαις καὶ Τυδείδαις καὶ Αἰακίδαις καὶ Λαερτιάδαις, καὶ Ἀγαμεμνονίδαις δὲ χωρὶς θυσίαν ἐπιτελεῖν ἐν ἄλλῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἰδίᾳ, ἐν ᾗ νόμιμον εἶναι ταῖς γυναιξὶ μὴ γεύσασθαι τῶν ἐκείνοις θυομένων. ἔστι δὲ καὶ Ἀχιλλέως νεὼς παρ’ αὐτοῖς. λέγεται δὲ μετὰ τὸ παραλαβεῖν τοὺς Ταραντίνους Ἡράκλειαν τὸν τόπον καλεῖσθαι ὃν νῦν κατοικοῦσιν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄνω χρόνοις τῶν Ἰώνων κατεχόντων Πλεῖον· ἔτι δὲ ἐκείνων ἔμπροσθεν ὑπὸ τῶν Τρώων τῶν κατασχόντων αὐτὴν Σίγειον ὠνομάσθαι.

II§135 The observance of reverential silence in passing by the tomb of a cult hero is relevant to the naming of another Aeolian site, Sigía, which is directly comparable to the naming of the old Aeolian site Sígeion. Our information about Sigía comes from Strabo (13.1.46 C604). After finishing his brief survey of the territory of the Akhílleion, the geographer traces his way farther south along the Asiatic coastline. Next comes a territory called the Akhaíïon. [101] Strabo describes this territory as the peraia of Tenedos. The word peraia conventionally refers to the part of a mainland that belongs to an outlying island. In this case, the outlying island is Aeolian Tenedos. [102] Strabo refers to the city of this island-state as a polis Aiolis ‘Aeolian city’. A distinguishing feature of the Aeolian territory of the Akhaíïon on the Asiatic mainland facing the island of Tenedos is a rocky height overlooking the sea. The name of the city founded on this height is Khrúsa. At this point, Strabo notes the intrusive presence of a new Hellenistic city, Alexándreia Trōiás or ‘Alexandria-in-the-Troad’, founded by Antigonus and refounded by Lysimachus (13.1.47 C604). The {184|185} geographer describes this new city as sunekhēs ‘contiguous’ with the ancient territory of the Akhaíïon, and he says that the new city resulted from a merger of ancient cities that were sunekheîs ‘contiguous’ with the Akhaíïon. [103] One of the cities he mentions here is Kolōnai. This name is the elliptic plural of the singular form kolōnē, which means ‘tumulus’. [104] As we saw earlier, kolōnē in the Iliad refers to a prominent tumulus in the Trojan landscape (II 811), described as a sacred place that is known to immortals as the sēma ‘tomb’ of Murinē (II 814). As we also saw earlier, the related word kolōnos is attested in contexts where it refers to a tumulus fortified with stones that marks the place where a cult hero is buried. Kolōnai and the other old cities contiguous with the Akhaíïon were later consolidated, Strabo says, into the new Hellenistic city of Alexandria-in-the-Troad. He adds that the name of the ancient site where the new consolidated city is located is Sigía. So the site of Sigía is associated with rocky heights overlooking the Hellespont and with tumuli marking the burial places of cult heroes. And this vision of tumuli is the essence of the meaning of the place name Kolōnai. What I have just said about the site of Sigía applies also to the site of Sígeion. Strabo actually uses the expression Sigeiàs ákra, the ‘headland of Sigeion’ as he proceeds to consider the heights where the Akhílleion is located (13.1.46 C604), and we have already considered in some detail the potential association of these heights with the tomb of Achilles.

II§137 I close this section by noting some relevant details recorded roughly a half a millennium after Strabo. What we are about to see is a first-person account of a traveler heading from Alexandria-in-the-Troad, site of the ancient Sigia, to New Ilion, {185|186} site of ancient Troy, and from there to Akhilleion. The year is 354 CE, and the traveler is Julian the Apostate:

IIⓣ16 Flavius Claudius Julianus Imperator (“Julian the Apostate”) Epistle 79 [106]

Πηγάσιον ἡμεῖς οὔποτ’ ἂν προσήκαμεν ῥᾳδίως, εἰ μὴ σαφῶς ἐπεπείσμεθα ὅτι καὶ πρότερον, εἶναι δοκῶν τῶν Γαλιλαίων ἐπίσκοπος, ἠπίστατο σέβεσθαι καὶ τιμᾶν τοὺς θεούς· οὐκ ἀκοὴν ἐγώ σοι ταῦτα ἀπαγγέλλω τῶν πρὸς ἔχθραν καὶ φιλίαν τοιαῦτα λέγειν εἰωθότων, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐμοὶ πάνυ διατεθρύλλητο τὰ τοιαῦτα περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ μὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ᾤμην οὕτω χρῆναι μισεῖν αὐτὸν ὡς οὐδένα τῶν πονηροτάτων. Ἐπεὶ δὲ κληθεὶς εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον ὑπὸ τοῦ μακαρίτου Κωνσταντίου ταύτην ἐπορευόμην τὴν ὁδόν, ἀπὸ τῆς Τρῳάδος ὄρθρου βαθέος διαναστάς, ἦλθον εἰς τὸ Ἴλιον περὶ πλήθουσαν ἀγοράν· ὁ δὲ ὑπήντησε καὶ βουλομένῳ τὴν πόλιν ἱστορεῖν (ἦν γάρ μοι τοῦτο πρόσχημα τοῦ φοιτᾶν εἰς τὰ ἱερὰ) περιηγητής τε ἐγένετο καὶ ἐξενάγησέ με πανταχοῦ. Ἄκουε τοίνυν ἔργα καὶ λόγους, ἀφ’ ὧν ἄν τις εἰκάσειεν οὐκ ἀγνώμονα τὰ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς αὐτόν. Ἡρῷόν ἐστιν Ἕκτορος, ὅπου χαλκοῦς ἕστηκεν ἀνδριὰς ἐν ναΐσκῳ βραχεῖ. Τούτῳ τὸν μέγαν ἀντέστησαν Ἀχιλλέα κατὰ τὸ ὕπαιθρον· εἰ τὸν τόπον ἐθεάσω, γνωρίζεις δήπουθεν ὃ λέγω. Τὴν μὲν οὖν ἱστορίαν, δι’ ἣν ὁ μέγας Ἀχιλλεὺς ἀντιτεταγμένος αὐτῷ πᾶν τὸ ὕπαιθρον κατείληφεν, ἔξεστί σοι τῶν περιηγητῶν ἀκούειν. Ἐγὼ δὲ καταλαβὼν ἐμπύρους ἔτι, μικροῦ δέω φάναι λαμπροὺς ἔτι τοὺς βωμοὺς καὶ λιπαρῶς ἀληλιμμένην τὴν τοῦ ῞Εκτορος εἰκόνα, πρὸς Πηγάσιον ἀπιδών· “τί ταῦτα;” εἶπον, “Ἰλιεῖς θύουσιν;” ἀποπειρώμενος ἠρέμα ὡς ἔχει γνώμης. Ὁ δέ· “καὶ τί τοῦτο ἄτοπον, ἄνδρα ἀγαθὸν ἑαυτῶν πολίτην, ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς,” ἔφη, “τοὺς μάρτυρας, εἰ θεραπεύουσιν;” Ἡ μὲν οὖν εἰκὼν οὐχ ὑγιής, ἡ δὲ προαίρεσις ἐν ἐκείνοις ἐξεταζομένη τοῖς καιροῖς ἀστεία. Τί δὴ τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο; “Βαδίσωμεν,” ἔφην, “ἐπὶ τὸ τῆς Ἰλιάδος Ἀθηνᾶς τέμενος.” Ὁ δὲ καὶ μάλα προθύμως ἀπήγαγέ με καὶ ἀνέῳξε τὸν νεών, καὶ ὥσπερ μαρτυρόμενος ἐπέδειξέ μοι πάντα ἀκριβῶς σῶα τὰ ἀγάλματα, καὶ ἔπραξεν οὐθὲν ὧν εἰώθασιν οἱ δυσσεβεῖς ἐκεῖνοι πράττειν, ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου τοῦ δυσσεβοῦς τὸ ὑπόμνημα σκιογραφοῦντες, οὐδὲ ἐσύριττεν, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι, αὐτὸς καθ’ ἑαυτόν· ἡ γὰρ ἄκρα θεολογία παρ’ αὐτοῖς ἐστι δύο ταῦτα, συρίττειν τε πρὸς τοὺς δαίμονας καὶ σκιογραφεῖν ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου τὸν σταυρόν. Δύο ταῦτα ἐπηγγειλάμην εἰπεῖν σοι· τρίτον δὲ ἐλθὸν ἐπὶ νοῦν οὐκ οἶμαι χρῆναι σιωπᾶν. Ἠκολούθησέ μοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ Ἀχίλλειον ὁ αὐτός, καὶ ὑπέδειξε τὸν τάφον σῶον· ἐπεπείσμην δὲ καὶ τοῦτον ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ διεσκάφθαι· ὁ δὲ καὶ μάλα σεβόμενος αὐτῷ προσῄει. Ταῦτα εἶδον αὐτός· ἀκήκοα δὲ παρὰ τῶν νῦν ἐχθρῶς ἐχόντων πρὸς αὐτὸν ὅτι καὶ προσεύχοιτο λάθρᾳ καὶ προσκυνοίη τὸν Ἥλιον. Ἆρα οὐκ ἂν ἐδέξω με καὶ ἰδιώτην μαρτυροῦντα; Τῆς περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς διαθέσεως ἑκάστου τίνες <ἂν> εἶεν ἀξιοπιστότεροι μάρτυρες αὐτῶν τῶν θεῶν; Ἡμεῖς ἱερέα Πηγάσιον ἐποιοῦμεν <ἄν>, εἰ συνεγνώκειμεν αὐτῷ τι περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς δυσσεβές; Εἰ δὲ ἐν ἐκείνοις τοῖς χρόνοις, εἴτε δυναστείας ὀρεγόμενος, εἴθ’, ὅπερ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἔφη πολλάκις, ὑπὲρ τοῦ σῶσαι τῶν θεῶν τὰ ἕδη, τὰ ῥάκια ταῦτα περιαμπέσχετο καὶ τὴν ἀσέβειαν μέχρις ὀνόματος ὑπεκρίνατο (πέφηνε γὰρ οὐδὲν οὐδαμοῦ τῶν ἱερῶν ἠδικηκὼς πλὴν ὀλίγων παντάπασι λίθων ἐκ καταλύματος, ἵνα αὐτῷ σώζειν ἐξῇ τὰ λοιπά), τοῦτο ἐν λόγῳ ποιούμεθα, καὶ οὐκ αἰσχυνόμεθα ταὐτὰ περὶ αὐτὸν πράττοντες ὅσαπερ Ἀφόβιος ἐποίει καὶ οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι πάντες προσεύχονται πάσχοντα ἰδεῖν αὐτόν; Εἴ τί μοι {186|187} προσέχεις, οὐ τοῦτον μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους, οἳ μετατέθεινται, τιμήσεις, ἵν’ οἱ μὲν ῥᾷον ὑπακούσωσιν ἡμῖν ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ προκαλουμένοις, οἱ δ’ ἧττον χαίρωσιν· εἰ δὲ τοὺς αὐτομάτους ἰόντας ἀπελαύνοιμεν, οὐδεὶς ὑπακούσεται ῥᾳδίως παρακαλοῦσιν.

Pegasios is a man I would never easily have accepted into my company if it had not been clearly proved to me that, even in the old days, [107] although he was a bishop of the Galilaeans, [108] he understood how to worship and give honor [timē] to the gods. These things that I am reporting to you are not hearsay coming from those who are accustomed to say such things for negative or positive purposes, since I too had heard such idle talk about him and, I swear by the gods, I was ready to hate him more than any other evildoer in the whole world. But when I was summoned to headquarters by Constantius, of blessed memory, [109] and I was on my way to get there, and, having stopped over at Alexandria-in-the-Troad [110] and proceeding from there at early dawn toward Ilion, which I reached by midday when the marketplace was in full swing, he [= Pegasios] was there, waiting to greet me. And, when I expressed a desire to have a close look at the city (that was my pretext for visiting the sacred places there), he became my guide and host, taking me all over the place. So now I want you to listen to what I say about the things he did and said, from which one may infer that he was not at all ignorant of the things that have to do with the gods. There is a hero precinct of Hector, where a bronze statue is erected inside a small sacred building. [111] Facing this statue they have set up the big statue of Achilles, which is standing outside in the open space. If you have seen the place for yourself, you surely know what I am talking about. [112] As for the story that tells why the big statue of Achilles that stands facing him [= Hector] happens to take up the entire open space, I will leave that for the guides [113] to tell you. [114] Anyway, I found the altars still lit—I would say they were practically still glowing—and the simulacrum of Hector was glistening, all daubed in olive oil. Turning to Pegasios and looking him in the eye I said: “So what is going on here: Are the people of Ilion making sacrifice [thuein]?” I was trying to ease him into telling {187|188} me what he was really thinking. “And what is so strange about this,” he said to me, “if they happen to venerate [therapeuein] a noble man who is their fellow citizen the same way we venerate the martyrs?” All right, so the image is not wholesome, [115] but the intention, if examined in terms of the circumstances that then prevailed, is quite sophisticated. “So now what comes next?” [116] “Let us go,” I said, “to the precinct of Athena Ilias.” With great eagerness he led me to the place and opened the temple. [117] Then, just as if he were bearing witness to his faith, he showed the statues, which were all perfectly intact, and he did not do any of the things that those impious ones [118] are accustomed to do, tracing on the forehead the sign of the Impious One. [119] Nor did he start hissing under his breath, the way those [impious ones] do. For the ultimate exaltation of theology for them [= the Christians] adds up to these two things: hissing at the daimones and tracing the cross on the forehead. So these are the two things I said I would tell you. But a third thing occurs to me, [120] and now I think I must not be silent about it. [121] The same man [= Pegasios] accompanied me to the Akhilleion, and he pointed out to me the tomb [of Achilles], which was intact. Previously, I had been led to believe that this tomb, as well as other sites, had been demolished by him. But he approached it [= the tomb of Achilles] with the most worshipful reverence. [122] I saw these things with my own eyes, [123] and I have heard even from those who are now hostile toward him that he used to pray secretly to the god Helios and to worship him. Would you not accept me as a witness to what I saw, even if I were a private citizen? When it comes to each man’s disposition concerning the gods, what witnesses would be more worthy to be believed than the gods themselves? Would I be making Pegasios a priest if I knew of any impious thought he might have with regard to the gods? And if in those old times—whether he was aspiring to high office or (and this is some-{188|189} thing he has admitted to me many times already) it was for the sake of saving the abodes of the gods—he wore these rags [124] of his and acted out the role of impiety [125] (I say “acted out” because he has evidently harmed the sacred places nowhere—except for an altogether small number of stones that he took from a hostel, [126] and he did that in order to make it possible to save the rest of the stones), are we taking this into account and are we not ashamed that we are doing all the same things to him that Aphobios used to do [127] and that all the Galilaeans wanted to see happening to him [= Pegasios]? If you are going to pay any attention to me, you will honor not only this man [= Pegasios] but also all the others who have converted, so that people may find it all the more easy to heed me as I call upon them to do the things that are good, while the other side may have all the less reason to be happy about anything. If I reject those who come to me of their own free will, then nobody will find it easy to heed my call.

II§138 Toward the end of this epistle by Julian, we see a reference to the reusing of stones from pagan sanctuaries for the sake of building Christian edifices. Such reusing is reminiscent of the archaic Aeolian reuse of stones from the ruins of Troy for the building of new walls that reassert the continued presence of the old city.

II 74. Rethinking the Trojan past

II§139 Keeping in mind this ancient Aeolian reuse, I return to the testimony of Strabo, who reports that the Mytilenaeans of Lesbos built the Aeolian city of Sigeion from the stones of the old Troy. As we saw, the geographer uses this precious testimony to make a point of his own. He says that the stones of the old site of Ilion were used for a new building project for a practical reason: because the old Ilion had been totally destroyed in the Trojan War and therefore rendered useless (13.1.38 C599). As I have been arguing, this point made by Strabo simply cannot be justified. That is because the motive of the Mytilenaeans and of the Aeolians whom they claim to represent was symbolic as well as practical.

II§140 The symbolism was connected with two basic historical facts that I have already noted. First, the Aeolians appropriated the ancient site of Troy when they gained control of the Troad. Second, the Mytilenaeans fortified the ancient site called Akhilleion, making it a new Aeolian countercity after they had lost through arbitration the old Aeolian city of Sigeion to the Athenians.

II§141 Strabo ignored the symbolic meaning of the stones used to build Sigeion and to {189|190} fortify Akhilleion because he ignored the Aeolian cultural agenda implicit in this meaning. The same can be said about his resistance to the idea that the city of New Ilion was a direct continuation of the old Ilion. In this regard, it is essential to keep in mind the fact that New Ilion, founded as an Aeolian city in the seventh (or even as early as the eighth) century BCE, retained a distinctly Aeolian and non-Athenian identity well into the fifth century—and, as we will see later, even into Strabo’s time.

IIⓣ17 Aeschylus Eumenides 397–404

πρόσωθεν ἐξήκουσα κληδόνος βοὴν
ἀπὸ Σκαμάνδρου, γῆν καταφθατουμένη,
ἣν δῆτ’ Ἀχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι,
τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα,
ἔνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον ἐς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοί,
ἐξαίρετον δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις· {190|191}
ἔνθεν διώκουσ’ ἦλθον ἄτρυτον πόδα
πτερῶν ἄτερ ῥοιβδοῦσα κόλπον αἰγίδος.

From far away did I hear the shout of people calling for me,
all the way from Scamander, while I was taking possession of that territory,
which, as I found out, the leaders and chiefs of the Achaeans
had assigned to me as my great share of the spoils won by the spear in war.
They had assigned it [= the territory of Sigeion] to me, root and branch and all, to be mine absolutely and for all time,
this exceptional gift bestowed upon the children of Theseus.
It is from there [= that territory] I have come, pursuing my unweary step,
winging my way to the whirring sound made not by wings but by the folds of my aegis.

II§145 The city of Sigeion, claimed by the goddess Athena as her very own site in the production of the Oresteia of Aeschylus in 458 BCE, must have been viewed as an Asiatic replica of the ultimate site of Athena that was the city of Athens. And while the formerly Aeolian city of Sigeion was being foregrounded as a new Athens in Asia, the neighboring Aeolian cities of northern Asia Minor were being pushed into the background, facing the threat of losing their Aeolian cultural identity. One event stands out: in the summer of 427, the Athenians demolished the walls of Mytilene in Lesbos, confiscated the city’s fleet of ships, and took possession of all the cities on the Asiatic mainland that had formerly belonged to the Mytilenaeans (Thucydides 3.50.1–3). Strabo takes note of these decisive events, inferring that the site of New Ilion, the ancient Troy of the Aeolians, now belonged not to Mytilene but to Athens (13.1.39 C600).

II§146 So the question arises, What did this ancient Troy of the Aeolians mean to the Athenians? The answer is stark. For Athenians in the era of the democratic Athenian empire, this ancient Troy simply did not exist. From the standpoint of Athenian imperial propaganda, there could be no trace left of ancient Troy. The Athenians owned Sigeion, with its own special links to the ancient Troy, and that was already more than enough for them. As far as the Athenians were concerned, Sigeion was all that was left of ancient Troy. After all, even the Aeolians had once claimed that their former possession, the old Aeolian city of Sigeion, had been built from the {191|192} stones of Troy. The big difference is, the Aeolians had made three further claims about New Ilion, as we know from Strabo (13.1.40 C599):

The old city of Ilion, with its own special temple of Athena, had not been completely demolished by the Achaeans in the Trojan War.The old city of Ilion had not been completely abandoned and left uninhabited.The walls of the new city of Ilion had been built from the stones of the old Ilion.

II§147 To be contrasted with these claims of the Aeolians is a counterclaim: that the old Ilion had in fact been totally demolished—and that the stones of its city walls had been completely used up in the fortifying of Sigeion. In terms of this counterclaim, there could be no trace left of the Troy of the Trojan War. This counterclaim, along with the claims of the Aeolians, is reported by Strabo (13.1.38 C599).

II§148 I propose that this counterclaim stems from the political interests of the Athenian empire. I also propose that the Athenian phase of Sigeion was meant to replace the New Ilion of the Aeolians. For the Aeolians, as also for the archaeologists of today, their New Ilion was the real Troy, rebuilt on the old site from the stones of the old Ilion. For the Athenians, however, the old Sigeion of the Aeolians was rethought as a would-be “New Ilion” built on a new site from the stones of the old site. As for the New Ilion of the Aeolians, it was no Ilion at all for the Athenians. That was the essence of the Athenian ideology.

II§150 In the years before 427—that is, before Athens succeeded in appropriating all the territories of the Troad that had once been dominated by Mytilene—the Athenians must have maintained a policy of claiming that Sigeion, with its temple of Athena, was a re-enactment of the old Ilion, and that the New Ilion of the Aeolians was a falsification. Such a policy is reflected in the words of Athena as I quoted them earlier from the Oresteia of Aeschylus. In the years after 427, however, when most of the Troad had come to be dominated by the Athenians, Athens was in the position to do something concrete about its claims against New Ilion. Strabo notes in {192|193} passing that the territory of New Ilion was divided up between Sigeion to the west and Rhoiteion to the east for an unspecified period of time (13.1.42 C602). Such a period, I suggest, coincides with the years after 427.

II§152 The Athenian domination of Aeolians in Asia Minor and in the outlying islands was not to last. Despite all the setbacks they suffered in the late fifth century at the hands of the Athenians, the Aeolians eventually recovered most of their cultural identity in the course of the next century. That is why the entire paralia ‘coastline’ of Asia Minor from Abydos in the far north all the way to Cyme in the far south could proudly be described as Aiolis ‘Aeolian territory’ by an Aeolian source from the second half of the fourth century BCE: this source is Ephorus (FGH 70 F 163 by way of Strabo 13.1.39 C600), who was a native of the Aeolian city of Cyme. Strabo cites this testimony of Ephorus as an indication of the enduring power of Aeolian cultural identity—and, indirectly, of an ongoing Aeolian cultural resistance to Athenian domination.

II§153 In precisely this context, Strabo mentions a historical fact that turns out to be all-important for my argumentation: in the end, Sigeion was destroyed by the city of New Ilion, and this destruction had taken place long before Strabo’s time. The geographer says that the city of Sigeion in his time was completely demolished (13.1.39 C600 κατεσπασμένη). We do not know the exact date or circumstances of this catastrophe that befell Sigeion in particular and Athenian prestige in general, but I estimate that it happened sometime in the second half of the fourth century. After the destruction did take place, New Ilion could once again become what the old Ilion had once been, that is, the dominant city of the Troad. Strabo goes out of his way to note the dominance of New Ilion in his own time (13.1.25 C593), when this Aeolian city controlled the Asiatic coastline of the Hellespont as far north as Dardanos (13.1.39 C600).

II§154 So, in the post-Athenocentric era of Strabo, a great city that had once stood out as the new Troy of Athens and the new Athens of Asia, Sigeion, no longer existed. It is implicit in Strabo’s wording that Sigeion was no longer even a katoikia ‘settle-{193|194} ment’ ; by contrast, the geographer makes it explicit that the old countercity of the Aeolians, Akhilleion, was at least still a katoikia mikra ‘small settlement’, featuring the mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles as its distinguishing landmark (13.1.39 C600). What now stood out in sharp contrast was New Ilion, which was by this time the premier city of the Troad, as Strabo attests (13.1.25 C593). Still, the geographer cannot resist making a disparaging remark about New Ilion: he says that it had in earlier times been a mere katoikia ‘settlement’, and that a simple hieron ‘sacred space’ of Athena had once been its only distinguishing landmark (13.1.42 C601).

II§155 The ultimate ascendancy of the city of New Ilion in the Troad was decisively ratified in the year 334 BCE, when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont from Europe into Asia Minor and defeated the forces of the Persian empire at the river Granicus in the Troad. The time had now come for New Ilion, instead of Sigeion, to be recognized once again as the site of the old Ilion. I say once again because, as I noted earlier, the Persians themselves had recognized New Ilion as the old Troy already at the time of the expedition of Xerxes in 480: according to Herodotus (7.43.2), the Persian king of kings made the grand gesture of sacrificing to Athena, surnamed hē Ilias, in New Ilion; he also offered libations to the ‘heroes’ there. [134] Later, in 334, after his victory over the Persians in the Troad, Alexander likewise sacrificed to Athena in New Ilion (Strabo 13.1.26 C593; Arrian Anabasis 1.11.7). Strabo says specifically that Alexander made sacrifice at the hieron ‘sacred space’ of Athena at New Ilion (13.1.26 C593). So Alexander ratified New Ilion as the genuine ancient Troy. Strabo also reports that Alexander the Great went on to transform the site from a kōmē ‘village’ into a polis ‘city’, and that the transformation was continued by Alexander’s would-be successor Lysimachus (13.1.26 C593). [135] At this point, the geographer goes out of his way to add a disparaging remark: he notes that the hieron ‘sacred space’ of Athena at New Ilion had been mikron kai euteles ‘small and of modest means’ before the era of Alexander (again, 13.1.26 C593).

II§157 I will have more to say later about this new imperial claim. But first, I return to the {194|195} fact that Demetrius of Scepsis, followed by Strabo, rejected the idea that the Aeolian city of New Ilion was a continuation of the old Ilion, claiming that the old Ilion was totally destroyed and that this total destruction explains why the stones of the old Ilion had been reused by the Aeolians in fortifying the walls of the newer city of Sigeion (13.1.38 C599). I will now proceed to argue that this alternative line of thinking actually represents an alternative Athenian claim.

II§158 In his speech Against Leokrates (62), the Athenian statesman Lycurgus compares the total destruction of any city to the finality of death itself, and the prime example he cites is the destruction of Troy. Strabo (13.1.41 C601) cites this striking formulation by the Athenian Lycurgus as the basis for his own claim that the old Ilion was totally destroyed by the Achaeans and left aoikēton ‘uninhabited’. To be contrasted is the claim made by the people of the city of New Ilion, as also reported by Strabo (13.1.40 C600): according to this claim, the old Ilion was not totally destroyed and it was not left uninhabited. What we see here, in terms of my ongoing argument, is a traditional Aeolian claim promoting the cultural identity of the Aeolians, for whom the old Ilion extended directly into the city of New Ilion.

II§159 In saying that Troy no longer existed, the Athenian statesman Lycurgus was evidently tapping into the conventional thinking of Athenians at the time of his speech, which is dated to 330 BCE. Such thinking can also be dated farther back to a far earlier time. When the city of Sigeion was captured from the Aeolians by the Athenians in the late seventh century, the temple of Athena at Sigeion became a rival to the temple of Athena at New Ilion. We can reconstruct such an earlier time on the basis of a statement made by Strabo (13.1.42 C601), which can be divided into two parts. First, he concedes that the founding of New Ilion dates back to the days of the Lydian empire. So this part of his statement matches the modern archaeological dating of the site as far back as the seventh (or even eighth) century BCE. Second, after having conceded the early inhabitation of New Ilion, he goes on to insist that this site started not as a polis ‘city’ but merely as a hieron ‘sacred space’ of Athena, situated in the vicinity of what he describes as a mere katoikia ‘settlement’. Such a dismissive description of the old site of Troy corresponds to what I reconstruct as an alternative Athenian ideology, which elides the New Ilion of the Aeolians while highlighting what had once been the New Ilion of the Athenians at Sigeion. As we have seen, that would-be “New Ilion” prominently featured a rival sacred space of Athena.

II§160 By contrast with such ideological agenda concerning Troy after the Trojan War, Strabo’s own agenda can be viewed as scholarly rather than political. In denying the idea that the site of ancient Troy was the site of New Ilion, Strabo was following the learned theories of Demetrius of Scepsis, who likewise denied this idea. As we have already seen, Demetrius argued that the real site of ancient Troy was a place called ἡ τῶν Ἰλιέων κώμη ‘the village [kōmē] of the people of Ilion [Ilieis]’, located in the territory of Scepsis in the region of Mount Ida, at a distance of some thirty stadia {195|196} from New Ilion (Strabo 13.1.35–36 C597–598; also 13.1.25 C593). Strabo says explicitly, following Demetrius, that there was no trace of any ancient city at this kōmē ‘village’; on that basis, it is claimed that the stones used for the building of Sigeion must have been taken away from this village (13.1.38 C599).

II§161 Whereas this scholarly formulation about an alternative location for Troy stems from antiquarian theorizing, there were earlier versions of this formulation stemming from political ideology—in particular, from the ideology of the Ionians.

II§162 This ideology is evident in the Ionian epic tradition. The primary example is the Ionian epic of the Iliou Persis, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. Here I offer a brief summary of the relevant parts of this epic (Proclus summary p. 107.24–26 ed. Allen):

After Troy was completely destroyed by the Achaeans, a handful of prominent survivors sought to find alternative places to live. The most prominent of these survivors of Troy’s total destruction was the hero Aeneas: he and his followers, interpreting the killing of Laocoön by two serpents as an omen of the total destruction of Troy, withdrew from that city before its destruction and moved back to his home in the highlands of Mount Ida.

We also find a mention of this epic event in a fragment from the Laocoön of Sophocles (F 373 via Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 1.48.2), where a messenger describes the withdrawal of Aeneas to an apoikia ‘settlement’, evidently situated in the region of Mount Ida.

II§163 This version of the Aeneas story matches not only the plot of the epic Iliou Persis. It matches also the local mythology of the city of Scepsis, located in the region of Mount Ida. As we learn from Strabo (13.1.53 C607), Demetrius of Scepsis claimed explicitly that the basileion ‘royal palace’ of Aeneas was in Scepsis.

II§164 The idea of a city founded by Aeneas in the region of Mount Ida reflects the political interests of Ionians in general, not only of Scepsis in particular. To make this point, I start by focusing on two details reported by Demetrius of Scepsis by way of Strabo (13.1.52 C607):

  1. The city of Scepsis, after being founded by Aeneas, was ruled jointly by Ascanius (Askanios) son of Aeneas and Scamandrius (Skamandrios) son of Hector.
  2. The population of Scepsis was augmented at a later period by immigrants from the Ionian city of Miletus, whose presence led to a democratic form of government for the city.

II§165 Scepsis had a special meaning for Ionians not only because this city was supposedly the site of the palace of the hero Aeneas but also because the ancient site of Troy was supposedly located within its territory, in the highlands of Mount Ida. Here was the kōmē ‘village’ of the Ilieis ‘people of Ilion’, the site that Demetrius identified with the old Ilion (Strabo 13.1.35–36 C597–598; also 13.1.25 C593). {196|197}

II§166 So the Trojan War, according to this Ionian version, supposedly happened in territory that Ionians claimed as their own. And the relocation of Aeneas to Scepsis after the Trojan War meant that this city could become the legitimate heir to the Trojan heritage—all within the framework of its own Ionian territory. In terms of this particular Ionian version of the Trojan War, everything happened within the Ionian territory of Scepsis.

II§167 In contrast with the version of the Trojan War that suited the interests of the Ionians, the Aeolians claimed that Troy was in fact not totally destroyed and that some of its population survived to rebuild the old city of Ilion as New Ilion. This rival version was actively promoted by the historian Hellanicus of Lesbos, whose publications can be dated as far back as 406 BCE (scholia for Aristophanes Frogs 694). I have already noted the claim that he makes in his Trōïka (FGH 4 F 25b), as reported by Strabo (13.1.42 C602), that the city of New Ilion was in fact the same place as the old Ilion; Strabo adds, as I have also noted, that this claim of Hellanicus—who was a native of Aeolian Lesbos—reflects the historian’s partiality toward the people of the Aeolian city of New Ilion.

II§169 Here I stop to review the mutually contradictory mythological claims that we have seen so far concerning what happened to Troy after the Trojan War:

  1. The Athenians claimed that Troy was totally destroyed by the Achaeans and left uninhabited, as we see from a statement made by Lycurgus the Athenian (Against Leokrates 62). Strabo accepted this claim as true (13.1.41 C601), adducing the internal evidence of the Iliad as proof of the total destruction of old Ilion. As we will see later, what Strabo adduces as internal evidence is not compelling.
  2. The people of the Ionian city of Scepsis claimed that Troy, supposedly located in their territory, was totally destroyed by the Achaeans and left uninhabited. But they also claimed that some survivors were relocated in Scepsis. Our source is Demetrius of Scepsis (F 23 ed. Gaede), by way of Strabo (13.1.35–36 C597–598; also 13.1.25 C593).
  3. The people of the Aeolian city of New Ilion claimed that Troy was not totally destroyed and was not left uninhabited. The Aeolians converted the ruins of Troy into the city of New Ilion. Our source is Strabo (13.1.40 C600), evidently following Demetrius. Strabo (13.1.42 C602) cites an important textual source supporting this claim, the Trōïka of Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGH 4 F 25b). {197|198}

II§172 What is being explained in the scholia here is a prophecy made by Poseidon concerning the descendants of Aeneas, the Aeneadae. In the Iliad as we have it, the god is prophesying that the Aeneadae will survive the Trojan War and will rule their subjects forever (XX 306–308), but the context makes it clear that this rule will never happen in the old city of Troy, which will have to be destroyed completely (XX 309–317). I will quote at a later point the actual wording that prophesies the eternal rule of the Aeneadae, which will be relevant to a later stage of my argumentation. For now, however, I simply emphasize one fact about this prophecy: it implies that the Aeneadae will have to be relocated from Troy. According to the scholia we are considering here, one school of thought explains this relocation in terms of a Roman version: the claim is that Homer knew about the prophecy of the Sibyl concerning {198|199} the future of Aeneas in Italy (οἱ μὲν διὰ Ῥωμαίους φασίν, ἅπερ εἰδέναι τὸν ποιητὴν ἐκ τῶν Σιβύλλης χρησμῶν). By contrast, according to the same scholia, another school of thought explains the relocation of the Aeneadae in terms of an alternative version claiming that this dynasty was expelled from old Ilion by ‘the Aeolians’ (οἱ δέ, ὅτι Αἰολεῖς ἐξέβαλον τοὺς ἀπογόνους Αἰνείου).

II§173 In terms of this alternative version, the relocation of the Aeneadae is not predicated on the total destruction of Troy. Whereas the descendants of Aeneas are expelled from Troy, the descendants of Hector remain in the city, which has become transformed into New Ilion. As we have seen, our source for the essentials of this story is the Trōïka of Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGH 4 F 31), by way of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 1.45.4–1.48.1). And, as we have also seen, this source follows an explicitly Aeolian tradition. After the Trojan War, according to this version of the story, New Ilion was ruled jointly by Ascanius the son of Aeneas and Scamandrius the son of Hector and by their descendants. But then, as we can see from the scholia T for Iliad XX (307–308a1), New Ilion was at a later time ruled exclusively by the descendants of Hector—after the descendants of Aeneas were expelled by ‘the Aeolians’.

II§174 To be contrasted with this Aeolian tradition about the New Ilion is the Ionian tradition about Scepsis. In this case, as we have seen, our source is Demetrius of Scepsis by way of Strabo (13.1.52 C607). After the Trojan War, according to this version of the story, Scepsis was first ruled by Aeneas. Then it was ruled jointly by Ascanius the son of Aeneas and Scamandrius the son of Hector and by their descendants. But then it was ruled democratically by a coalition including immigrants from the Ionian city of Miletus.

II§175 According to the Aeolian tradition about New Ilion, we see that Scamandrius represents the Aeolians who dominate New Ilion while Ascanius represents the Ionians who are eventually expelled from the city. According to the Ionian tradition about Scepsis, by contrast, Scamandrius represents the non-Ionians who rule jointly with the Ionians the relocated “New Ilion” that is Scepsis, and the dominantly Ionian character of this city is then reinforced by Ionians immigrating from Miletus, leader of the Ionian Dodecapolis.

II§176 Neither of these versions of the myths surrounding Scamandrius son of Hector is represented in the Homeric Iliad, according to which the Trojans of the future will be ruled exclusively by the descendants of Aeneas, not by any descendants of Hector. The wording comes from the god Poseidon himself, who prophesies as follows:

II§177 Strabo (13.1.53 C608) quotes these same Homeric verses and then proceeds to quote a variant version:

II§178 Depending on whether we follow the first or the second of the two versions as reflected in these two textual variants, we can say that the population to be ruled by the lineage of Aeneas will be either the Trojans or all humanity (Iliad XX 307). Either way, the point that is being made in both versions is that the lineage of Aeneas will last forever (XX 307–308), whereas the lineage of Hector the son of Priam will be extinct (XX 302–306). The same point is being made in a prophecy of the goddess Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymn (6) to Aphrodite (196–197).

II§179 The future Trojans who are destined to be ruled by the descendants of Aeneas—and not by the descendants of Hector—could not be equated with the population of the New Ilion dominated by the Aeolians, who as we have seen ultimately expelled the descendants of Aeneas from their city (scholia T for Iliad XX 307–308a1). Nor could these future Trojans be equated with the population of the would-be “New Ilion” that was Scepsis, who were ruled not exclusively by Ascanius the son of Aeneas but jointly by him and by Scamandrius the son of Hector and grandson of Priam. Rather, as I will argue, these future Trojans were imagined as the population controlled by the would-be “New Ilion” that was Sigeion, and this population was to be ruled exclusively by the descendants of Aeneas, not of Hector.

II§182 Here I return to the two Iliadic versions of the prophecy made by the god Poseidon to Aeneas, as reflected in the two attested textual variants in the Iliad (XX 307–308). According to one version, as we saw, the lineage of Aeneas will rule all of humanity, not only the Trojans of the future. This version of the Aeneas story became suitable for appropriation by the lineage of Julius Caesar, who as we saw claimed to be descended from Aeneas. In terms of this version, the descendants of Aeneas would one day rule all humankind, in that the Roman imperial rule of Caesar and his successors was viewed to be universal. According to the other version, it was the Trojans themselves who would be ruled forever by the descendants of Aeneas. This other version, as I will argue, equated these notional Trojans with the population of the territories controlled by the “New Troy” of Sigeion.

II§183 These notional Trojans of the future were Ionians—as redefined by Athens. Or, to put it another way, they were non-Aeolians. That is because the Iliad pointedly avoids equating these notional Trojans with the Aeolians of New Ilion, who claimed to be the new Trojans inhabiting the city where the old Ilion had once stood. In terms of the prophecy uttered by Poseidon in the Iliad as we have it, the New Ilion of the Aeolians was the one place where the new Trojans would not and could not live, since the old Troy would be utterly destroyed and the new Trojans would have to be relocated to another city. Even in terms of the Aeolian version of the Trojan story, as we have seen, the descendants of Aeneas would ultimately be expelled from {201|202} the new Troy known as New Ilion. And we know for a fact that New Ilion became a non-Ionian and notionally all-Aeolian site. In the Iliad, then, New Ilion is taken out of consideration as a place for the Aeneadae to rule forever.

II§184 Strabo (13.1.53 C608) surveys various alternative places linked with various alternative versions concerning the destiny of these Aeneadae, and these alternative places include the Latin territory linked with the Roman Aeneid tradition. Here I simply focus on the most immediate alternative, which corresponds to a version that suits the Ionians. Strabo (13.1.52 C607) mentions it at an earlier point, referring to the testimony of Demetrius of Scepsis as his authority. We have already examined this testimony of Demetrius, and I offer here only a brief restatement. For the Ionians, the place destined to be ruled by the descendants of Aeneas was a would-be “New Ilion” in the highlands of Mount Ida, the city of Scepsis. And the old site of the real Troy, the old Ilion, was supposedly located in territory controlled by the city of Scepsis. Like Scepsis, the old site was located in the highlands of Mount Ida. When this site was destroyed without a trace at the end of the Trojan War, the surviving Trojans supposedly moved to this city of Scepsis, and here it was that they were ruled by Ascanius the son of Aeneas, jointly with Scamandrius the son of Hector.

II§185 Strabo (13.1.52 C607) adds a revealing detail about the evolution of Scepsis: as time went by, according to Demetrius, the Ionian identity of Scepsis was enhanced by immigrants from the Ionian city of Miletus. I have already drawn attention to this link of Scepsis with Miletus, noting that it reinforces the compatibility of this version with the Ionian tradition. But now I add that it also highlights an emerging incompatibility with the Aeolian tradition.

II§186 I propose to review further the links between Scepsis and Miletus, but first I need to focus on the most salient example of ultimate incompatibility between the Ionian and the Aeolian versions of the actual location of ancient Troy. According to the Ionian version as restated by Demetrius and then by Strabo, the site of the old Ilion was the kōmē ‘village’ of the Ilieis ‘people of Ilion’ in the territory of Scepsis, some thirty stadia away from New Ilion (13.1.35–36 C597–598; also 13.1.25 C593). To repeat, it was this ‘village of the people of Ilion’ that had been the site of the old Ilion, Demetrius claims, despite his concession that he could see absolutely no trace of any epic ruins there.

II§187 The Trojan connections of Scepsis were not limited to this city’s claim that ‘the village of the people of Ilion’, which was under its control, had once been the sacred ground of the real Troy of the Trojan War. The city also made direct claims to a hero who figures so prominently in the Trojan War, Aeneas. Not only was the city nominally ruled by the descendants of Aeneas. Scepsis also claimed to be the original site of the basileion ‘royal palace’ of Aeneas, as we have already seen from the testimony of Demetrius of Scepsis (by way of Strabo 13.1.53 C607). By implication, it {202|203} was this palace that became the stronghold of the dynasty of Aeneas that survived the Trojan War.

II§188 The Aeneadae of the city of Scepsis represented the Ionians not only because Scepsis eventually became an Ionian city. More specifically, Scepsis was closely connected to the Ionian city of Miletus, which once dominated the federation of Ionian cities known as the Ionian Dodecapolis. So the connection here is not only Ionian in general but also Milesian in particular. As we have seen earlier, this Milesian connection is made explicit by Demetrius of Scepsis (by way of Strabo 13.1.52 C607), who reports that the Ionian identity of Scepsis was enhanced by immigrants from Miletus.

II§189 This Milesian connection of Scepsis is represented not only by the status of Aeneas as an adoptive dynastic hero of the city’s predominantly Ionian population but also by his status as an epic hero who fought in the Trojan War. Here I return to the Ionian epic tradition about Aeneas that became part of the epic Cycle and was known as the Iliou Persis, an epic attributed to Arctinus of Miletus. As we have seen earlier, this Milesian epic narrates how Aeneas and his followers withdrew from Troy before its total destruction and moved back to his home in the highlands of Mount Ida (Proclus summary p. 107.24–26 ed. Allen).

II§190 There is a clear sign of this Ionian epic tradition in the Homeric narrative about the rescue of Aeneas by the god Poseidon in Iliad XX (290–352). This god, although he is generally pro-Achaean in the Iliad, has a special link to the figure of Aeneas. That is because Poseidon also has a special link to the Ionians belonging to the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis headed by Miletus: as Poseidon Helikōnios, he was the chief god of the Panionion, the sacred site of the festival of the Panionia, which expressed the communality of the twelve cities of the Ionian Dodecapolis as headed by the city of Miletus (Pausanias 7.24.5, scholia bT for Iliad XX 404).

II§191 So far, in my survey of the Ionian and the Aeolian versions of the story of Troy’s destruction, I have highlighted a point of mutual agreement. According to both the Ionian and the Aeolian versions, the new Trojan dynasty that succeeded the doomed old Trojan dynasty of Priam began with the joint rule of Ascanius the son of Aeneas and Scamandrius the son of Hector. We have seen that Demetrius of Scepsis follows the Ionian tradition about a new Troy under such a joint rule in Scepsis. And, earlier, we have seen that Hellanicus of Lesbos in his Trōïka (FGH 4 F 31) follows a corresponding Aeolian tradition about a new Troy under such a joint rule in New Ilion. Though the two traditions contradict each other about the place where the dynasty rules, they agree about the identities of the rulers.

II§194 What we have just seen in the Aeolian epic tradition as represented by Lesches of Lesbos can also be seen in the Ionian epic tradition as represented by Arctinus of Miletus. Likewise in this tradition, as we know from the epic of the Iliou Persis attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, the son that Hector and Andromache had together does not escape (F 2 ed. Allen via scholia to Euripides Andromache 10). The same can be said about the Dorian tradition as represented by Stesichorus (PMG 202). In the case of the Ionian tradition of the Milesian Iliou Persis, we know of further details: the name of the doomed son is Astyanax, and his killer is not Neoptolemos but Odysseus (Proclus summary p. 108.8–9 ed. Allen).

II§195 To be contrasted with these Aeolian, Ionian, and Dorian versions is another version of the narrative, as preserved in the Iliad: here the death of the son that Hector and Andromache had together is explicitly prophesied by Andromache (Iliad XXIV 735), and here again the son’s name is Astyanax (VI 403; XXII 500, 506). This time, however, the name Astyanax is said to be synonymous with Scamandrius (VI 402). This Iliadic version, by merging the identity of Scamandrius with that of Astyanax, eliminates the surviving son of Hector. Thus it contradicts the Aeolian tradition, which locates the new dynasty in New Ilion. And it also contradicts the Ionian tradition, even though that tradition locates the new dynasty not in New Il-{204|205} ion but in Scepsis. In both cities, Scepsis as well as New Ilion, Scamandrius is part of the dynastic picture, sharing it with Ascanius.

II§196 Strabo (13.1.53 C608) notices the contradiction between what the Iliad says and what all the other versions say, including the preferred version of Demetrius. In the Iliad, it is prophesied that Aeneas and his descendants will rule over the Trojans. There is simply no room for Hector and his descendants—not for Astyanax, not even for Scamandrius. So Strabo is forced to contradict even Demetrius by admitting that the place where the Aeneadae will rule is not Scepsis—nor any of the other alternative places favored in other versions.

II§197 Strabo’s logic here is on the mark. And we can take it further. The truth is, the place where the Aeneadae will rule must be the Troy of the Iliad, which is not necessarily the real Troy of Bronze Age archaeology.

II§199 In the Iliadic version of the story of Troy’s destruction, as we saw earlier, Aeneas survives that destruction, so that he and his descendants may rule the Trojans for the rest of time. From the standpoint of Athenian political interests, the prophesied rule of the Aeneadae over the new Trojans cannot be situated in the New Ilion of the Aeolians, which is a rival of Sigeion, the Iliadic city of the Athenians. And the Iliadic version of the overall Aeneas story affirms the Athenian interests by contradicting the Aeolian version, according to which the new Trojans will be ruled jointly by the descendants of Aeneas and the descendants of Hector—until the Aeolians finally succeed in excluding the Aeneadae altogether from New Ilion.

II§200 According to the Aeolian version as represented by Hellanicus of Lesbos, the new Trojans are destined to be ruled exclusively by the descendants of Hector in New Ilion. According to the Ionian version as represented by Demetrius of Scepsis, the new Trojans are destined to be ruled jointly by the descendants of Aeneas and the descendants of Hector in Scepsis. But, according to the version preserved in the Iliad, the new Trojans are destined to be ruled exclusively by the descendants of Aeneas.

II§202 From the standpoint of the Iliad, as articulated in the prophecy of Poseidon concerning the future of Aeneas and his descendants, the future populations to be ruled by the Aeneadae would be imagined as Ionians—that is, Ionians as ultimately redefined by Athens. What is implied by the prophecy is an Ionian Aeneas who escapes the total destruction of Troy and relocates to territory controlled by Sigeion, a would-be new Troy for Athens in its imperial role as the notional mother city of all Ionians.

II§203 To be contrasted is the would-be Aeolian Aeneas whose new Troy would have been New Ilion—if only the Aeneadae had not been expelled from there in later times. Also to be contrasted is a more narrowly conceived Ionian Aeneas whose new Troy is Scepsis, where his descendants have to share the rule with the descendants of Hector. By the time of Strabo, this Ionian Aeneas of Scepsis eclipsed a more broadly conceived Ionian Aeneas associated with Sigeion and with Athens. That is because the city of Sigeion was already extinct by this time, as we saw earlier.

II§204 By contrast with the Iliadic version, which precludes any future for the Aeolian reality of a New Ilion ruled by the descendants of Hector, Athenian mythmaking could accommodate an attenuated version of that Aeolian reality, and such a version is in fact attested:

IIⓣ21 Scholia for Euripides Andromache 10 (ed. Schwartz 1891), citing Lysimachus of Alexandria (ca. 200 BCE; FGH 382 F 9), who quotes Dionysius of Chalkis (fourth century BCE):

Στησίχορον μὲν γὰρ ἱστορεῖν ὅτι τεθνήκοι καὶ τὸν τὴν Πέρσιδα συντεταχότα κυκλικὸν ποιητὴν ὅτι καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ τείχους ῥιφθείη· ᾧ ἠκολουθηκέναι Εὐριπίδην. εἰσί γε μὲν οἵ φασιν αὐτὸν καὶ πόλεις οἰκίσαι καὶ βασιλεῦσαι, ὧν τὰς δόξας Λυσίμαχος ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν Νόστων ἀνέγραψεν· “Διονύσιος δὲ ὁ Χαλκιδεὺς τὸν Ἀκάμαντα παρὰ Ἑλένου καὶ Ἀγχίσου φησὶ <διὰ> τὴν πρὸς Λαοδίκην οἰκειότητα Σκαμάνδριον τὸν Ἕκτορος εἰληφότα καὶ Ἀσκάνιον τὸν Αἰνείου ἐπιχειρῆσαι μὲν Ἴλιον καὶ Δάρδανον τειχίζειν, τῶν δὲ Ἀθηναίων αὐτὸ παραιτησαμένων, τηνικαῦτα τῆς ἐπιβολῆς ἀποστάντα τῆς Τρῳάδος Γέργιθα καὶ Περκώτην καὶ Κολωνὰς καὶ Χρύσην καὶ Ὀφρύνιον καὶ Σιδήνην καὶ Ἄστυρα καὶ Σκῆψιν καὶ Πολίχναν καὶ πρὸς τούτοις Δασκύλειον καὶ Ἰλίου κολώνην καὶ Ἀρίσβαν οἰκίσαντα ἀναγορεῦσαι οἰκιστὰς Σκαμάνδριον καὶ Ἀσκάνιον.”

II§206 Strabo (13.1.41 C601) cites Homeric passages that he interprets to mean that the destruction of Troy was total (Iliad VI 448, XII 15, Odyssey iii 130). In making his argument for the total destruction of Troy (1.2.4 C17 as well as 13.1.41 C601), he also cites other supposedly Homeric passages—passages not attested in the medieval manuscript tradition of the Iliad and Odyssey. There is an irony here, since these other passages cited by Strabo could be seen retrospectively as neoteric, that is, post-Homeric. Strabo has thus managed to produce otherwise unknown neoteric variants in his attempt to show that Homer is not neoteric.

II§207 Because he insists on the tradition that tells how Troy was totally destroyed, Strabo eliminates from consideration some important rival traditions. Chief among these are the traditions preserved and promoted by the inhabitants of New Ilion. A case in point is a complex of myths and rituals concerning the Locrian Maidens (13.1.41 C600). Strabo mentions only in passing this important complex of non-Ionian myths and rituals. Also mentioned only in passing is a most precious detail about the old statue of Athena in the temple of the goddess at New Ilion: this statue, as Strabo says in passing, is figured in a standing position (13.1.41 {207|208} C601). By contrast, the statue of the goddess as represented in the Iliad is figured in a seated position (VI 303). Strabo makes a grand effort in arguing against those who make the claim that the wording of our Iliad can be understood to mean that the statue was really standing after all rather than sitting (again, 13.1.41 C601). Strabo’s point is well taken, but his efforts would have been better spent if he had given his readers more details about other statues he mentions in passing—statues representing the goddess in a standing rather than seated position, as in Phocaea, Chios, and so on (once again, 13.1.41 C601). In any case, the overall evidence of archaic Greek traditions in the visual arts shows that the goddess could be represented in either a standing or a seated position. So the real question is not whether but why the statue of the goddess in the Iliad is represented in a seated position (VI 303).

II§208 My answer centers on the statue of Athena that had once been housed in the temple of the goddess in Sigeion. I propose that this statue represented Athena in a seated position, and that the relevant passage as we see it in the Iliad refers to this seated statue in Sigeion, not to the standing statue in New Ilion. Earlier on, I argued that the city of Sigeion, claimed by the goddess Athena as her very own place in the production of the Oresteia of Aeschylus in 458 BCE, must have been viewed as an Asiatic replica of the ultimate place of Athena, the city of Athens. Now I am ready to argue that the very idea of an Asiatic Athens is matched by the idea of an Asiatic Athena Polias who resides in her temple at Sigeion—the same temple indicated by the references we saw in Alcaeus (F 401B via Strabo 13.1.37 C600) and Herodotus (5.95.1). Such a statue of the goddess would have been a rival of the statue of Athena in her temple at New Ilion.

II§209 The closest thing to this reconstruction of an unattested archaic seated statue of Athena Polias in Sigeion is an attested seated Athena Polias in the Ionian city of Erythrai, which is described as follows:

II§210 A statue of Athena residing in her temple at Sigeion need not be imagined as a masterpiece of Athenian or even Ionian art. It may have been a masterpiece of Aeolian art, since the city of Sigeion had once been Aeolian—just as New Ilion, site of the rival statue of the goddess, was still Aeolian. Nevertheless, the Athenians would have claimed such a statue residing in her temple at Sigeion as their very own Asiatic Athena Polias, just as they claimed the city of Sigeion as their very own Asiatic Athens. In 458 BCE, at the dramatic moment of the Oresteia when the goddess Athena herself is imagined as arriving from her city of Sigeion and speaking in her city of Athens, she refers to her sacred space in Sigeion as her new home (Aeschylus Eumenides 397–404). This moment predates by twenty years the installation of the definitive Athena Parthenos of Pheidias in her new temple on the acropolis of Athens in 438 BCE. Back in 458 BCE, an Athenian audience would be expected to picture the newly-acquired Athena Polias residing in her temple in Sigeion in terms of the old Athena Polias residing in her temple on the acropolis in Athens. Pausanias describes the statue of Athena Polias in Athens (1.26.4), and he reports a myth that tells how this statue had fallen from the sky (1.26.6). (There is a comparable myth about the Palladium on the acropolis at Troy: it too had fallen from the sky [“Apollodorus” Library 3.12.3].) In brief, what we see being re-enacted by the verbal art of Iliad VI (303) is a new conceptualization of the old statue of Athena Polias.

II§211 Not only is Athena Polias at Athens matched by a Trojan Athena Polias at Sigeion. The attendant of Athena Polias at Athens, the Athenian hero called Erikhthonios, is matched by a Trojan hero called Erikhthonios. As we learn from Iliad XX (219, 230), the Trojan Erikhthonios was son of Dardanos and father of Tros, the ancestor of Aeneas. This match between the Athenian Erikhthonios and the Trojan Erikhthonios of the Dardanidai can be explained in terms of a differentiation of the Athenian figure of Erekhtheus into an earlier figure called Erikhthonios and a later figure called Erekhtheus in the official Athenian genealogy of kings. The sequencing of the Athenian Erikhthonios in this Athenian genealogy is synchronized with the sequencing of the Trojan Erikhthonios in the Trojan genealogy that culminates with Aeneas in the Iliad. [156] So the differentiation of the Athenian hero Erekhtheus into {209|210} an earlier Erikhthonios and a later Erekhtheus serves to connect the local Athenian hero with the epic Trojan hero Erikhthonios, ancestor of Aeneas. This way, the prestige of the Trojan genealogy of the Dardanidai, culminating in the dynastic figure of the epic hero Aeneas, is appropriated into the Athenian genealogy of kings. A signal of this Athenian appropriation in the Iliad is the pointed reference to four chariot horses owned by Anchises, father of Aeneas (V 271), complemented by two chariot horses owned by Aeneas himself (V 272). [157] As we learn from the Parian Marble (FGH 239 section 10), the Athenians claimed that Erikhthonios was the inventor of the four-horse chariot, on the occasion of the first chariot race held at the first Panathenaic festival in 1505/4 BCE. [158] So the Iliadic reference to the four-horse chariot team of Anchises is an implicit Athenian signature. To be contrasted are the two-horse chariot teams used by almost all warriors, including Aeneas himself (V 270–272), for fighting battles in the Trojan War. An exception is the four-horse chariot team used by Hector (VIII 185). He too, like Aeneas, is a descendant of the Dardanidai (XX 240). [159] So here again we see an implicit Athenian signature, since both Aeneas and Hector were appropriated by the Athenians in their version of the Trojan story.

II§212 In the course of time, something catastrophic happened to the Athenian frame of reference in the Troad: the total destruction of Sigeion. As we have seen, Strabo goes out of his way to describe the city of Sigeion as completely ‘demolished’ in his own time, and his wording makes clear that no stone was left in place (13.1.31 C595 κατεσπασμένη πόλις). Once this city was destroyed, the Athenian frame of reference was obliterated. Gone forever was the temple of Athena at Sigeion, a prime epic landmark for the Athenians. The Aeolian frame of reference could now be restored, and this restoration was furthered in the Roman era through the patronage accorded to New Ilion by Julius Caesar (13.1.27 C594–595). By favoring New Ilion, Caesar and his successors favored the Aeolian version of the Trojan story and obliterated the rival Athenian version. In this rival version, as we saw, Aeneas and his descendants were linked with Sigeion as a new Troy that was destined to rule the Ionian populations of the Troad. After the Roman intervention, however, Aeneas and his son Ascanius or Iulus were appropriated as founders of the new Troy that was Rome. Also, the Aeolian New Ilion was appropriated as the old Troy. Because of this second appropriation, Aeneas was eclipsed as a founder of Ionian cities like Scepsis: he was now primarily the founder of Rome, and the Ionian traditions about Aeneas and his descendants became marginalized and even trivialized. So, in the {210|211} end, the Aeolian version of the Trojan story won out over the Ionian version as primarily defined by Athens.

II§213 The Roman appropriation of Troy and the Trojan story produced another result. Just as the Athenian version of the Trojan story lost out to the older Aeolian version because of the Romans, so also the Athenian version of Homer—the Homeric Koine—lost out to the Homerus Auctus, as edited in the Library of Pergamon and as appropriated in the epic poetry of Virgil. Below in the Epilegomena to this volume, I will explain the distinction I am making here between Athenian and Pergamene versions of Homer, as represented respectively by the Homeric Koine and the Homerus Auctus.

II 75. Homer the Ionian revisited

II§214 In what we have just seen, I concentrated on a distant past dating back to a time when the Aeolians of Asia Minor were being pressured from the north by the Athenians and eventually lost to them the old Aeolian city of Sigeion, the site where Achilles, premier hero of the Aeolians, was believed to be buried in a tumulus situated nearby on the Sigeion Ridge. At an earlier stage of my argumentation, I had concentrated on another aspect of the distant past, when the Aeolians of Asia Minor were being pressured from the south by the Ionians and eventually lost to them the old Aeolian city of Smyrna, the site where Homer, premier poet of the Aeolians, was believed to have been born. In what follows, I return to the subject of this second loss suffered by the Aeolians of Asia Minor, which actually took place earlier than the loss of Sigeion. This earlier loss of Smyrna, like the later loss of Sigeion, had a permanent impact on the form and the content of Homeric poetry as we know it. Because of this loss, Homer became irrevocably Ionian.

II§216 According to Strabo (14.1.4 C633), Smyrna was eventually added to the federation of twelve Ionian cities, the Ionian Dodecapolis. As we will see, the idea that Smyrna actually became one of the twelve members of this Ionian confederation in the archaic period is anachronistic. Still, as I noted earlier, the wording of Herodotus indicates that Smyrna had requested membership in the Ionian Dodecapolis:

IIⓣ23 Herodotus 1.143.3

αἱ δὲ δυώδεκα πόλιες αὗται τῷ τε οὐνόματι ἠγάλλοντο καὶ ἱρὸν ἱδρύσαντο ἐπὶ σφέων αὐτέων, τῷ οὔνομα ἔθεντο Πανιώνιον, ἐβουλεύσαντο δὲ αὐτοῦ μεταδοῦναι μηδαμοῖσι ἄλλοισι Ἰώνων—οὐδ’ ἐδεήθησαν δὲ οὐδαμοὶ μετασχεῖν ὅτι μὴ Σμυρναῖοι

But these twelve cities, took pride in the name [‘Ionian’ ] and established a sacred space of their own, giving it the name Panionion, and they wished to give membership to no other Ionians [= Ionian cities]—nor did any Ionians [= any other Ionian city] request it except for the Smyrnaeans.

II§217 Smyrna had already turned Ionian by the time of the twenty-third Olympiad (Pausanias 5.8.7), that is, by the end of the eighth century. I quote this apt formulation: “[Smyrna], lying more than ten miles south of the [river] Hermus, and having Phocaea on the coast between it and Cyme, belonged naturally to the Ionian sphere.” [161] The Ionization of Smyrna is evident in the Homeric Hymn (9) to Artemis, where the Ionian site of Klaros is ostentatiously linked with Smyrna and with the river Meles (connected in the local lore with Homer’s alternative name Melēsigenēs) in a description of the territorial domain of the goddess (verses 3-6). Then, toward the end of the seventh century, Ionian Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydian empire, and this point in time can serve as a terminus ante quem for the description that we find in Homeric Hymn 9. [162] After this point, Smyrna ceased to exist, and it became known as one of the three proverbial extinct cities of archaic Greek poetry, along with Colophon and Magnesia-at-Sipylus. [163] According to Strabo (14.1.37 C646), Smyrna remained a non-city for hundreds of years (he estimates four hundred, though an estimate of three hundred is more likely, as we will see), inhabited only ‘in the mode of a kōmē’ (κωμηδόν)—that is, in the mode of a ‘village’—but then, toward the end of the fourth century BCE, the city was refounded by Antigonus and then once again refounded by Lysimachus. [164] So Smyrna was refounded at around the same time that New Ilion was refounded. As we saw earlier, Strabo (13.1.26 C593) reports that Alexander the Great transformed the site of New Ilion from a kōmē ‘village’ into a {212|213} polis ‘city’, and that the transformation was continued by Alexander’s would-be successor Lysimachus. [165] Like the New Ilion, which kept its previous Aeolian identity after its notional refounding, the new Smyrna kept its previous Ionian identity after its own refounding.

II§218 According to Strabo (14.1.4 C633), Smyrna was later added to the federation of twelve Ionian cities, that is, to the Ionian Dodecapolis, but he does not say whether the city’s membership is to be dated after the refounding. Strabo does say, however, that the people of Smyrna had a special claim to Homer, and that they maintained a sacred precinct called the Homēreion, where the Poet was worshipped as a cult hero (14.1.37 C646).

II§219 As we see from this particular formulation by Strabo, the status of Smyrna as a member of the Ionian Dodecapolis after its refounding in the Hellenistic era was far less significant than its status as the primary claimant to the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. By this time, the membership of Smyrna in the Ionian Dodecapolis no longer had any significant effect on the identity of Homer. That is because the status of the Ionian Dodecapolis itself went into a drastic decline in the era that followed the destruction of Ionian Smyrna by the Lydian empire.

II§220 In the preceding era, however, the status of a city like Smyrna did in fact have a most significant effect on the identity of Homer. That is because the tradition of Homeric poetry was still in a formative phase at the time when Ionian Smyrna was destroyed by the Lydians and thus lost by the Ionians—and this time is not far removed from when Aeolian Sigeion was lost forever to the Athenians by the Aeolians.

II§221 This time marks a major difference in what subsequently happened to these two formerly Aeolian cities of Asia Minor. After the destruction of Smyrna by the Lydian empire toward the end of the seventh century BCE, that city ceased to exist for hundreds of years—to repeat Strabo’s estimate of the chronology. Meanwhile, all during that period, the city of Sigeion continued to exist as an Athenocentric extension of Athens, an Asiatic Athens in the Troad, until it was finally obliterated around the same time when Smyrna was refounded as a city. For some three hundred years, then, the tradition of Homeric poetry was evolving in the context of an audience reception that recognized Sigeion as the definitive point of reference for visualizing the epic action in the Troad, and this particular point of reference was Athenocentric in its poetics as well as its politics. To put it another way, Sigeion was the Athenocentric lens through which the tradition of Homeric poetry continued to view the topography of the Troad for these three hundred years. Conversely, all during this period, nothing of Panhellenic importance was happening in Smyrna. {213|214} By the time that Smyrna was refounded in the Hellenistic era by the dynasts I mentioned a moment ago, the tradition of Homeric poetry was no longer in a formative phase. And it no longer mattered whether Smyrna had once been Aeolian or Ionian.

II§223 Some three hundred years later, in the Hellenistic era, when the Aeolian city of New Ilion finally succeeded in destroying the Athenocentric city of Sigeion, the Aeolians were left with the unwieldy double heritage of two tombs of Achilles, one at either end of the Sigeion Ridge. Our primary source, Strabo, does not say how or even whether the people of New Ilion ever solved the problem of explaining the coexistence of two rival tombs within what was now a unified political sphere, but such a problem would have been no novelty in this part of the Greek-speaking world, where rival cities were constantly making rival claims to the epic legacy of the Trojan War.

II§224 In the northern coastal territory of Asia Minor, as we have seen, the rival claims centered on the location of the tomb of Achilles as well as the location of Troy. As for the central coastal territory of Asia Minor, rival cities were making rival claims to the epic legacy of Homer himself. In this case, the rivalry centered on the question of locating the place where Homer was born, and among the cities claiming to be the birthplace of Homer, the city of Smyrna stood out.

II§225 The epic potential of Smyrna was not to last. During the centuries when it would have made all the difference in the world if Smyrna could assert its claim to be the birthplace of Homer, Smyrna did not exist. The obliteration of Smyrna, a city that {214|215} had long ago swung into the orbit of the Ionians, was symptomatic of an overall decline in the wealth, power, and prestige of the federation of cities known as the Ionian Dodecapolis in the sixth century BCE. This decline can best be understood if we view it against the backdrop of earlier times when this federation was still at the height of its power. Back in those earlier times, as we are about to see, the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis was a prototype of the kind of economic, cultural, and political communality that Hellenes of later times associated with the Athenian empire. And the spokesman for this communality was none other than Homer the Ionian.

II§226 I return here to the earlier years when Smyrna had just turned Ionian and had thus become eligible for membership in the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis. Strabo (14.1.4 C633) focuses on this moment after listing the twelve cities that were members of the original Ionian Dodecapolis, adding that Smyrna was ultimately admitted. Strabo (14.1.3 C633) lists the twelve member cities of the original Ionian Dodecapolis in the following order: Ephesus, Miletus, Myous, Lebedos, Colophon, Priene, Teos, Erythrai, Phocaea, Klazomenai, Chios, Samos. He highlights two Ionian cities in particular, Ephesus and Miletus, and I draw attention to his wording:

IIⓣ24 Strabo 14.1.3 C632–633

ἄρξαι δέ φησιν ῎Ανδροκλον τῆς τῶν Ἰώνων ἀποικίας, ὕστερον τῆς Αἰολικῆς, υἱὸν γνήσιον Κόδρου τοῦ Ἀθηνῶν βασιλέως, γενέσθαι δὲ τοῦτον Ἐφέσου κτίστην. διόπερ τὸ βασίλειον τῶν Ἰώνων ἐκεῖ συστῆναί φασι, καὶ ἔτι νῦν οἱ ἐκ τοῦ γένους ὀνομάζονται βασιλεῖς ἔχοντές τινας τιμάς, προεδρίαν τε ἐν ἀγῶσι καὶ πορφύραν ἐπίσημον τοῦ βασιλικοῦ γένους, σκίπωνα ἀντὶ σκήπτρου, καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ τῆς Ἐλευσινίας Δήμητρος

[Pherecydes (FGH 3 F 155)] says that the leader of the Ionian Migration [apoikia] was Androklos, and that this migration was later than the Aeolian Migration. He goes on to say that this Androklos was the legitimate son of Kodros, king of Athens, and that this Androklos became the founder of Ephesus. That is why they say that the royal palace [basileion] of the Ionians was established there [= in Ephesus] and why even today those who are descended from the lineage [genos] of this man [= Androklos] are called kings [basileis] and have various privileges [timai]: the presidency at the contests [agōnes = contests of the festival of the Panionia]; a special kind of purple wear that signifies royal lineage [genos]; a scepter, which they call not skēptron but skipōn; and priestly control over the rites of Demeter Eleusinia.

IIⓣ25 Strabo 14.1.3 C633

καὶ Μίλητον δ’ ἔκτισεν Νηλεὺς ἐκ Πύλου τὸ γένος ὤν· οἵ τε Μεσσήνιοι καὶ οἱ Πύλιοι συγγένειάν τινα προσποιοῦνται, καθ’ ἣν καὶ Μεσσήνιον τὸν Νέστορα οἱ νεώτεροί φασι ποιηταί, καὶ τοῖς περὶ Μέλανθον τὸν Κόδρου πατέρα πολλοὺς καὶ τῶν Πυλίων συνεξᾶραί φασιν εἰς τὰς Ἀθήνας· τοῦτον δὴ πάντα τὸν λαὸν μετὰ τῶν Ἰώνων κοινῇ στεῖλαι τὴν ἀποικίαν· τοῦ δὲ Νηλέως ἐπὶ τῷ Ποσειδίῳ βωμὸς ἵδρυμα δείκνυται.

And Miletus was founded by Neleus, whose lineage [genos] was from Pylos. Both the Messenians and the Pylians claim some kind of genealogical connection to him. In line with this connection, the newer [neōteroi] poets call Nestor by way of the epithet {215|216}Messēnios ‘Messenian’. They [= the newer poets] say that many of the Pylians had gone to Athens to join the company of Melanthos, father of Kodros, and that this entire aggregate [laos] initiated the colonization [apoikia] in common [koinēi], along with the Ionians. There is also to be seen on the promontory called Poseidion an altar erected by Neleus.

II§227 I note here the association of the Ionian polis with the Ionian Migration or apoikia, that is, with the notionally original action that defined the Ionians of Asia Minor. And I note also the wording that refers to the Athenian participation in the Ionian Migration: in this context, the colonization by the Pylians, representatives of the heroic age, is described as an action taken koinēi ‘in common’, and the primary joiners in the common enterprise are the Athenians. Earlier on, I noted the implications of the adjective koinos ‘common’ in contexts having to do with the Athenian empire. Here too the expression koinēi ‘in common’ implies the makings of an imperial enterprise. And I note with interest the linking of this federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis not only with the Athenians, who represent here an early phase of a great empire, but also with the Pylians, who represent an even earlier great empire—what archaeologists describe as the Mycenaean empire of the Bronze Age.

II§228 Not only Strabo but also Herodotus alludes to these phases of empire. And he too refers to the federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis. In the version given by Herodotus, however, Miletus rather than Ephesus figures as the premier city in the Dodecapolis:

IIⓣ26 Herodotus 1.142.3

Μίλητος μὲν αὐτῶν πρώτη κεῖται πόλις πρὸς μεσαμβρίην, μετὰ δὲ 
Μυοῦς τε καὶ Πριήνη· αὗται μὲν ἐν τῇ Καρίῃ κατοίκηνται 
κατὰ ταὐτὰ διαλεγόμεναι σφίσι. Αἵδε δὲ ἐν τῇ Λυδίῃ· 
Ἔφεσος, Κολοφών, Λέβεδος, Τέως, Κλαζομεναί, Φώκαια· 
αὗται δὲ αἱ πόλιες τῇσι πρότερον λεχθείσῃσι ὁμολογέουσι κατὰ γλῶσσαν οὐδέν, σφίσι δὲ ὁμοφωνέουσι. Ἔτι δὲ τρεῖς 
ὑπόλοιποι Ἰάδες πόλιες, τῶν αἱ δύο μὲν νήσους οἴκηνται, 
Σάμον τε καὶ Χίον, ἡ δὲ μία ἐν τῇ ἠπείρῳ ἵδρυται, Ἐρυθραί· Χῖοι μέν νυν καὶ Ἐρυθραῖοι κατὰ τὠυτὸ διαλέγονται, Σάμιοι δὲ ἐπ’ ἑωυτῶν μοῦνοι.

The first of them [= the twelve cities] to be mentioned is Miletus, situated to the north. Next in order [= moving from north to south] there are Myous and Priene. These cities are settlements situated in Carian territory, and they share the same dialect with each other. Next, the following cities are situated in Lydia: Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Klazomenai, Phocaea. These cities are not at all consonant in dialect with the ones mentioned previously. Next there are three Ionian cities still to be mentioned. Of these three, two are settlements situated on islands, Samos and Chios. And one is a settlement situated on the mainland, Erythrai. The inhabitants of Chios and Erythrai have the same dialect, but the Samians have a dialect of their own. {216|217}

II§229 Here I repeat the sequence of cities listed by Herodotus as members of this federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis: Miletus, Myous, Priene; Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Klazomenai, Phocaea; Samos; Chios and Erythrai. The three semicolons that I just used in punctuating this sequence reflect the division of the twelve cities in this federation into four dialectal groups, as also indicated by Herodotus. I draw attention to two features of this division. First, there is the highlighting of Miletus, not Ephesus, at the head of the list. Second, there is the grouping of Samos, Chios, and Erythrai. Herodotus implies that the dialects of these three cities are more closely related to each other than to the dialects of the other nine cities, and then he goes on to say explicitly that the dialects of Chios and Erythrai are more closely related to each other than to the dialect of Samos, which is thus left to a category all by itself. This last grouping of three and subgrouping of two and one corresponds to the sequence of narration in Vita 1 of the Life of Homer tradition: in the course of the Poet’s travels, he stops over at Ionian Erythrai on his way to Ionian Chios (1.225–275); after his extended stay in Ionian Chios (1.346–398), he stops over at Ionian Samos on his way to Athens (1.399–484).

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. Shaw 2001 gives a survey.

[ back ] 2. Shaw 2001:170.

[ back ] 3. Archaeologists have securely identified the site at Cape Burun as Akhílleion: see Burgess 2006n56 and n58; 2009:122–123. Also Cook 1984:168. In the third century BCE, as Rose 2006:149 observes, the tumulus of Achilles at this site was enlarged.

[ back ] 4. Archaeologists have securely identified the site at Cape Yenişehir as Sigeion: see Burgess 2006; 2009:118–121. Also Cook 1973:178–186 and Aloni 1986:65n8.

[ back ] 5. For a summary of archaeological evidence about the tumuli in the Troad, see especially Burgess 2006. See also Cook 1973:185–186 and 1984:167–168; Aloni 1986:65n8; West 2002:208n8; Rose 1999:61–63, 2000:65–66, and 2006:140–141, 149.

[ back ] 6. In Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 18.2, this son of Peisistratos is called Thessalos (Thettalos), but in 17.3–4 it is made explicit that his primary name was Hegesistratos and that Thessalos was his parōnumion ‘side-name’. Herodotus (5.94.1) refers to him as Hegesistratos and says explicitly that he was an illegitimate son of Peisistratos, but Thucydides (1.20.2 and 6.55.1) calls him Thessalos and assumes that he was a legitimate son.

[ back ] 7. Shaw 2001:167n7.

[ back ] 8. I will have more to say later on about these two references.

[ back ] 9. BA 20§§20–28 (= pp. 338–346), cited by Shaw 2001:167. On prospective references in Homeric poetry, see Nagy 2001c.

[ back ] 10. In the usage of the Homeric Iliad, as we will see, the name Hellēspontos refers not only to the strait of the Hellespont (or Dardanelles) but also to the Aegean Sea offshore from the Sigeion Ridge. See also Kraft, Kayan, and Oğuz 1982:37.

[ back ] 11. The light is pictured as visible ‘from’ the sea, that is, from the perspective of those who are at sea.

[ back ] 12. The time frame indicated as ‘now’ here is the era of the heroes who fought in the Trojan War.

[ back ] 13. BA 20§§20–28 (= pp. 338–346), cited by Shaw 2001:167.

[ back ] 14. To repeat what I noted earlier: the light is pictured as visible ‘from’ the sea, that is, from the perspective of those who are at sea.

[ back ] 15. For parallel wording, see Odyssey xi 574: ἐν οἰοπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν ‘in the solitary heights of the mountains’.

[ back ] 16. This space for pasturing is also the space for picturing what is in the pasture.

[ back ] 17. I reconstruct such a basic meaning from the survey of facts presented in Chantraine DELG s.vv. στάθμη and σταθμός.

[ back ] 18. This etymological interpretation, among others, is considered in DELG s.v. κλίνω.

[ back ] 19. This etymological interpretation, among others, is considered in DELG s.v. σηκός. In Hesychius s.v., we read that σῆκα is what a shepherd shouts to his herd of sheep when he herds them back into their penfold.

[ back ] 20. In the scholia T (hypothesis) at Odyssey iv 612, we read: μετασταθμήσω. τὸ γὰρ στῶ στήσω καὶ ἐπὶ σταθμοῦ λέγεται, ὅθεν γίνεται καὶ ὁ σηκὸς στηκός τις ὢν καὶ δηλῶν σταθμόν τινα, ὅθεν καὶ ἡ ἀντισήκωσις ἀντιστάθμησίς τις οὖσα.

[ back ] 21. There is a short survey of epigraphical and literary contexts in DELG s.v. σηκός.

[ back ] 22. The tumulus containing the tomb of the hero Protesilaos, situated on the European side of the Hellespont, faces the tumulus containing the tomb of the hero Achilles on the Asiatic side. The word that refers to the tumulus of Protesilaos is kolōnos in Philostratus Heroikos 9.1. See Nagy 2001e:xxxiii–xxxiv n34, where I translate that word as ‘landmark’. I will have more to say about kolōnos as the discussion proceeds.

[ back ] 23. Strabo subscribes to the idea of an old Ilion that is not where the New Ilion is located. This idea has been discredited in light of archaeological work at the New Ilion, which proves that this site can be identified with the old Ilion of the Iliad as we know it. For a historical and archaeological overview, see Rose 2006. I will have more to say later about the concept—and the reality—of the New Ilion.

[ back ] 24. See also Pliny the Elder Natural History 5.33.125.

[ back ] 25. Editors of Strabo, troubled by the manuscript reading ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ πεδίον νῦν προστιθείς, offer a variety of emendations. For me the reading makes sense as it is.

[ back ] 26. To paraphrase Aristotle (F 162 ed. Rose): Homeric poetry acknowledges the non-existence of the Achaean Wall at the time of its own performance. See BA 9§§15–16 (= pp. 159–160), 20§22 (= p. 340).

[ back ] 27. Although Strabo in this context (8.6.2 C368–369) accepts the Argive aetiology of the name Nauplia as the ‘sailing place’ for the city, he rejects the part of the aetiology that claims Nauplios as the local hero, on the grounds that Nauplios is not mentioned in the Homeric Iliad or Odyssey. In this case and in many others, Strabo displays a stance of extreme anti-neoterism.

[ back ] 28. Kraft, Kayan, and Oğuz 1982:32: “Of the two schools of thought—that there was an embayment on the lower Scamander Plain three thousand and more years ago or that the lower Scamander Plain was then approximately in the same position as today—we find the latter to be untenable. It is now evident that there was a major marine embayment in the plains of the Scamander and [Simoeis] rivers during the past ten millennia.” This point made by the geologists—that there was indeed a Deep Bay in the plain of Scamander—differs from what we read in Cook 1984, with whose judgments I will disagree in the discussion that follows. In assessing the evidence about the Deep Bay in the Troad, I have benefited from a consultation with A. M. Snodgrass (2005.03.23).

[ back ] 29. Kraft, Kayan, and Oğuz 1982:35: “Surely a fortified city on a promontory overlooking a marine embayment controlling the Dardanelles must have had some ships. From the paleogeographic reconstructions here presented it would seem logical that any Bronze Age Trojan harbor or landing would have been located immediately west of the citadel or to the north.”

[ back ] 30. Herodotus (2.10.1) compares the silting at the delta of the Nile with the silting at the outlets of the Scamander (τὰ … περὶ Ἴλιον), the Caicus, the Cayster, and the Maeander (Cook 1984:166-167).

[ back ] 31. Kraft, Kayan, and Oğuz 1982:37: “Certainly the shoreline of this time would have been complex, with marshes, muddy sands, many asmaks, and a possible birdsfoot delta of the Scamander River extending northwest toward the tip of the [Sigeion] Promontory.” Herodotus (5.65.3) speaks of ‘Sigeion-on-the-Scamander’, using the preposition epi as ‘on’ (Cook 1984:166).

[ back ] 32. When Pliny speaks of the Palaeoscamander, he is thinking of the river’s path in epic time, as distinct from the river’s path in his own time.

[ back ] 33. Cuillandre 1944. For an alternative interpretation of the topography of the Troad as visualized in Homeric poetry, see Clay 2007. She makes this remark (p. 241) about the work of Cuillandre: “many of his assumptions can be shown to be wrong.” She does not elaborate, however, on what these assumptions may be.

[ back ] 34. According to the scholia for Iliad XIV 36, Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus all agree in reporting the variant πολλόν ‘vast’ instead of μακρόν ‘deep’. See Cuillandre 1944:18, who comments on the form στομαλίμνη as reported by Aristarchus in the context of Iliad VI 4. The idea of a Deep Bay was promoted in the ancient world by Demetrius of Scepsis and by a woman scholar, Hestiaia of Alexandria (probably Alexandria-in-the-Troad); see Cook 1984:165.

[ back ] 35. Cuillandre 1944:16.

[ back ] 36. Cuillandre 1944:18–19, 29, 34. Cf. Clay 2007:241.

[ back ] 37. Cuillandre 1944:18.

[ back ] 38. Cuillandre 1944:30n2. The concept of a theater of war is invoked by Clay 2007.

[ back ] 39. BA ch. 3 (= pp. 42–58).

[ back ] 40. Cuillandre 1944:77.

[ back ] 41. Cuillandre 1944:47.

[ back ] 42. The ship is half burned by the time Patroklos succeeds in putting out the fire (Iliad XVI 293–294).

[ back ] 43. Cuillandre 1944:59–60. In this context, he emphasizes the precision of the Iliadic visualization of what Achilles sees with his own eyes while observing the various battle scenes from the vantage point of his own ship. There is a remarkable example at Iliad XI (599–600), where a foregrounded figure blocks a backgrounded figure in the hero’s line of vision: from the distant vantage point of his ship, Achilles sees the figure of Nestor driving a chariot, but his view of the chariot driver blocks his view of the chariot rider, the wounded Machaon, who happens to be standing to the right of Nestor. So Achilles is looking from the west toward the east as Nestor is driving his chariot in retreat from the south toward the north. [[2012.07.28… I have rethought this formulation. I now prefer to say: So Achilles is looking from the northwest toward the southeast as Nestor is driving his chariot in retreat from the southeast toward the northwest]].

[ back ] 44. The symbolic value is further deepened if the original killer of Protesilaos is to be understood as Hector himself.

[ back ] 45. Cuillandre 1944:50.

[ back ] 46. Cuillandre 1944:65 notes the glissement of the Scamander toward the west over the course of time.

[ back ] 47. This positioning of the station of Ajax, as reconstructed on the basis of references to it in the Iliad, corresponds to the positioning in the Ajax of Sophocles, especially in verse 418; see Cuillandre 1944:24, 61.

[ back ] 48. Cuillandre 1944:96 notes the perpetual movement that characterizes this particular battle scene.

[ back ] 49. Cuillandre 1944:99–100 surveys the action.

[ back ] 50. Cuillandre 1944:65.

[ back ] 51. Cuillandre 1944:41, 69.

[ back ] 52. Cuillandre 1944:63.

[ back ] 53. At this point, within the time frame of the narrative of Iliad XI, the position of Hector is at some distance to the east of the north-to-south advance of Ajax, who is at some distance to the west, and so the Trojan warrior has not yet caught sight of his Achaean adversary (XI 497–498). To say it from the Trojan point of view, the position of Ajax is at some distance to the west of Hector, who is standing at the east wing of the Trojan forces. And immediately farther east of where Hector stands is the river Scamander, flowing from south to north.

[ back ] 54. Cuillandre 1944:63, 74.

[ back ] 55. Cuillandre 1944:61 notes that the Iliad visualizes the south-to-north course of the Scamander as nearly perpendicular to the main ship station of the bay into which the river flows.

[ back ] 56. Cuillandre 1944:89 reconstructs the logistics. In the logic of the overall narrative of the Iliad, the Trojans must be guarding the points where the Scamander can be forded, since they shuttle back and forth between Troy on the east side of the river and the arena of battle on the plains of the west side. Even before we see any blood being spilled in our Iliad, the Trojans are already on the west side of the Scamander: see Cuillandre p. 75 for a topographical reconstruction of the initial scenes of Trojan-Achaean confrontation as visualized in the Iliad. Despite their freedom of movement in fording the Scamander, however, the Trojans continue to be stationed inside the walls of Troy. Much is made in the narrative about the first time they feel confident enough to camp outside the city walls (Iliad VIII 489–501). For more on the logistics of fording the Scamander, see Cuillandre 1944:74 on three verses in Iliad XXIV (349–351) concerning the moment when Priam crosses the river as he journeys from Troy to the station of Achilles.

[ back ] 57. For a parallel situation in a later battle scene, see XIII 674–675 and the commentary of Cuillandre 1944:48.

[ back ] 58. On the concept of the Hellespont as including the west coastline of the Troad, see Burgess 2006n60.

[ back ] 59. Cuillandre 1944:19–20.

[ back ] 60. Cuillandre 1944:19.

[ back ] 61. Such an interpretation is supported by the scholia for Iliad XXIII (143). See Cuillandre 1944:19n3. Elsewhere in the Iliad (XXIV 12–13), Achilles is pictured standing on the beach facing west toward the Aegean seas of the Hellespont as its waters start reflecting the light of the rising sun. Regarding the marshy coastline to the west of the Sigeion Ridge, extending from the promontory of Sigeion to the promontory overlooking the Bay of Beşike, see Cuillandre 1944:22.

[ back ] 62. For a description of the tumulus of Protesilaos, see Leaf 1923:163.

[ back ] 63. See Nagy 2001e:xxxiii–xxxiv n34, where I translate kolōnos as ‘landmark’.

[ back ] 64. The wording connotes an aetiology, as if the death of Achilles were the single reason that explains why Achaeans no longer wear their hair long.

[ back ] 65. Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001:153.

[ back ] 66. The ritually dramatized hostility between the Thessalians and the city of New Ilion may be a reflex of an old Thessalian connection with Sigeion as the rival city that represented the interests of Athens in the era of the Peisistratidai. As allies of Athens, the Thessalians would have been welcome as visitors to the sacred sites in the part of the Troad controlled by Sigeion in that era. In later times, however, the Thessalians would have become personae non gratae at the sacred sites taken over by New Ilion.

[ back ] 67. This detail in the ritual, where unwilting garlands are worn in honor of Achilles as cult hero, is I think related to the semantics of the epithet aphthito-, meaning literally ‘unwilting’, as applied to the kleos or epic ‘glory’ of Achilles in Iliad IX 413. In BA 10§§1–5 (= pp. 174–177), PH 7§6n23 (= p. 204), 8§11n42 (= p. 223), 10§9n21 (= p. 278), I analyze further the semantics of phthi- ‘wilt’ in this and in other related poetic contexts.

[ back ] 68. Translation adapted from Berenson and Aitken 2001:157, 159. As we see from the overall context here, these practices were later reinstated.

[ back ] 69. Note the collocation kolōnos lithōn ‘tumulus built of stones’ in Herodotus 4.92.

[ back ] 70. On this context of oikos, see PH 9§27 (= pp. 268–269).

[ back ] 71. Nagy 2001e xxxiv n34.

[ back ] 72. Stähler 1967:19, with citations.

[ back ] 73. The editio princeps is Vermeule 1965.

[ back ] 74. The editio princeps is Stähler 1967.

[ back ] 75. The editio princeps of the relief sculpture of the Polyxena Sarcophagus is Sevinç 1996; see also Rose 2006:143–146. In this sculpted ensemble, Polyxena is represented as near naked at the moment of her sacrificial slaughter, with her breasts exposed. I find it relevant to compare a detail in Euripides Hecuba (558): Polyxena tears the peplos that she is wearing at the moment of being slaughtered, thus exposing her breasts, and she is pictured at this moment as an agalma ‘artifact’ (561), as if she were a statue. Later on in the Hecuba (571–582), after Polyxena is slaughtered, a peplos is presented to her as a ritual offering. Similar to Polyxena, Iphigeneia in Aeschylus Agamemnon (208) is pictured as an agalma ‘artifact’ in the household of Agamemnon. When Iphigeneia is about to be sacrificed by her father in the Agamemnon (289), she is pictured as if she were in a painting. Perhaps this painting can be imagined as a painted relief sculpture. There is a similar painterly reference in the Hecuba (807), on which see Dué 2006:130. For more on the Polyxena Sarcophagus, see Dué pp. 125–126. On the picturing of Hecuba as a lamenting statue, see Dué p. 128n27.

[ back ] 76. Photius Lexicon α 2450, see also α 2449 and Suda α 3250. The paragraphs that follow are based on Nagy 2009d.

[ back ] 77. Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 7.73.2–3; Harpocration s.v. In Eratosthenes Katasterismoi chapter 1, section 13, lines 19–22, we read that the figure of an apobatēs is a re-enactment of the prototypical chariot fighter (carrying a shield and wearing a three-plumed helmet) who rode next to Erikhthonios as chariot driver when Erikhthonios founded the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. This prototypical apobatēs was traditionally imagined as the goddess Athena herself: for iconographic evidence, see Schultz 2007, especially p. 60; also Shear 2001:47–53. On the north side of the Parthenon Frieze (North XII), there is a depiction of an apobatēs who is being crowned with a garland: see Schultz p. 65.

[ back ] 78. Stähler 1967 gives a survey; also Schultz 2007. There is a vivid reference to the athletic event of the apobatai in a speech attributed to Demosthenes (61).

[ back ] 79. Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 7.73.3. According to other sources, the apobatēs can leap on as well as off the platform of a racing chariot: see Etymologicum magnum p. 124 lines 31–34 ed. Kallierges and Photius Lexicon α 2450. Paintings of mythological scenes showing a warrior mounting his chariot may correspond to athletic scenes where the apobatēs mounts his chariot: see Vermeule 1965:44 on the Amphiaraos Krater.

[ back ] 80. Vermeule 1965 and Stähler 1967 survey a wide variety of relevant pictures besides the two that concern me primarily here, the pictures painted on the Boston Hydria and the Münster Hydria.

[ back ] 81. Vermeule 1965:45.

[ back ] 82. Lowenstam 1997.

[ back ] 83. BA2 Preface §3 (= p. vii), BA Introduction §§13–15 (= pp. 6–8).

[ back ] 84. Stähler 1967, especially p. 32.

[ back ] 85. GM 88, 94, 217, 220.

[ back ] 86. PH 7§§10–19 (= pp. 207–214).

[ back ] 87. See also PR 10, 66.

[ back ] 88. Cook 1984:168 comments on the site of Akhílleion, which features “plenty of Aeolic gray ware and other sherds dating from the sixth century or earlier down to middle Hellenistic.”

[ back ] 89. For further references to the tumulus of Ajax in primary sources, see Leaf 1923:157–158.

[ back ] 90. Seventh century: Blegen 1958:247–250. Eighth century: Cook 1973:101. See also Smith 1981:29n21. Smith p. 54 thinks that Troy was deserted between 1100 and 700 BCE.

[ back ] 91. Cook 1984:167 dates these tumuli to 480 BCE, “give or take fifty years” (with reference to Cook 1973:159–165). If we choose Cook’s earlier option, his dating fits my argument. Cook’s choice of the year 480 is linked with his conjecture that these tumuli were the tombs of the tyrant Hippias and his family.

[ back ] 92. There is a similar distinction in the report of Arrian Anabasis 1.12.1 concerning Alexander the Great and his veneration of the tombs of Achilles and Patroklos. Comments on this passage by Burgess 2006n35 and n57, who mentions also the report of Plutarch Alexander 15.8-9 concerning honors paid by Alexander to Achilles.

[ back ] 93. Cook 1984:168.

[ back ] 94. Cook 1984:168, 170 argues for a landing at the Bay of Beşike. His argumentation unnecessarily assumes that there could have been only one version of the landing in the poetry of the Iliad.

[ back ] 95. Cook 1984:168. In this context, I am reminded of the evocative title of an article by West 2002, “The View from Lesbos.” What I am arguing here is that the Homeric Iliad actually reflects “a view from Lesbos.” The argument of West, however, differs from mine. For him, “the view from Lesbos” about Troy is strongly influenced by a preexisting Ionian tradition.

[ back ] 96. On the ritual significance of the distancing pronoun ekeinos ‘that one’ in referring to cult heroes, see Nagy 2001e xxvii n20.

[ back ] 97. Strabo uses the article to in combination with Sígeion (13.1.31 C595, 13.1.32 C596, 13.1.34 C597, 13.1.38 C599, 13.1.39 C600, 13.1.42 C602) as well as with Akhílleion (13.1.38 C600, 13.1.46 C604) and with Rhoíteion (13.1.31 C595, 13.1.34 C597, 13.1.42 C602).

[ back ] 98. On the derivation of sigân from the adverb sîga, see Chantraine DELG s.v. σῖγα.

[ back ] 99. Brelich 1958:157n229.

[ back ] 100. Brelich 1958:156–157.

[ back ] 101. Already at the first mention of Akhaíïon, Strabo combines the name with the article to (13.1.32 C506; see also 13.1.46 C604, 13.1.47 C604).

[ back ] 102. In Pindar Nemean 11, we hear that the laudandus of the song, an aristocrat from Tenedos, is descended from ancestors who came from Amyklai with Orestes to settle Tenedos (line 34); these settlers of Tenedos are imagined as a bronze-clad horde of Aeolians (line 35).

[ back ] 103. For a historical overview of this merger of cities into a koinon including Alexandria-in-the-Troad, see Rose 2006:147–149, who highlights the significance of the sanctuary of Athena at New Ilion as a religious center of this koinon. In the era of this koinon, a Panathenaic festival was instituted in New Ilion, modeled on the original Panathenaic festival of Athens; the relevant evidence is surveyed by Rose, who concludes: “the Koinon chose the Panathenaic festival, based directly on the one in Athens. In addition to athletic and musical events, rhapsodes would have sung parts of the Iliad in the city’s agora, which lay in front of the Troy VI fortification wall. That wall was no doubt presented as a remnant of Priam’s citadel, and sections of it were repaired and exhibited to spectators near the Bouleuterion and on the road to the theater” (p. 148).

[ back ] 104. On the concept of an elliptic plural, and on examples of place names in the elliptic plural, see HTL 157–164.

[ back ] 105. From here on, I will write simply Sigeion, Sigia, and Akhilleion.

[ back ] 106. I follow the edition of Bidez 1924.

[ back ] 107. Julian is referring back to a time when he was not yet emperor, and when the official imperial religion had not yet reverted from Christianity to paganism.

[ back ] 108. Julian refers to the Christians derisively as ‘Galilaeans’.

[ back ] 109. The date of the incident that is being narrated is 354 CE. Toward the end of that year, Julian was summoned to travel from Nicomedia, where he was staying at the time, to Milan, where Constantius II was staying (Bidez 1924:85n2). The present letter must have been written after 3 November 361, which is when Constantius II died.

[ back ] 110. As we saw earlier, Alexándreia Trōiás was a Hellenistic city built on the site of ancient Sigia.

[ back ] 111. For a description of this statue of Hector, see Philostratus Heroikos 18.3–7.

[ back ] 112. The speaker is ostentatiously passing over in silence the details of what one can see. The rhetoric here simulates the sense of muein, which refers to visualization and verbalization in sacred contexts and to non-visualization and non-verbalization in profane contexts. See PH 1§29 (= pp. 31–32), 2§30 (= pp. 66–67).

[ back ] 113. The term peri(h)ēgētēs designates a guide who is expert in sacral realia.

[ back ] 114. This time, the speaker is ostentatiously passing over in silence the details of what one can say. See Zosimus 4.18.2 for a reference to the cults of Achilles as they existed in the fourth century CE (Bidez 1924:86n1).

[ back ] 115. The unwholesome eikōn ‘image’ that is produced here results from comparing Hector to a Christian martyr.

[ back ] 116. Here I follow the suggestion of G. W. Most in assigning this sentence to Pegasios and not to Julian as speaker. In any case, the syntax calls attention to the fact that a second experience is about to be narrated. As we will see, there will be three experiences in all.

[ back ] 117. By implication, the Christian bishop is unlocking the door to the temple of Athena Ilias at the site of old Ilion (within New Ilion) because there is at the time no pagan priest of Athena Ilias in charge of that temple (Bidez 1924:86n2).

[ back ] 118. That is, the Christians.

[ back ] 119. That is, Pegasios did not make the sign of the Cross, the sign of the crucified Christ, who is described here as the Impious One.

[ back ] 120. The speaker ostentatiously refers to this third experience as if he had just recalled it at this very moment. By implication, he should pass over the details in silence, but the spontaneous recall inspires him to break his silence. It is as if he would now reveal something that should not be revealed except in a sacred context.

[ back ] 121. There is a wordplay here, since the first detail to be mentioned after the noting of silence is the tomb of Achilles, which requires reverential silence on the part of those who approach it—as opposed to the hostile gesture of ‘hissing at the daimones’.

[ back ] 122. Presumably, he approached the tomb of Achilles in reverential silence.

[ back ] 123. Once again, the rhetoric simulates the sense of muein, which refers to visualization and verbalization in sacred contexts and to non-visualization and non-verbalization in profane contexts.

[ back ] 124. This is a derisive reference to the ecclesiastical robes worn by Christian bishops.

[ back ] 125. This is a derisive reference to the ecclesiastical duties performed by Christian bishops.

[ back ] 126. Such a kataluma ‘hostel’ was evidently an annex to a sanctuary, used for the lodging of those who came to visit the given sanctuary (Bidez 1924:87n2).

[ back ] 127. This reference to Aphobios has not been explained, as far as I know.

[ back ] 128. Leaf 1923:186: “The whole of the large stones from the N[orth] side of Hisarlik have been removed, and it is highly probable that, as Demetrios says, they were taken to build the more modern and flourishing coast towns in the neighbourhood.”

[ back ] 129. Griffith 1995:98–99.

[ back ] 130. Meiggs and Lewis 1988:226.

[ back ] 131. Robertson 1996 argues that the temple of Athena in Sigeion was matched by the temple of Athena Nike in Athens. He also argues that this Athenian temple can be dated back to around 600 BCE. See Frame 2009 §3.74.

[ back ] 132. Leaf 1923:190 surveys the available evidence and concludes that the Athenians never even occupied the actual city of “Troy.”

[ back ] 133. Pfeiffer 1968:250.

[ back ] 134. See again Haubold 2004.

[ back ] 135. This passage of Strabo (13.1.26 C593), if I understand it correctly, goes on to mention the favor shown by Lysimachus not only to the city of New Ilion but also to the new city of Alexandria-in-the-Troad.

[ back ] 136. On the patronage bestowed on New Ilion by the successor to Julius Caesar, the emperor Augustus (and by his own successors), see Rose 2006:152–153. Also Erskine 2001:245–253.

[ back ] 137. There is an engaging account by Pfeiffer 1968:250–251.

[ back ] 138. On this city of Aíneia, see Leaf 1923:277 and Erskine 2001:93–98.

[ back ] 139. I cannot agree with the reasoning of Smith 1981:28–29, who thinks that the Aeolians would not have claimed an affinity with such a pairing of Scamandrius and Ascanius. I will have more to say presently about the political agenda implicit in such a claim.

[ back ] 140. There have been attempts to emend the text of the scholia to say that the Aeolians did not expel the Aeneadae. For a summary, see Aloni 1986:22–23, 112–113. As is evident from my interpretation of the existing text, I see no compelling reason to accept such an emendation.

[ back ] 141. According to the scholia A for Iliad XX 308, there was this variant in the City Editions: λίπωνται ‘will survive’ instead of γένωνται ‘will be born’. On the City Editions, see the Prolegomena to HC.

[ back ] 142. Literally, the subject is a metonym: ‘the power of Aeneas’ is ‘powerful Aeneas’.

[ back ] 143. According to the variant I mentioned just above: ‘who will survive thereafter’.

[ back ] 144. According to the scholia A and T for this line, the reading is Αἰνείω γενεὴ πάντεσσιν ἀνάξει. I infer that this variant was reported by Aristonicus: as I argue in the Prolegomena to Homer the Classic, this Alexandrian editor was based in Rome, not in Alexandria.

[ back ] 145. Leaf 1923:273 notes a shift from Aeolic to Ionic dialect in the language found on the coinage of Scepsis around the fifth century BCE.

[ back ] 146. The second of these two sons of Hector, Skamandros, seems to be the same figure as the Aeolian Skamandrios, that is, Scamandrius.

[ back ] 147. Aloni 1986:76, 102n37; Debiasi 2004:192–193. Such Aeolian links with Aeneas may help account for traces of Aeolic traditions in the wording of the prophecy about Aeneas in the Homeric Hymn (6) to Aphrodite (196–197). See Aloni pp. 78–82.

[ back ] 148. Andromache’s reference here (Euripides Andromache 224) to her nursing the bastards of Hector when she was a queen is meant to contrast with the hostility of Hermione toward the bastard Molossos whom Andromache bore as a slave concubine of Neoptolemos: see Ebbott 2003:75–76.

[ back ] 149. There is a useful commentary in Aloni 1986:62–63.

[ back ] 150. A similar point is made by Aloni 1986:94, though his line of argumentation differs from mine.

[ back ] 151. Smith 1981:57 thinks that the identification of Scamandrius with Astyanax is an Iliadic innovation.

[ back ] 152. All the Aeolian cities listed here are in the general area of the Troad. So it is not that Akamas of Athens really stopped his attempt to control the Troad: in terms of the narrative, he simply stopped his attempt to fortify Ilion (that is, New Ilion) and Dardanos with new walls.

[ back ] 153. Helpful remarks in Aloni 1986:20.

[ back ] 154. See Chapter 3, the section entitled “A post-Athenocentric view of the Homēridai.”

[ back ] 155. The statue of Athena in her temple on the acropolis of Troy is called an agalma in Alcaeus (F 298.21).

[ back ] 156. See Heitsch 1965:128 on the synchronization of the Athenian Erikhthonios with the Trojan Erikhthonios. Also p. 124 on the appropriation of Erikhthonios around 610 BCE, when the Athenians appropriate Sigeion; also pp. 129–130 on the Athenian appropriation of Athena in the Troad, and on the relationship between this appropriation and the passage in Iliad VI referring to the Trojan women’s offering of a peplos to Athena in her temple on the acropolis. In this context, Heitsch p. 129 also connects the reference in Aeschylus Eumenides 397–402 to Athena in the Troad.

[ back ] 157. The narrative introduces these two sets of chariot horses by saying that Anchises secretly bred six horses from the original chariot horses given by Zeus to Tros in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede (Iliad V 263–270); of these six, he kept four for himself and gave two to Aeneas (V 271–272).

[ back ] 158. According to the Parian Marble (FGH 239 section 23) Troy was captured in 1209/8 BCE.

[ back ] 159. Otherwise, Homeric references to four-horse chariot teams are confined to references to chariots used in chariot racing as distinct from warfare (Iliad XI 699–702, Odyssey xiii 81–83).

[ back ] 160. There is a reference to the capture of ‘Aeolian’ Smyrna by Colophon in Mimnermus (F 9 ed. West) as quoted by Strabo (14.1.4 C633). On all matters related to the Ionization of Smyrna, I am indebted to the advice of Douglas Frame. For an essential discussion of the Ionian Dodecapolis and its role in the making of Homeric poetry in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BCE, see Frame 2009 chs. 10 and 11.

[ back ] 161. How and Wells 1928 I 124. On the dating of the loss of Smyrna by the Aeolians to the Ionians, see also Frame 2009:526n21.

[ back ] 162. Graziosi 2002:75.

[ back ] 163. See PH 9§§20–23 (= pp. 263–266) for an overview of passages referring to Smyrna, Colophon, and Magnesia-at-Sipylus as extinct cities.

[ back ] 164. In this passage of Strabo (14.1.37 C646), the notional refounding of Smyrna by Antigonus leads to another refounding by Lysimachus.

[ back ] 165. In this passage of Strabo (13.1.26 C593), the notional refounding of Ilion by Alexander leads to another refounding by Lysimachus; meanwhile, the founding of Antigonia by Antigonus leads to its refounding as Alexandria-in-the-Troad by Lysimachus. Strabo observes that Lysimachus made more of an effort in refounding Alexandria-in-the-Troad than he did in refounding the New Ilion.

[ back ] 166. In making this point, I agree with the overall argumentation of Frame 2009.