II 7ⓢ1. 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:
The city of Mytilene in Lesbos was supposedly representing all Aeolic-speaking Hellenes when it claimed the Iliadic territory of Aeolian Sigeion.
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§45 There is a plethora of external evidence about the status of Achilles as a cult hero. [1] {147|148} Of particular interest is the fact that the attested hero cults of Achilles are predominantly located at Aeolian sites. [2] One such site is the city of Akhílleion, located in territory that once belonged to the city of Sigeion in that other city’s Aeolian phase of existence. This city of Akhílleion, some ten kilometers to the south of Sigeion, was built on the heights of the promontory at the Bay of Beşike, at the southern end of the Sigeion Ridge. [3] Nearby is a tumulus looking out over the sea. As we will see, it was claimed that this tumulus was the tomb of Achilles.
II§46 There was also a rival claim, however. It centered on a tumulus situated some ten kilometers to the north, on the slopes stretching from the heights of the promontory at the northern end of the Sigeion Ridge, in the immediate vicinity of the old city of Sigeion. [4] This tumulus, looking out over the sea of the Hellespont, was likewise claimed as the tomb of Achilles. As the discussion proceeds, we will have to confront this question: Which of these two rival tumuli matches the tomb of Achilles as described in the Homeric Iliad? [5]
II§47 As we learn from the stylized account of Philostratus in the Heroikos (52.3–54.1), the tomb of Achilles in the Troad was the site of seasonally recurring sacrifices offered to the hero. These sacrifices were performed by Aeolians. To be more specific, these Aeolians were Thessalians, that is, Aeolians originating from—and still living in—the territory on the Helladic mainland where the Iliadic hero Achilles himself was reputedly born and raised. So these Aeolians could claim a special connection to the territory on the Asiatic mainland where Achilles died and was buried. Such a claim is relevant to the imperial interests of Athens in the era of the Peisistratidai. We know that one of the sons of Peisistratos, Hegesistratos, was renamed Thessalos (in the Attic dialect, Thettalos) the ‘Thessalian’ (Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 17.3–4), and we also know that this son was directly associated with Sigeion: after that city reverted to the Athenians, he was put in charge as tyrant of the city (Herodotus 5.94.1). [6] The Athenian tyrant’s ad hoc name Thessalos evokes a {148|149} special Athenian connection with the Aeolians who inhabited Thessaly. Herodotus (5.63.3) highlights the ongoing alliance between the dynasts of Thessaly and the Peisistratidai of Athens. [7]
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§49 What I have just formulated can be reconciled with two references in the Iliad to a most singular event: the capture of all Lesbos by a single hero, Achilles of Thessaly (IX 128–131, 270–273). [8] I propose that the story of this capture was a charter myth that accounted for the early appropriation of Lesbos by the Thessalians and for a much later attempt at reappropriation in the specific context of their alliance with the Athenians. In terms of such a charter myth, as I will now argue, the tomb of Achilles could be located not only at the site of Akhílleion, as owned and operated by the Mytilenaeans of Lesbos, but also at the site of Sigeion, as owned and operated by the Athenians. As I will also argue, Homeric poetry was cited as testimony to validate either of these two rival sites.
II§50 Homeric poetry refers at least three times to the tomb of Achilles. There is a direct reference near the end of the Odyssey, when the ghost of Agamemnon in Hades speaks retrospectively about the funeral of Achilles. In that context, we find this description of the tomb of Achilles: [9]
Next, over these [= the bones of Achilles and Patroklos], a great and faultless tomb was built by us the sacred band of Argive spearmen {149|150} on a promontory [aktē] jutting out over the vast Hellespont, [10] so that it might be visible, shining forth from afar, for men at sea [pontos], [11] both for those who live now [12] and for those who will live in the future.
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:
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:
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§54 There is another mention of this same image, again in the Iliad, and here we can see an additional reference, however indirect, to the tomb of Achilles. The narrative here visualizes the selas ‘gleam’ radiating from the bronze surface of the Shield of Achilles, and this gleam is compared to a light emanating from a distant watchfire burning at some solitary outpost situated on the coastal heights overlooking a stormy sea—a light flashing its gleam of salvation for sailors seeking to find their way: [13]
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:
Next, the one with the two great arms [= Hephaistos], whose fame is supreme, made [an image of] a space for pasturing in a beautiful mountainous place. It was a vast space, full of sheep with shining fleeces. It [= this space for pasturing] [16] had stathmoi, klisiai with covering on top, and sēkoi.
II§56 These three words—stathmos, klisia, and sēkos—are applied here in the context of describing a generic pastoral setting. When we compare the etymologies of these three words with the contexts of their usage in other pastoral settings, we find that their reconstructed meanings are interrelated: stathmos, derived from the root *sta- meaning ‘stand up’, is the makeshift post of a herdsman’s shelter or tent; [17] klisia, derived from the root *kli- meaning ‘lie down’ or ‘lean’, is the space in the shelter where the herdsman reclines—or, alternatively, it is a ‘lean-to’ covering that affords a makeshift shelter; [18] and sēkos, derived from the root *sak- meaning ‘fill [an empty space]’, is the enclosure where the herdsman’s herd is penned in. [19] By way of metonymy, the klisia is not only an aspect of the shelter but also the entire shelter; likewise, the stathmos is not only the post of the shelter but also the entire shelter and everything contiguous with the shelter, including the sēkos. [20] In this sense, then, the stathmos is the herdsman’s ‘station’. {152|153}
II§57 The pastoral word sēkos refers not only to the enclosure where a herd is penned in but also to the enclosure where a cult hero is buried and worshipped. [21] I will now argue that such sacral connotations are attached to the pastoral words klisia and stathmos as well. All three words connote traditional images typical of cult heroes.
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:
After Rhoiteion is Sigeion, which is a demolished city, and there is also the naustathmon and the harbor [limēn] of the Achaeans and the Achaean camp [stratopedon] and the so-called mouth-of-the-marsh [stomalimnē] and the outlets [ekbolai] of the Scamander. For the rivers Simoeis and Scamander converge in the plain and bring together a great deal of alluvium there. They [= the two rivers] silt up the coastline and make a blind mouth [tuphlon stoma], sea lagoons [limnothalattai], and marshes [helē]. And facing the promontory [akrā] of Sigeion on the Chersonesus is the space of Protesilaos [22] and Elaioussa [Elaious]. About these things I have already spoken in the section on Thrace. And the length of this coastline, if one sails in a straight line from Rhoiteion to Sigeion and the tomb [mnēma] of Achilles, is sixty stadia. And all of it [= the coastline] is visible from on high in Ilion—I mean both the present-day Ilion, which is about twelve stadia away from the harbor [limēn] of the Achaeans, and the previous Ilion, which is thirty additional stadia farther uphill in the direction of Mount Ida. [23] There is both a sacred precinct [hieron] and a tomb [mnēma] of Achilles in the vicinity of Sigeion, and there are also tombs [mnēmata] of Patroklos and Antilokhos, and the people of Ilion make sacrifices [enagizein] to all these heroes as well as to Ajax.
II§61 On two separate occasions in this passage, Strabo’s wording pairs the site of Sigeion, which he describes as a ‘demolished city’ (κατεσπασμένη πόλις), with the site of the mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles (13.1.31–32 C595). Why this city was no longer in existence in Strabo’s time is a question I will address at a later point. For now I concentrate on the mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles, which Strabo locates in the immediate vicinity of this demolished city of Sigeion and which he pairs with this city in measuring the distance of sixty stadia from the city of Rhoiteion farther to the east. This tomb of Achilles, located in the vicinity of Sigeion near the northern end of the Sigeion Ridge, cannot be the same thing as the tomb of Achilles located in Akhílleion, a site farther to the south on the Aegean coast, which was built on the heights of the promontory at the Bay of Beşike, near the southern end of the Sigeion Ridge. That Akhílleion, as I noted already, is some ten kilometers south of Sigeion. Strabo (13.1.39 C600) speaks of a mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles at this site as well. [24] I will have more to say later about that alternative tomb of Achilles.
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:
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]
II§64 What, then, is the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’? And how are we to imagine the naustathmon? Was it where the “modern” harbor was located in Strabo’s time, some twenty stadia away from the city of New Ilion, or was it where the harbor was supposed to be located in epic times, that is, some twelve stadia away? For answers, I turn to the evidence provided by modern geological studies of the Troad. As we see from this evidence, there existed in prehistoric times a Trojan Bay on the coastline of the Hellespont between the promontory of Sigeion to the west and the promontory of Rhoiteion to the east. Map 1 shows the relevant topography, as reconstructed by geologists on the basis of the existing geomorphology: [28] {156|157}
Map 1. Map of the Trojan Bay area at the time of the traditional dating of the Trojan War, ca. 3250 B.P.
II§65 In the Bronze Age, as we see in Map 1, the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’ was once a huge bay interrupting the coastline of the Hellespont. This bay had once been the harbor of the Trojans. In other words, Troy had once been a city with a great harbor positioned at the entrance to the Hellespont. [29] So the new geological evidence has rewritten the prehistory of the story told in our Iliad: we now see that the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’ had once been the harbor of the Trojans. But now, in the time {157|158} of the Trojan War, it was the Achaeans who stationed their ships there—at least, according to the narrative of the Iliad as we know it. In a related context, Strabo speaks of the naustathmon as the northernmost point of the geographical area once controlled by Hector on the Trojan Plain (13.1.33 C596).
II§66 This Trojan Bay interrupting the coastline of the Hellespont was still in existence in the time of Strabo, though its dimensions were considerably reduced over the years by silting in the area where the river Scamander flowed into it. [30] Map 2 shows the relevant topography, as reconstructed by geologists on the basis of available geomorphological evidence, supplemented by relevant information from Strabo: {158|159}
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ⓣ11 Pliny the Elder Natural History 5.33
Scamander amnis navigabilis et in promuntorio quondam Sigeum oppidum. Dein portus Achaeorum, in quem influit Xanthus Simoenti iunctus stagnumque prius faciens, Palaeoscamander
The Scamander is a navigable river; and, at the promontory, there was once a city called Sigeion. The next thing to talk about is the harbor of the Achaeans, into which flows {159|160} the Xanthos—that is, the Palaeoscamander, which joins with the Simoeis before it forms a lagoon at the outlet. [32]
II§70 Why does Strabo say that the naustathmon in epic time must be located next to the outlet of the Scamander? It is because he thinks that the internal evidence of the Iliad requires such a location. As I will now argue, Strabo’s opinion is actually borne out by that internal evidence. In making such an argument, I will examine the relevant references to the topography of the Troad in the Iliad. These references, as the work of Joseph Cuillandre has demonstrated, reveal a remarkable consistency and precision in visualizing that topography. [33] But there is more to it. It is not just a matter of consistency and precision. These references, I argue, are external indications of an internal reality, and that reality is the formulaic system of Homeric poetry—a system that organizes the external reality of what is pictured by that poetry.
II§71 The Iliad situates the naustathmon, imagined as the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, in the Trojan Bay of the Hellespont. In the Iliad, we see an explicit reference to this bay: ἠϊόνος στόμα μακρόν ‘the deep bay of the coast’ (XIV 36). [34] According to the Iliad, the ships of the Achaeans are beached along the coastline of this bay, with their sterns pointing inward in the direction of the land and with their prows pointing outward in the direction of the water (I 409, XVIII 76; cf. XIV 32, XV 385). [35] So the naustathmon is not to be imagined as a harbor in the modern sense of the word: according to the Iliad, the ships of the Achaeans were neither anchored offshore in a harbor nor docked in a harbor.
II§72 As we see from the internal evidence of the Iliadic narrative, the beached ships of two heroes, Achilles and Ajax, are situated the farthest apart from each other: the ship of Achilles is at a point farthest to the west along the coastline of the bay, while the ship of Ajax is at a point farthest to the east. This relative positioning of the beached ships of Achilles and Ajax is determined by the Iliadic references to the beached ship of Odysseus, which is situated at a centerpoint of the bay’s coastline extending from the ship of Achilles at one extreme in the west to the ship of Ajax at the other extreme in the east (VIII 220–226 and XI 5–9). Agamemnon is {160|161} shown standing on the ship of Odysseus, which is en messatōi ‘in the middlemost space’, when he projects his voice of authority and calls out to all the Achaeans stationed at their ships—from the ship of Achilles at one extreme all the way to the ship of Ajax at the other (VIII 220–226). Agamemnon’s own ship, together with the ships of Diomedes and Nestor, is near the ship of Odysseus, and it is in this ‘middlemost space’ that the central station of the Achaeans is visualized by the narrative of the Iliad (XIV 27–36). [36]
II§73 It is this central station, this notional centerpoint, that Strabo identifies as the naustathmon, to be equated with the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’. It is here, next to the beached ship of Odysseus, that the Achaeans of the Iliad hold their assemblies and perform their sacrifices (XI 807–808). [37] Such a centerpoint is not only topographical: it is also political—even sacral.
II§74 It is this central station that becomes the political stage of Agamemnon when he stands on the beached ship of Odysseus and projects his voice of authority to all the Achaeans stationed at their ships (VIII 220–226). And it is this central station that becomes the prime target of the Trojan hero Hector when he seeks to penetrate the defenses of the Achaeans. What stands in Hector’s way is the Achaean Wall, with a central gate that leads to and from the central station, and it is through this gate that the forces of the Achaeans enter and exit the theater of war (VII 337–343); the Iliad even pictures the comings and goings of war chariots through this gate (VII 340). [38] And it is next to this gate that the sacred common tomb of the Achaean dead is located (VII 336–337). So we see here a sacred as well as strategic gateway to the naustathmon, which is both the topographical and the political centerpoint of the Achaeans.
II§75 I draw attention to the pointed sharing of this ‘middlemost’ space by two figures in particular, Agamemnon and Odysseus. As I noted, it is from the beached ship of Odysseus that Agamemnon projects his voice of authority. The sharing of the topographical centerpoint by these two heroes is homologous with their sharing of the political centerpoint, as far as the epic quarrels of Achilles are concerned: the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad, as I have argued at length elsewhere, is linked with the quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus in the “micro-Iliad” of Odyssey viii. [39] Stationed next to the political centerpoint, besides Odysseus, is the leader of the Athenians, Menestheus: he too, like Odysseus, is stationed next to the headquarters of Agamemnon (IV 327, [40] XII 331–377 [41] ). {161|162}
II§76 In the course of the action narrated in the Iliad, Hector manages to penetrate the defenses of the Achaeans as he breaks through the gate of the Achaean Wall and heads for the all-important naustathmon. There he sets fire to the ship of Protesilaos (XV 704–706; XVI 122–124). Achilles sees from afar this critical moment when that ship catches fire (XVI 127). [42] He has been observing the battle scene, standing next to his own ship and in front of his klisia ‘shelter’ (XVI 255–256). [43] Hector’s act of setting fire to the ship of Protesilaos is of deep symbolic value, since Protesilaos had been the first Achaean hero to land on the shores of the Troad—and the first to be killed by a pointedly unnamed Trojan warrior (Iliad II 699–792). [44] Accordingly, the ship of Protesilaos had been the first of all Achaean ships to be beached—and thus the nearest target for the threatening fire of Hector (XIII 681; XVI 286, 294–298). [45]
II§77 As we take a second look at Map 2, the map of the Troad as described by Strabo, it is by now evident that the naustathmon must be located somewhere near the center of the coastline of the bay—immediately to the west of the Scamander’s outlet as pictured on Map 1. In terms of Strabo’s reconstruction, to repeat, the Iliadic setting of the naustathmon is to be identified with the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, which the geographer locates at a distance of twelve stadia from what we know as Troy. By contrast, Strabo’s measurement of twenty stadia as the distance between this Troy and the actual outlet of the Scamander in his own time indicates how much farther to the west the pathway of the river had already veered. [46]
II§78 In order to define more precisely the location of the naustathmon in relation to the Scamander, I propose to combine the external evidence about the Trojan Bay with the internal evidence of the formulaic system that visualizes the Achaean ships stationed along the coastline of this bay. As we follow on Map 2 the contour of this coastline, we see a U-shaped curve that starts at the station of Achilles in the northwest, near the promontory of Sigeion, and ends at the station of Ajax in the northeast, near the promontory of Rhoiteion. The section of the curve that extends from the northwest station of Achilles to the central station is much longer than the section that extends from the central station to the northeast station of Ajax. So the {162|163} centerpoint is really off-center toward the east: it is situated much farther away from the station of Achilles and much closer to the station of Ajax, which is practically due north of the outlet of the Scamander. [47] Here is what the Homeric scholia say:
IIⓣ12 Scholia T for Iliad VII 339b1 (exegetical scholia)
“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§80 In this phase of the Trojan War, the fighting between the Achaeans and the Trojans on the Trojan Plain is consistently visualized as taking place to the right of the river Scamander—that is, to the west. This visualization reflects a reality built into the overall Iliadic narrative about the Trojan War. The narrative point of reference in the Iliad consistently follows the north-to-south perspective of the Achaeans. [51]
II§81 This epic visualization is compatible with the topographic reconstruction outlined by Strabo. In terms of this reconstruction, as we have seen, the naustathmon must be the same thing as the ‘harbor of the Achaeans’, and the outlet of the Scamander must be located next to the naustathmon in the epic time of the Iliad, not farther westward as in the actual time of Strabo. Moreover, the naustathmon must be located on the west side of the Scamander, as we see from the overall narrative logic of the Iliad. [52] So long as the anger of Achilles remains in force, the Trojans will remain in possession of the east side of the river while they continue to fight the Achaeans on the west side, as is the case in the battle scene in Iliad XI that we have just considered. [53] Only after Achilles rejoins his comrades-in-arms and returns to the battlefield will the Trojans be pushed back to the east side of the Scamander, which finally happens in Iliad XXI. There the raging Achilles pushes the Trojans back to the edge of the west bank of the Scamander (XXI 1); and there they perish, either at the hands of Achilles or by drowning (7–21)—unless they manage to escape by crossing over to the east bank of the river (2–4). [54]
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§84 The narrative of the Iliad, in picturing where the ship of Achilles is beached, situates this place on the west coastline of the Deep Bay, at a point that is closest to the tomb of Achilles. As we look once again at Map 2, the map of the Troad as described by Strabo, we see that this tomb, situated on the heights of the promontory of Sigeion, must have had a commanding view of not one but two coastlines, one of which was the coastline of the bay to the east; the other, the coastline of the Aegean Sea to the west—that is, the coastline of the outer Hellespont. Up to now, I have been focusing on the coastline of the bay to the east, where the ship of Achilles is beached. Now I will concentrate on the coastline of the outer Hellespont to the west, where the tomb of Achilles looks out from the heights toward the sea. [58]
II§85 In a most memorable passage of the Iliad (XXIII 138–151), we can see the grieving figure of Achilles as he stands on the heights of the promontory and looks out {165|166} toward the sea (143). Where he is standing, on the promontory (125 aktē), is the place he marks out for building the funeral pyre of Patroklos (125–126), which catches fire and burns only after the gods who control the winds that sweep over the seas of the Hellespont from the north (Boreas) and from the west (Zephyros) assent to the ignition (192–230). [59] This funeral pyre is at the same place where the tomb shared by Patroklos and Achilles will be built after Achilles himself is killed (126). [60] As Achilles looks out from these heights over the seas of the outer Hellespont, he is facing homeward, fixing his gaze in the direction of his native land of Thessaly and yearning for the river Sperkheios that flows through that distant land: it was to the waters of that river, which he will never live to see again, that he had hoped to sacrifice his long blond hair after he came of age to cut it. [61] Whenever Achilles looks west toward Thessaly, he could be standing at either of the two places where his tomb is located in the time of Strabo. The vantage point can be either Aeolian or Athenian.
II§86 How, then, are we to imagine this tomb of Achilles in the days when the city of Sigeion was still in its full glory? In the traditional way of visualizing places where heroes are buried, such a tomb would be a tumulus. Strabo’s wording indicates the existence of a tumulus identified with the tomb of the hero Achilles situated on the slopes extending from the heights of the promontory of Sigeion. This tumulus is visualized as the counterpart of another tumulus, that is, the tomb of the hero Protesilaos. We have already seen Strabo’s juxtaposition of the two tombs, one on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont and one on the European side, facing each other across the strait (Strabo 13.1.31 C595). [62] In the Heroikos of Philostratus (9.1), the word that refers to the tumulus of Protesilaos is kolōnos. [63] Comparable is the Homeric word kolōnē (Iliad II 811), referring to a prominent tumulus in the Trojan landscape where Hector marshals the military forces of the Trojans (811–815): it is described as a sacred place that is known to mortals as Batieia (813) and to immortals as the sēma ‘tomb’ of Murinē (814).
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}
This kolōnos, guest-stranger, which you see standing at the brow of the promontory [aktē], was built [ageirein ‘pile stones together’] by the Achaeans who came together at the time when he [= Achilles] was mixed together with Patroklos for their joint burial, having provided for himself [= Achilles] and for that one [= Patroklos] the most beautiful of funeral rites. And this is the origin of the custom of singing his name in praise when people celebrate the bonds of love between friends. Of all mortals who ever existed, he [= Achilles] was buried in the most spectacular way, what with all the gifts that Greece bestowed upon him. No longer could the Greeks consider it a beautiful thing to grow their hair long, once Achilles was gone. [64] Whatever gold or other possession each of them had brought to Troy or had taken away from the division of spoils [= spoils taken at Troy] was now collected and piled up on top of the funeral pyre, right then and there. The same thing happened also later when Neoptolemos came to Troy. He [= Achilles] received another round of glorious gifts from his son and from the Achaeans who were trying to show their gratitude [kharis] to him. Even as they were getting ready to sail away from Troy, they would keep throwing themselves on top of the place of burial and believe that they were embracing Achilles. [65]
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).
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.
When they approached the tomb [sēma] after the hymn [humnos], a shield was banged upon as in battle, and together with rhythmic coordination they cried alala while calling upon Achilles. When they had garlanded [stephanoûn] the summit of the tumulus [kolōnos] and dug sacrificial pits on it, they slaughtered the black bull as to one who is dead. They also called upon Patroklos to come to the feast, so as to gratify [= makekharisfor] Achilles. After they slit the victim’s throat and made this sacrifice [enagizein], they evidently proceeded to go down to the ship, and, after sacrificing [thuein] the other bull on the beach again to Achilles and having begun the offering by taking from the basket and by partaking of the entrails for that sacrifice [thusia] (for they sacrificed [thuein] this sacrifice [thusia] as to a god), they sailed away toward dawn, taking the sacrificed animal so as not to feast in the enemy’s country. These practices, guest-stranger, which are so holy and ancient, had been reportedly discontinued by the tyrants who are said to have ruled the Thessalians after the Aiakidai. And even the Thessalians had neglected these practices. [68]
II§89 In the passage I cited earlier from the Heroikos of Philostratus about the original epic act of building the kolōnos of Achilles, it is made clear that this act was imagined as a piling of stones, as we see from the use of the word ageirein (51.12). [69] The tumulus that is the kolōnos is mentally associated not only with the stones on its surface but also with the sacred corpse of the cult hero inside. For example, the kolōnos of Protesilaos, surrounded by elm trees, ‘extends over’ (ep-ekhein) the body of the cult hero (9.1). We see similar patterns of mental association in the Oedipus at Colonus {169|170} of Sophocles: in that work the place name Kolōnos refers to a sacred grove (690, 889) where Oedipus’ body is destined to receive an oikos, that is, an ‘abode’ befitting a cult hero (627). [70] There is a metonymy implicit in the name: the tumulus that is the kolōnos becomes, by extension, the name of the whole sacred grove—and, by further extension, the name of the whole deme of Attica in which the grove is situated. [71]
II 7ⓢ2. The tomb of Achilles as a landmark for the festival of the Panathenaia
II§90 The tumulus of the generic cult hero, as marked by the word kolōnos, is conventionally envisaged as shining white. For example, the place name Colonus, which is the metonym Kolōnos, is described with the epithet argēs ‘shining white’ in Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus (670). In Black Figure vase paintings, the tumulus of the generic cult hero is conventionally painted shining white, foregrounded against the red background of the fired clay. What this foregrounding represents is the white stucco that covers the tumulus of the cult hero. [72] There are a number of Black Figure paintings that show the tomb of Achilles this way, and I will concentrate here on two examples of such paintings. These paintings are found on vases to which I will refer simply as the Boston Hydria (Figure 1) [73] and the Münster Hydria (Figure 2). [74] Both are dated to the last two decades of the sixth century BCE. That date, as we will see, is most relevant to the content of the paintings. That date, moreover, matches roughly the date of the Polyxena Sarcophagus, which was excavated from such a tumulus and which features a relief showing the sacrifice of Polyxena at the tumulus of Achilles. [75] This tumulus matches in appearance the tumulus of Achilles as represented on the Black Figure paintings. {170|171}
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§95 Every time we look through the painted window that frames this painted scene, we return to this same precise moment. As Emily Vermeule says: “The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world, outside the window frame through which the spectator views it, in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.” [81] This moment is the critical moment of the apobatēs, the apobatic moment.
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§101 It cannot be said, however, that the narrative of the painting must be derived from the Iliad as we know it. Such a further inference is unjustified. It cannot even be said that the narrative of the painting was derived from an Iliad that was different from the one we know. It would be simplistic to think that a narrative inherent in a painting that dates from the last two decades of the sixth century BCE was derived from {174|175} any text. The visual medium of heroic narrative by way of painting did not have to depend on the verbal medium of heroic narrative by way of poetry. [82]
II§102 On the other hand, it can be said that both the visual and the verbal media of heroic narrative were dependent on the basic principle of making contact with the traditional world of heroes—who were honored by way of ritual as well as myth. As I have argued extensively elsewhere, the rules of heroic narrative in the archaic period of Greek civilization were governed by the myths and rituals linked with the cult of heroes. [83] What applies to the medium of poetry applies equally to the medium of painting.
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§105 It has been argued that the main picture on the Münster Hydria represents the notional beginnings of a hero cult shared by Achilles with his other self, Patroklos. [84] The two of them preside as cult heroes of the athletic event of the apobatai at the festival of the Panathenaia. The death of Patroklos, which is the prototype for the death of Achilles himself, is figured as the aetiology of this athletic event, which shows the ritual dimension of the cult hero as a complement to the mythical dimension that we see played out in narratives conveyed by painting as well as by poetry. The painting on the Münster Hydria shows Achilles as a prototypical participant in this hero cult by way of participating in this athletic event. Through his prototypical participation, Achilles shows the way for future athletes to participate {175|176} in this athletic event of the apobatai at the seasonally recurring festival of the Panathenaia for all time to come.
II§106 A parallel argument can be made about the Funeral Games for Patroklos in Iliad XXIII. [85] Here too Achilles is shown as a prototypical participant in the hero cult of his other self, Patroklos. Here too he shows the way for future athletes to participate in his own hero cult by way of participating in the athletic events we see described in Iliad XXIII, especially in the chariot race. In this case, however, Achilles does not himself participate in the athletic events of the Funeral Games for Patroklos: rather, it is the other surviving Achaean heroes of the Iliad who serve as prototypical participants in the athletic events, while Achilles himself simply presides over these events as if he were already dead, having already achieved the status of the cult hero who will be buried in the tumulus to be shared with his other self, Patroklos. [86]
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§109 Such a version of the Iliad, I argue, was current in the era when the Boston Hydria and the Münster Hydria were painted. It was in this era when the poetic program of the Panathenaia was being reformed by the tyrant Hipparkhos son of Peisistratos. As we have seen in Chapter 1, this Athenian tyrant played a role in shaping the ultimate form of the Panathenaic Homer, that is, of the Homeric Iliad and {176|177} Odyssey as we know them. As we have also seen, Hipparkhos is credited with having established the Athenian institution that we know today as the Panathenaic Regulation, which concerns the performing of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey at the festival of the Panathenaia. In terms of the Panathenaic Regulation, the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey became the standard epic repertoire of the quadrennial Panathenaic festival. In Chapter 1, I quoted the passage in “Plato” Hipparkhos (228b-c) where we read what amounts to an aetiology of the Panathenaic Regulation. As I argued in that chapter, the custom of relay performing the Iliad and Odyssey in sequence at the festival of the Panathenaia is a ritual in and of itself. [87]
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 7ⓢ3. 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§117 Let us consider the reference made by Strabo (13.1.39 C600) to the mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles on the heights of the promontory that forms the southern end of the Sigeion Ridge at what is called today the Bay of Beşike. As Strabo says, this mnēma ‘tomb’ was thought to be located inside the ‘space of Achilles’: that is, inside what he calls the Akhílleion. In other words, the site of Akhílleion is visualized here as a settlement named after the sacral centerpoint of the hero’s tomb. The name of the tomb is a metonym for the whole site. Akhílleion means literally ‘space of Achilles’, and its morphology is specifically Aeolic, stemming from the two-gender adjective Akhílleios, Akhílleion. Strabo adds pointedly that Akhílleion, which had once been a fortified Aeolian city, was in his own time merely ‘a small settlement’, {178|179} katoikia mikra (again, 13.1.39 C600). By contrast, as we saw earlier, Herodotus refers to this same site as the ‘city of Achilles’, Akhillēios polis (5.94.2). [88]
II§118 At an earlier point in his survey of the Troad, Strabo refers to a mnēma ‘tomb’ of Achilles in a hieron ‘sacred space’ of Achilles that he locates πρὸς Σιγείῳ ‘at Sigeion’, adding that there are also mnēmata ‘tombs’ of Patroklos and Antilokhos in this vicinity, and that the people of New Ilion offer sacrifices to these three heroes as also to a fourth hero, Ajax (13.1.32 C596). The word used by Strabo in this context, enagizein ‘offer sacrifice’, indicates that the people of New Ilion worshipped Achilles, Patroklos, Antilokhos, and Ajax as cult heroes. The tomb of Achilles that Strabo locates ‘at Sigeion’, on the promontory to the northwest of the Trojan Bay of the Hellespont, is matched by the tomb of Ajax that Strabo locates at Rhoiteion, on the promontory to the northeast of this bay. Strabo (13.1.30 C595) describes Rhoiteion as a polis ‘city’ situated on the heights; overlooking (epi) its coastline (ēiōn) was the mnēma ‘tomb’ and the hieron ‘sacred space’ of Ajax, along with an andrias ‘statue’ of the hero. [89]
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§122 I propose, however, that there are symbolic as well as practical reasons for the use of stones taken from the city walls of the old Ilion in order to fortify Sigeion and, later on, to fortify the Akhílleion: such a use establishes a symbolic connection between the old Ilion and the new Iliadic structures being built. Among these structures was the historical reality of New Ilion itself, an Aeolian city founded in the seventh (or possibly as early as the eighth) century BCE, which was built on the ruins of the old Ilion. [90] Archaeologists have successfully identified the old Ilion of the Iliad (whether it be Troy VI or Troy VIIa) as an earlier stratum of this New Ilion (Troy VIII), which was sought out in historical times by world rulers striving to link themselves with the heroes of the epic past. In 480 BCE, as we saw earlier, Xerxes made sacrifice to Athena, surnamed hē Ilias, in New Ilion; he also made libations to the ‘heroes’ (Herodotus 7.43.2); Alexander the Great likewise sacrificed to Athena in New Ilion (Strabo 13.1.26 C593; Arrian Anabasis 1.11.7).
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§125 I propose that the Athenian version of the tomb of Achilles can be identified with {180|181} one of two tumuli that are still visible to the northeast of the ancient site of Sigeion. Both these tumuli can be dated back to the early fifth century and, more likely, even farther back to the sixth century. [91] The larger one of the two could have been adduced as the tomb that contained the bones of both Achilles and Patroklos as mentioned in the Iliad (XXIII 83–84, 91–92, 125–126, 245–248) and Odyssey (xxiv 76–77), and the smaller one, as the tomb that contained the bones of Antilokhos, which were kept separate from the bones of the other two heroes according to the Odyssey (xxiv 78–79).
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§128 A problem remains in the wording of Strabo (13.1.32 C596), which implies that there were separate tombs of Achilles and Patroklos at Sigeion. [92] To be contrasted is the Homeric version, according to which the bodies of Achilles and Patroklos shared a single tomb. I suggest that the problem is removed if we view such distinctions in terms of a postclassical antiquarian elaboration. By the time of Strabo, after all, it was the city of New Ilion that presided over the cult of heroes in the Troad, since the city of Sigeion itself had already been completely demolished, as the geographer himself notes explicitly in an earlier remark (13.1.31 C595). So the maintenance of the tombs no longer reflected the Athenian ideology of Sigeion.
II§129 From the standpoint of Athenian ideology, the tomb of Achilles had to be a tumulus in Sigeion, since the Athenians had lost through arbitration the environs of Akhílleion, which was the site of another tumulus identified with the tomb of Achilles. The tumulus at Akhílleion, belonging to the Aeolians, was evidently older and thus potentially more prestigious than the tumulus belonging to the Atheni-{181|182} ans. This older tumulus, known today as Beşik Tepe, can be dated as far back as the sixth or even the seventh century BCE. [93]
II§130 This is not to say, however, that we have to choose between one version or the other, as if the data of only one of the two versions could be valid. It is not simply a matter of conflicting data about what really happened in the Trojan War. Rather, it is a matter of conflicting data stemming from the traditions of conflicting groups that tell us more about their own conflicts than about what really happened in the Trojan War. So each of the two versions needs to be studied on its own terms. Arguing that there was only one tomb of Achilles seems to me as pointless as arguing that there was only one possible place for the Achaeans to land in the Troad. So it is not our place to choose which version was right. Rather, we need to find out what choices were made and by whom. And the choice made in the Iliad as we have it is the choice made by the Athenians. It is the Athenian version that prevails in this Iliad, not the Aeolian version. According to the Athenian version, the tomb of Achilles was located at the north end of the Ridge of Sigeion, whereas it was located at the south end according to the Aeolian version. Correspondingly, the Achaeans landed at the Trojan Bay on the Hellespont in the Athenian version, whereas they most probably landed at the Bay of Beşike in the Aeolian version. [94] So long as the Athenians dominated the Trojan landscape by way of their outpost at Sigeion, the Athenian version of the Iliadic tradition must have eclipsed the Aeolian version.
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§132 This is not to say that there is no trace of an Aeolian Iliad in our Iliad. When Achilles stands at the tumulus of Patroklos and looks out homeward toward the west, he could be standing either at the northern or at the southern crest of the Sigeion Ridge. Moreover, even our Iliad shows glimpses of Trojan topography that require an Aeolian vantage point. A case in point is the scene in Iliad XIV (282–293) where Hera is about to mate with Zeus: as the scene opens, we see the god Hypnos accompanying the goddess Hera as she touches ground at Cape Lekton in the {182|183} Troad and proceeds up the slopes of Mount Ida to reach Zeus, who is seated on a peak called the Gargaron akron. The skyline envisaged here, as an archaeologist has noticed, matches what you would see from the vantage point of the city of Methymna on the northern shores of Aeolian Lesbos as you look across the strait to the mainland of the Troad:
[The Gargaron akron in Iliad XIV] must have been the massive peak (Koca Kaya) on which in due course the people of Methymna planted a city named Gargara. It is far from being the highest point of Ida (barely 2500 [feet] as against 5800 [feet] in the high Kaz Daǧi), and it would get no view of the Plain of Troy. But it is the dominant peak in the panorama across the strait from Lesbos, the whole stretch from Lekton to Gargara forming the skyline seen from Methymna. [95]
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
They say that in Tarentum, at certain times of the year, they make sacrifice [enagizein] to the Atreidai, the Tydeidai, the Aiakidai, and the Laertiadai; also, that they conduct a sacrifice [thusia] separately to the Agamemnonidai on another day that is special to them. And on that day it is unlawful for women to taste of the meat that is sacrificed to those ones [= the Agamemnonidai as cult heroes]. [96] There is also in their territory a {183|184} sacred space of Achilles. It is said that, after the people of Tarentum took over the place they still inhabit, it was called Herakleia, but that in previous times, when the Ionians were living there, it was called Pleion. And that, even before them, when the Trojans were occupying it, it was called Sígeion.
II§134 The morphology of the place name Sígeion is parallel to that of Akhílleion, which as we saw is typical of the Aeolic dialect. [97] As for the root of this form Sígeion, it is cognate with the root of the adverb sîga ‘silently’ and of its derivatives, including the verb sigân ‘be silent’ and the adjective sígēlos ‘silent’. [98] The name Sígēlos is even attested as the secret name of a cult hero. As we learn from a reference datable to the second or third century CE (Alciphron Letters 3.22.3), those who pass by the tomb of the cult hero Sígēlos must observe reverential silence. [99] In general, cult heroes attract a variety of epithets referring to the reverential silence required of those who are initiated into the Mysteries of worshipping them. [100]
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, AlexándreiaTrōiás 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§136 I conclude, then, that both Sígeion and Sigía refer to heights imagined as markers of sacred places where tombs of heroes are located. As for the actual meaning of these Aeolic place names Sígeion and Sigía, both signal a sacred space of reverential silence. By metonymy, the naming of these heights Sígeion and Sigía is connected with the practice of observing reverential silence at the tombs of heroes. [105]
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]
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 thedaimones 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 7ⓢ4. 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§142 The Aeolian city of New Ilion and the Aeolian city of Akhilleion both affirmed an Aeolian identity by way of the same physical metonymy: both these cities, like the once Aeolian city of Sigeion, were physically connected to the old city of Ilion, since their new walls had been built with the stones of the old walls of Ilion. [128] By contrast with Akhilleion and New Ilion, the identity of the formerly Aeolian city of Sigeion was complicated by its Athenian redefinition after the city was repossessed once and for all by Peisistratos in the sixth century BCE. This Athenian redefinition of Sigeion was in turn complicated by the fact that the Persian empire became a major force in the politics of Greek cities in Asia Minor, Sigeion included, in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. In the case of Sigeion, this city became a refuge for Hippias son of Peisistratos, after he was overthrown in 510 as tyrant of Athens and went over to the side of the Persians (Herodotus 5.94.1, Thucydides 6.59.4).
II§143 After 479, the Persian domination of the Troad gave way to Athenian domination. The next time we hear of Sigeion in the course of history, it figures as a satellite of the democratic Athenian empire. In the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus, presented in the year 458 BCE, the goddess Athena claims the territory of Sigeion as the political and poetic possession of Athens. [129] As the goddess makes her grand entrance in the third part of the trilogy, the Eumenides, she announces that she has just flown over to Athens from the territory of Sigeion, described metonymically as the banks of the river Scamander, where she has just finished claiming for herself—and thereby for her city—the territory of Sigeion. This territory, the goddess proclaims, had been assigned by the Achaeans to the Athenians as just reward for the participation of Athens in the Trojan War:
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§144 In an inscription dated to the middle of the fifth century BCE, we see the city of Sigeion listed as a member of the Delian League (IG I317), paying a thousand drachmas yearly to the central treasury of the Athenians; by the year 418/7, we find that the annual sum has been upgraded to a whole talent, which is some six times the earlier amount (ATL I list 33). [130]
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§149 A salient indication of such an Athenian ideology is the retrospective reference made by Herodotus (5.95.1) to ‘the Athēnaion in Sigeion’ (τὸ Ἀθήναιον τὸ ἐν Σιγείῳ) in his narration of the struggle between Athens and Mytilene over possession of ‘the Iliadic territory’, hē Ilias khōra (τῆς Ἰλιάδος χώρης). This Athēnaion or ‘sacred space of Athena’, located in Sigeion as it existed in its Athenian phase, must have been a rival to the sacred space of Athena located in the Aeolian New Ilion. [131] Both versions of that sacred space, the Aeolian one and the Athenian one, could be seen as re-enactments of the nēós ‘temple’ of Athena situated on the acropolis of Troy—as we see it pictured in Iliad VI (297).
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§151 But the Aeolian identity of New Ilion survived, endangered though it was during the period when Athenian domination extended to that part of the Troad. [132] The historian Hellanicus of Lesbos, whose publications can be dated as far back as 406 BCE (scholia for Aristophanes Frogs 694), is on record as claiming in his Trōïka (FGH 4 F 25b) that New Ilion was in fact the same city as the old Ilion. Our source here is Strabo (13.1.42 C602), who adds that this claim of Hellanicus reflects the historian’s partiality toward the people of the Aeolian New Ilion. [133] The birthplace of Hellanicus, Lesbos, indicates that his claim reflects his cultural identification with the Aeolians.
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§156 The good fortune of New Ilion did not stop with the beneficences of Alexander the Great and his successors. As Strabo notes, the ascendancy of this city in the era of Alexander was even further enhanced later on in the era of Roman domination at the special initiative of Julius Caesar, whose family claimed that their lineage could be traced all the way back to Iulus, the alternative name of Ascanius son of Aeneas (13.1.27 C594–595). [136]
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):
The city of Scepsis, after being founded by Aeneas, was ruled jointly by Ascanius (Askanios) son of Aeneas and Scamandrius (Skamandrios) son of Hector.
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§168 Modern archaeology has proved that the claim of the Aeolians as represented by Hellanicus of Lesbos was basically right and that the rival claim of the Ionians as later represented by Demetrius of Scepsis was wrong. There is in fact no historical or archaeological support for the claim that the old Ilion was located in the Ionian territory of Scepsis. [137]
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:
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.
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).
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§170 In terms of the third of these three claims, according to which Troy was not completely abandoned after its capture by the Achaeans, there was not only a surviving population that stayed in old Ilion but also a dynasty that ruled over such a population. There are traces of a traditional narrative about such a dynasty in the Trōïka of Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGH 4 F 31), as reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 1.45.4–1.48.1): according to this narrative, Aeneas himself was at least indirectly involved in such a dynasty. Here is a summary of what Hellanicus says:
After Aeneas escaped the capture of Troy by retreating to the highlands of Mount Ida, he negotiated with the victorious Achaeans his relocation to the city of Aíneia on the Thermaic Gulf. [138]
Meanwhile, his son Ascanius was relocated as king of Daskylitis on the coast of the Sea of Marmara.
Eventually, Ascanius returned to the old Ilion, where he joined forces with Scamandrius (Skamandrios) son of Hector in refounding it as the New Ilion. [139]
II§171 In terms of this Aeolian version, the joint rule of the descendants of Aeneas and Hector over New Ilion was not to last, as we see from the following report in the Homeric scholia:
IIⓣ18 Scholia T for Iliad XX 307–308a1 (exegetical scholia)
Other people say that the Aeolians expelled the descendants of Aeneas. [140]
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:
But, now I know, the lineage of Aeneas will rule over all, and so too will his son and his son’s sons who will be born thereafter.
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§180 The conflicting Aeolian and Ionian myths about Troy after the Trojan War can be correlated with an eventual differentiation of New Ilion and Scepsis as respectively Aeolian and Ionian cities. We know by hindsight that New Ilion was in fact a predominantly Aeolian city, whereas Scepsis, once an Aeolian city, eventually shifted toward an Ionian identity. [145] The earlier Aeolian identity of Scepsis matches the iden-{200|201} tification of the Aeolians with the descendants of Hector, who ruled the city jointly with the descendants of Aeneas (Strabo 13.1.52 C607). And, conversely, the later Ionian identity of Scepsis matches the identification of the Ionians with the descendants of Aeneas.
II§181 This is not to say that the Aeneadae were all along perceived as Ionians. Their Ionian identity was merely a function of the eventual Ionian identity of places where they were relocated after the Trojan War, such as Scepsis. That is why the identity of the Aeneadae is in fact Aeolian rather than Ionian if they are relocated to places that have an Aeolian identity. We see an example in a myth about Aeneas as retold by the mythographer Conon, who flourished in the first century BCE and CE. According to this source (Conon FGH 26 F 1.46), Aeneas founded a settlement in the region of Mount Ida but was later displaced from there by two surviving sons of Hector, namely by Oxynios and Skamandros (F 1.46.2); [146] Aeneas then migrated to the Thermaic Gulf (F.1.46.3), where he founded the city of Aíneia, also known as Aînos (F.1.46.4). The same name Aînos applies to a city on the banks of the river Ebros; that city, and Aíneia as well, were Aeolian settlements. [147]
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§192 In their mutual agreement, however, these two traditions are pointedly contradicted by a third tradition, which corresponds to what we find in the Iliad itself. To show this contradiction, I highlight a verse in the Andromache of Euripides (224) where Andromache speaks of the nothoi ‘bastards’ of Hector whom she nursed at {203|204} her breast along with the legitimate son that the couple had together. [148] According to the scholia for this verse, Scamandrius was one of those bastards, and he is described as the son of Hector who survives the destruction of Troy and escapes to the highlands of Mount Ida (Σκαμάνδριος γὰρ ἀφικνεῖται εἰς τὰ ἐν Ἴδῃ).
II§193 By contrast, the son that Hector and Andromache had together does not escape. According to the Aeolian tradition as preserved in the epic named the LittleIliad, attributed to Lesches of Lesbos, this son of Hector is killed by the son of Achilles, Neoptolemos, after the capture of Troy (F 19.1–5); then Neoptolemos takes away as his Trojan war prize not only Andromache (F 19.6–8) but even Aeneas himself (F 19.9–11). [149] There is another relevant detail in the Aeolian tradition: as we learn from Hellanicus of Lesbos (FGH 4 F 31), Scamandrius too is taken away by Neoptolemos as a war prize, but later he is released and allowed to go back to Ilion. In the exegetical scholia T for Iliad XXIV (735b) we read this revealing note about the son of Hector and Andromache: οἱ δὲ νεώτεροί φασιν αὐτὸν οἰκιστὴν ὕστερον γεγενῆσθαι Τροίας καὶ ἄλλων πόλεων ‘according to the newer poets [neōteroi], he [= Scamandrius] later became the founder of Troy and of other cities’. The term neōteroi ‘newer poets’ here fits poets of the epic Cycle like Lesches of Lesbos, poet of the LittleIliad.
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§198 From everything we have seen so far, this Troy of the Iliad is a fundamentally Athenian construct, and the visualization of this construct is based not on the New Ilion that was the old Ilion. Rather, it is based on the would-be New Ilion that was Sigeion. [150]
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§201 The Iliadic version of the Trojan War makes a clean break with both the Aeolian and the Ionian versions, in that the Iliad kills off Scamandrius by merging him with Astyanax, the child that Hector had with Andromache. [151] In this way, the Iliad affirms the Athenian version of the Trojan War. The Athenian reception of Homeric poetry was incompatible with the idea that the descendants of Hector {205|206} would rule over New Ilion after the destruction of the old Ilion. Such an idea was evidently too close to the Aeolian reality of the New Ilion.
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):
Stesichorus [PMG 202] attests that he [= Astyanax] was killed, and the poet of the Cycle who composed the Iliou Persis [F 2 ed. Allen] attests that he [= Astyanax] was thrown off the walls of Troy. And Euripides has followed this tradition. But there are those who say that he [= the son of Hector] founded cities and ruled as king over them, and the opinions of these sources are written up by Lysimachus in the second book of his Nostoi: “Dionysius of Chalkis says that Akamas [of Athens], having taken (through his ties with Laodike) [1] Scamandrius the son of Hector and [2] Ascanius the son of Aeneas from [1] Helenos and from [2] Anchises, attempted to fortify with walls Ilion and Dardanos, but, when the Athenians entreated him not to do so, then, having stopped his attempt at controlling the region of Troy, went on to found the cities of Gergis, Perkōtē, Kolōnai, Khrusē, Ophrynion, Sidēnē, Astyra, Scepsis, Polikhnē, and {206|207} in addition to these, Daskyleion and Iliou Kolōnē and Arisba, [152] designating as founders of these cities Scamandrius and Ascanius.” [153]
II§205 What we see here is a synthesis of Aeolian and Ionian versions—under the overriding control of an Athenian version. In the Iliad as we have it, by contrast, we see an unattenuated Athenocentric version that leaves no room for alternative Aeolian or Ionian versions. Strabo himself evidently took the position of agreeing with this unattenuated Athenocentric version of the Iliad as we have it, not with the attenuated Athenocentric version that leaves room for the rival Aeolian and Ionian versions. In taking this position, Strabo was not being pro-Athenocentric, nor was he being anti-Aeolian or anti-Ionian. Rather, he preferred the Iliadic version as we have it simply because he was trying to be anti-neoteric. In other words, he dismissed those aspects of Homeric poetry that Aristarchus and his followers would have labeled neoteric, that is, post-Homeric. As we saw earlier, the Aristarchean school labeled as neoteric anything they considered to be non-Homeric. [154] For Strabo, the total destruction of Troy is basically a Homeric theme, and any attenuation is neoteric, that is, post-Homeric.
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:
There is also in Erythrai a temple [nāós] of Athena Polias and a huge wooden statue [agalma] [155] of her sitting on a throne. She holds a distaff in each hand and wears a Vault of the Sky [polos] on her head. That this statue is the work [tekhnē] of Endoios we inferred by observing, among other things, the workmanship [ergasia] that went into the making of the statue [agalma] and especially on the basis of the white marble {208|209} representations of the Kharites and the Hōrai that stand in the open area before you go into the temple.
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 7ⓢ5. 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§215 After Aeolian Smyrna was captured by the Ionians and thus ceased to be a member of the federation known as the Aeolian Dodecapolis, Homer the Aeolian could become Homer the Ionian, just as Aeolian Smyrna became Ionian Smyrna. After the capture of Smyrna, as we saw earlier from what Herodotus says (1.150.2), the Aeolian population of the city was absorbed by the remaining eleven Aeolian cities of the old federation. Evidently, the capture of Smyrna was a collective defeat for the Aeolian Dodecapolis, with the subtraction of one city from their own existing twelve; and it was a collective victory for the rival federation of the Ionian Dodecapolis, though Smyrna was not added to the existing twelve cities as a thirteenth. [160] {211|212}
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:
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§222 The same can be said about the refounding of New Ilion by the same dynasts. By the Hellenistic era, to repeat, the tradition of Homeric poetry was no longer in a formative phase. So, by now, the question of whether or not New Ilion was really the same thing as the old Ilion was of little importance for the tradition of Homeric poetry. Also of little importance was the question of whether the tomb of Achilles was situated at the northern end of the Sigeion Ridge or at the southern end. Some three hundred years earlier, however, when the Athenians were struggling with the Aeolians over the territory of Sigeion, these same questions had been all-important. When the Aeolians succeeded in winning back through arbitration the tomb of Achilles at the south end of the Sigeion Ridge, the poetic as well as the political impact had been strong enough to force the Athenians to claim as a rival tomb of Achilles another tumulus situated at the north end of the Sigeion Ridge. It is this Athenocentric version of the tomb of Achilles that we see being pictured in the Homeric poetry of the Iliad, which as I have argued views the topography of the Troad through the Athenocentric lens of Sigeion. I should add that such an Athenocentric view is also an Ionian view: as we will see more clearly in what follows, Athenocentric trends in Homeric poetry were mostly a continuation of earlier Ionian trends emanating ultimately from Miletus. [166]
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:
[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.
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:
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).
[ 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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 ] 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.
