In the first place, I submit that if we now review the ten passages in which Homer speaks of Hellas, and bear in mind that in some among them it cannot be construed as meaning less than, with a certain amount of indeterminateness as to boundaries, Northern and Middle Greece generally, we shall also find, that there is not one of all those passages, in which it will not at least admit of the same sense. I do not deny that it is open to us to hold that the Hellas, in which Chalcon dwelt, was a mere district of Thessaly, and that Homer attaches in different places different senses to the word. But if there is a sense, substantially one, which will suit the word in every place where it is used, it seems most reasonable to adhere generally to that sense. Such a meaning we have, I think, found for Hellas, in concluding that it is used to signify Northern and Middle Greece. In this sense it overrides and includes Phthia, as France overrides Alsace or Burgundy. But as there was a time when Alsace and Burgundy might, before the present state of incorporation, have been either said to be in France or not in France, without an outrageous license of speech either way, so perhaps the land of Phthia was for Homer either a part of Hellas, or a province carved out of Hellas by the special occupation of the Myrmidons, as occasion might chance to demand. Not that he did not conform to the facts, but that the facts were themselves indeterminate. To our habits, under which every inch of ground belongs to somebody, this indefiniteness is wholly strange; but in times when only spots here and there were appropriated, and there was no universal occupation, it was thoroughly natural, and the thing really strange would be the absence of it. Accordingly, when Phœnix says he left Hellas, he gives to Phthia, the name of the place he reached, its exclusive force. When he says Chalcon dwelt in Hellas among the Myrmidons, he probably means in Phthia, but now regards Phthia as covered by the larger designation. When Homer tells us the soldiers of Achilles were those who inhabited Alos, and Alope, and Trachin, and who occupied Phthia and Hellas, we understand by the three first, particular spots which the Myrmidons had settled, by Phthia a larger district which they had so far dotted with their occupancy as to make it peculiarly theirs, and by Hellas the surrounding country, into which they had more or less ramified.
Assuming then the sense of the word Hellas to be now sufficiently ascertained, the next question is, how came this country, which has been described, to bear the name of Hellas? And the question admits of but one answer. It could only be called Hellas because tribes of Helli had become its masters, its governing race, the depositaries, through its various regions, of political and military power.
We must therefore understand that, according to Homer, tribes reputed to be of Hellic origin were so far distributed over this country, as to have begun at least to affix their name to it: though without having absolutely effaced every older name, like Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος and though not precluding the introduction of names perhaps more recent, certainly more specific, such as Phthia.
The Hellenes of Homer.
We may now proceed to consider the force, according to Homer’s use, of the names derived from Hellas. These are, as commonly understood,
1. Ἕλληνες,
2. Πανέλληνες,
and to these I shall presume to add,
3. Κεφάλληνες.
The first of these is found only in Il. ii. 684. Here, after the description of the places from which the forces of Achilles came, the poet proceeds to give them their designation: