It is not grammatically necessary that we should make these two words coextensive; and I do not believe that either of them separately, as here used, conveys the whole force of the two, though perhaps conjointly they may carry the assertion that he was the best spearman in the army.
If there was a Hellas in the time of Homer, which was inhabited by a variety of tribes, then, as these tribes dispersedly might be called with propriety Hellenes, even apart from the authority of constant use, so they might with equal propriety be combined into the term Panhellenes, which would mean all the tribes, including the Locrians, that inhabited Hellas, or Northern and Mid-Greece. Thus, as the Achæan name was at this time more prominent and distinguished in the Peloponnesus[507] than in any other part of the country, the poet may in this place by Ἀχαιοὶ mean the Southern or Peloponnesian Greece; so as, by the two epithets conjointly, to signify the whole army. Or he may mean all those who, in Hellas or beyond it, were of the pure Achæan race (assuming, for the moment, that such a race existed); and thus may here assert, that Ajax excelled all Hellas, and even all Achæans in or out of Hellas, using the last of the two words by way of climax. I do not deny that he may also be construed to mean the whole host in the gross by Ἀχαιοὶ, agreeably to the common use of it; but this is less likely; as the name, so understood, would not be distinctive.
Nor do I see any reason to hesitate about treating the Homeric name Κεφάλληνες as one of his Hellenic group of names. As in the case of Πελασγοὶ, so here we have a name formed by a combination of different words. The word head seems to have been represented by a root of flexible structure. In Sanscrit it is kapâla[508], in Greek κεφάλη, in Latin caput: but it also appears in the German kopf, and in the Greek κόπτειν, ‘to butt,’ and in κύβη, κυβιστάω, κυβερνάω. The word Κεφάλληνες seems, then, to be formed in the most direct manner from the root κεφ, signifying ‘head,’ and Ἕλληνες: and thus it both attaches Ulysses, with at least the dominant race among his subjects, to the Hellic stock, and indicates the tendency of the Hellenic name, even in Homer’s time, to reproduce itself and to spread abroad.
Again, we observe in his rare use of Κεφάλληνες the same signs as in Ἕλληνες and Πανέλληνες, that the power of the name was only growing up from its infancy. For the word is used but twice in the Iliad, and no more than four times in the Odyssey, where there is constant occasion for addressing, or for speaking of, the subjects of Ulysses. We find in that poem Ἰθακήσιοι eleven times, and Ἀχαιοὶ constantly.
Having dealt with the Homeric derivations of Hellas[509], let us now ascend to the word, from which it is itself derived; Hellas being evidently, in the Greek tongue, the country which had been occupied by the Helli.
Of the people who are so termed, either under the form beginning with the aspirate, or else under that of Σελλοὶ, we find obvious Homeric vestiges in the Hellespont, Ἑλλήσποντος; in various rivers termed Σελληείς; and in the invocation of Achilles to Jupiter, which places the Selli in the north of Thessaly, about wintry Dodona, and seems to stamp them as then still remaining a people of the rudest habits in their mountain home[510];
Δωδώνης μεδέων δυσχειμέρου· ἀμφὶ δὲ Σελλοὶ
σοὶ ναίουσ’ ὑποφῆται ἀνιπτόποδες, χαμαιεῦναι.
The Σελλοὶ of Homer.
The word Ἕλλοι would appear to be not the most probable reading of the text of this invocation; for it presumes an inconvenient loading of the sentence with the double pronoun σε and σοι. But there can be no doubt whatever as to its identity with Σελλοί. Independently of philological argument, there is the strongest presumption that in this place Achilles intends to name his own national ancestry, as being the ministers of the god; who give him, as it were, the right to invoke the aid of the Pelasgic indeed, but therefore genuine and original, Jupiter of Dodona. But no circumstance seems to be better established by philological research, than that in many cases of Greek words, which now begin with the aspirate, there was one (or more than one) initial letter, and that frequently that letter was the sigma. Much obscurity has hung about this subject, from the fact that discovery has proceeded piecemeal, and that for a length of time the word digamma was used to signify what had originally filled the void now existing in so many places of the Homeric versification. What this digamma might have been was disputed; but it was, almost insensibly perhaps, assumed to be some one letter or sound only. But as inquiry has made further advances, many forms of a lost letter or letters have been discovered: and it has also been made clear that the gaps ought to be filled up variously, and not by any one uniform expedient. To take very simple examples, there can be no doubt about the identity of ἓξ, ἕπτα, ὓς, with sex, septem, sus: nor any doubt about the essential identity of ὕδωρ and sudor, ἡδὺς and suavis, ἑκυρὸς and socer: none therefore that the σ ought to be supplied, and not f, w, or v, in the passage φίλε ἑκυρέ[511]. While indeed a presumption arises[512] from the German words schwieger and schwäger, that a double or even treble loss may have occurred, and that the passage may have run φίλε σϝεκυρέ. Under these circumstances, in the case before us, where we have both forms represented, there can be no hesitation as to the identity of Ἑλλοὶ and Σελλοί: the first represented in Ἕλλας, Ἕλληνες, Ἑλλήσποντος, and the Ἑλλοπία of Hesiod: the other and older one supported by Σελληείς.
There is another curious and instructive case, in which we have the older form of the word Σελλοὶ still remaining: besides that of Προσέληνοι, to which allusion has already been made in considering the case of the Pelasgian Arcadians. In the Birds of Aristophanes, the dramatist satirizes Athens and the Sicilian Expedition, under the name of a city in the clouds, called Νεφελοκοκκυγία; the object being to expose the arrogance of great pretensions, without adequate means to support them. There, he says, lie most of the goods of Theagenes, and all those of Æschines. This Theagenes was called κάπνος, smoke, because he promised much, and did nothing. Æschines was a pauper, who pretended to wealth. The Scholiast adds, ἦν δὲ Αἰσχίνης Σελλοῦ. Ἔλεγον δὲ ἐκ μεταφορᾶς τοιούτους Σελλούς· καὶ τὸ ἀλαζονεύεσθαι δὲ, σελλίζειν[513]. Cary thinks the term σελλίζειν came from a Sellus, the father of this Æschines. But in the first place, it seems difficult to rely on the Scholiast for knowing, still less for recording with accuracy, the name of the father of an obscure person, who had lived in the age of Aristophanes. In the second place, if Æschines was an obscure fellow, it is most improbable that his father’s name should have become the root of a Greek word descriptive of a particular habit or propensity. Such words (for example) as hectoring and rhodomontading presuppose a great celebrity in the person on whose name they are based. Lastly, the derivation from the ancient Σελλοὶ seems a perfectly natural one, and also adequate to the case. It is in some degree characteristic of those who in reduced circumstances trace back their lineage to a very ancient stock, instead of relying simply on the substantial honour of their descent, still to affect the possession of the wealth which has passed away from them: to play for themselves the part, which Caleb Balderstone desires to play, on behalf not of himself, but of the Master of Ravenswood, in Scott’s ‘Bride of Lammermoor’; and altogether to be sensitive, or what is called touchy on the subject, and to lean on the whole towards a certain boastfulness, in common with the νεοπλοῦτοι at the other extremity of the scale. There is a broad distinction between treating the Scholiast as a witness to the existence and force of a current phrase, and the taking his word for the parentage of a nobody, like this Æschines, who had lived long before him. It may, however, not be necessary to construe σελλίζειν solely, or even specially, with reference to a pride in wealth which had passed away. If we shall hereafter show for the Selli[514] a Persian ancestry, then, even without any regard to change of circumstances, the phrase at once leads us back to the description given by Herodotus of the Persians their forefathers. Πέρσαι, φύσιν ἐόντες ὑβρισταὶ, εἰσὶν ἀχρήματοι[515].