οἷοί τε ἀνάκτων παῖδες ἔασιν.[767]
where the ἀνάκτων παῖδες nearly corresponds with our ‘children of the higher orders,’ i.e. the masters of slaves.
On the other hand, in reference to the immortals, ἄναξ is sometimes a title: as in Il. xvi. 233,
Ζεῦ ἄνα, Δωδώναιε, Πελασγικέ.
Examples of titles.
There are, however, in Homer various words which are undoubtedly and uniformly titular. Such are in particular the adjectives Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς, which are very nearly equivalent in power to the phrase ‘Royal Highness’ of the present day. They commonly accompany the name of the individual, or of the class, to which they belong: and they are confined, with one single exception, in the Iliad, to persons of the highest known rank, that of βασιλεὺς or king. The exception is Phœnix, who is in one place addressed by Achilles as γέραιε Διοτρεφές. But Achilles says this χαριζόμενος, when petting and coaxing the old man, and therefore the instance does not destroy the force of the general rule.
In one place we have ὁ Διογενὴς[768] used for Achilles in the third person without his name: which still more strikingly marks the word as a title. Also Διοτρεφὴς is not unfrequently used in the vocative, without, as well as with, the name of the person to whom it is addressed. It may possibly be worth notice, that these words, Διοτρεφὴς and Διογενὴς, are never applied to Agamemnon, as if they had, again like the phrase ‘Royal Highness,’ a limit upwards as well as downwards, and were not applicable to the supreme head of the nation. There is indeed one passage where Agamemnon is addressed as Διοτρεφὴς, but it is in the universally suspected[769] νεκυΐα of the Twenty-fourth Odyssey. Plainly this fact cannot be referred to metrical considerations, even as to Διοτρεφὴς, because either in the genitive, or in the vocative, it would easily have been made available: especially in the latter inflexion, for Agamemnon is addressed vocatively some five and twenty times in the poems. I admit that Ulysses may allude to him in the line,
θυμὸς δὲ μέγας ἐστὶ Διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος[770].
But the phrase here is more abstract than personal: it is perhaps as we should say, ‘our royal master.’
The word βασιλεὺς may have borne originally a merely descriptive character. But it has only partial traces of that character still adhering to it, as it is used in the Iliad. The chief note of such a sense, that I can find, is, that it is used in the comparative and superlative to distinguish the Pelopid house from the other kings. Agamemnon is βασιλεύτατος, Il. ix. 69, and Menelaus is evidently intended in the βασιλεύτερος of Il. x. 239; where Diomed is bidden to choose the best man, irrespectively of rank, and not to tie himself to the βασιλεύτερος.