Eumelus, a living Greek.
| Augeias, | dead Greeks. | |
| Euphetes, |
| Anchises, | living Trojans. | |
| Æneas, |
It appears and perishes with Homer, not being found in the writings of any other Greek author.
It is never used in any of the cases, except the nominative: never separated from the proper name of the person to whom it is applied, except once (Il. i. 7), and then only by the particle τε: it always precedes the name except in that single passage: it always ends with the first half of the fifth foot of the verse, except in that same passage: and again, the word ἄναξ is never separated from the word ἀνδρῶν, except once in the Odyssey by the word δέ.
It is applied to no person whose name does not begin with a vowel, and to no person whose name is not of the metrical value necessary to enable it to form the last foot and a half of the hexameter: as, Agamemnon, of two short syllables and two long ones; Euphetes, three long ones; Eumelus, two long and one short. Circumstances, these last, which, if they stood alone, would raise a presumption that the use of it was determined by metrical considerations only.
That metrical considerations had some degree of influence on the use of phrases in Homer, we may sufficiently judge, by observing that while Homer uses the name of Achæans four times for that of Argeians once, he uses the forms Ἀχαίοισι and Ἀχαίοισιν but twelve times, whereas he uses Ἀργείοισι and Ἀργείοισιν more than sixty times.
But we may observe that no metrical considerations could have prevented Homer from applying the phrase to Diomedes, Polypœtes, or others, whose names differ from that of Agamemnon only in having a consonant at the beginning of them: and yet he has not done this: the names of all his six ἄνακτες ἀνδρῶν begin with a vowel. Thus as he restrains himself beyond what metre requires, he may have had some reason other than metre to govern his use of the title.
The question is, whether there are, evidently or probably, other conditions of substance, which, besides these of sound, meet in the persons designated by the title, and which enable us to trace and fix its purport?
With reference to Mure’s explanation I observe, that it does not appear to take account of the difference between descriptive words in general, and titles, as applicable to Homer; but rather to assume that the Homeric phrases are simply of the former class.