Diomedes.
Polypœtes.
Megapenthes.
Thrasymedes.
Eteoneus.
Agapenor.
Euphenor.
Prothoenor.
Hyperenor.
(4) Of the same metrical value with Agamemnon, except having the last syllable short:
Menelaus.
Echepolus.
Melanippus.
Polydorus.
And of the dead,
Rhadamanthus.
Meleagros.
Here are thirty-five names as susceptible of conjunction with the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν as the six to which he attaches it. How comes it to be attached, significant as it is primâ facie, to the six, and never to the thirty-five? Did it come and go by accident, or had Homer a meaning in it?
Moreover, I would by no means be understood to admit, that metrical obstacles would have sufficed to prevent Homer from applying almost any title to almost any name: such were the resources of his genius and his ear, and such the freedom that the youthful elasticity of the language secured to him.
It must be remembered too that he has given us an instance (in Il. i. 7) of a second site, so to speak, for ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν in the Greek hexameter, which would have enabled him at once to combine it with all such proper names as come within the compass of a dactyl and trochee, or a spondee and trochee. Such as Πουλυδάμας γὰρ ... Καὶ Πρίαμος μὲν ... Καὶ γὰρ Τευκρὸς ... Θησεὺς αὐτὸς ... Δάρδανος αὐτὸς .... And even without altering its usual position in the verse, by a break of it, or a cæsura, which is not unfrequent with him, he might have given us (for example) ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν γὰρ Ἐρεχθεύς. Or he might by tmesis, more liberally used, have further widened the field for its employment.
Or again, he would have been free, by the rules of his own usage, to have said in the vocative, ἀνδρῶν ἄνα.
Homer’s reverence for this title.