Thirdly, that this Achæan tribe was in all likelihood derived from Thessaly, where it was especially rooted and distinguished: as Thessaly was itself fed from the Helli of the mountains, and constituted the secondary and immediate source from whence the Hellenic races successively issued, and spread themselves over the peninsula.
I do not pretend to carry the proof of a patriarchal position or lineal chieftaincy in the case of Agamemnon further. We do not know what was the strictly original royal stock of the Hellenic tribes. The current tradition of Hellen and his sons would be very convenient, but it is too obviously accommodated to after-times, and too flatly at variance with the earliest, that is to say with the Homeric accounts, to be in the slightest degree trustworthy as an historic basis. We may take the Hesiodic tradition as affording evidence of the belief that there was a primitive royal stock, and that the ruling families had been derived from it, since within these limits it does not contradict Homer; but we can justly build upon it nothing further. Undoubtedly the very employment of the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, if the proposed construction of it can be made good, will greatly fortify this belief. But this can only be made good in a presumptive manner: as by showing that the phrase was only given in ruling families: and only in the representative lines of ruling families: and only in families which ruled over tribes of the dominant race; and which had so ruled from time immemorial—that is to say, they must be families of which it cannot be shown that at any time they had acquired their position in their own tribe. If a first ancestor, apparently the channel of the title, is indicated, he must be one from whom history begins: there must be nothing before him, nothing to show that he or his line had ever been less than what he came to be. Lastly, the tribes, over which the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν rules, must be in visible or presumable connection locally with the original seat or cradle of the nation; and it will be a further confirmation of the argument if, as we ascend the lineal lines, we find in them a tendency to converge towards an unity of origin, which we shall find poetically expressed as the divine parentage of Jupiter, and thus covered with the golden clouds of a remote antiquity, that not even the sun can pierce[787]. Perhaps we may even find reason to suppose it likely that descent from Jupiter was an essential qualification for the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
Arguments against his Hellenic descent.
First, then, let us deal with the negative or adverse presumptions, which would go to prove that Agamemnon was not Hellenic at all.
It may be urged,
1. That we see, even from Homer, that Pelops was a recent hero, only two generations before the Troica, so that Agamemnon has no antiquity to boast of.
2. That, according to extraneous tradition, there is no connection between Agamemnon and the Hellic stock: as Pelops is reputed to be the son of Tantalus, and Tantalus the king of Phrygia.
To the first I answer, that the list of names in Il. ii. 101-8, is not simply a genealogy, for it includes Thyestes, who is not in the right line; but it is a succession of kings on a common throne, and can only therefore begin with Pelops, as the first who sat upon that throne.
But, further, even if it were a genealogy, yet Homer seems usually to begin his genealogies not with the first known ancestor of a person, but with the first ancestor of his who settled in the place where he exercises power. Thus Nestor, though we acquire indirectly a knowledge of his earlier descent through the Νεκυΐα, has no genealogy beyond Neleus his father, because he was the ancestor that migrated into Peloponnesus, or, at least, that first acquired the Pylian throne, by marriage into a prior, and perhaps a Pelasgian house[788]. Ulysses has none beyond Arceisius; and it is plain, from the records of the earlier dynasty in Ithaca, that there could have been no king of that house before him. Dardanus and Minos, heads of genealogies, were also the founders of sovereignties. Again, Portheus is given us as the head of the Œneid line in Ætolia: and we have found it probable that he was the first of his race[789] who migrated into that country. The same considerations, in all likelihood, hold good with regard to Pelops.
Now with respect to the second objection.