Homer is the historian as well as the poet of Greece: but he is neither the poet nor the historian of Troy, further than as it was necessary for him to describe generally to the Greeks the race with whom they had been engaged in a death-struggle.
The strong resemblance between the two nations, and especially their partaking, to a certain extent, of a common lineage, seems to have constituted a difficulty in his way. Already in his time the sentiment of Greek nationality was strong. Whether he chiefly found or made it so, is nothing to the present purpose. This sentiment of nationality required to be circumscribed by a clear line, marking the extent of the Greek political organisation; and if it was unfavourable to the acknowledgment of relationship to any race beyond that line, especially was it so in the case of a race that the Greeks had conquered. Probably therefore the purpose of Homer required that he should instinctively as it were keep in special obscurity the notes of kindred between the two countries.
In the case of the Greeks, Homer has intelligibly pointed out the origin of the race among the hills of Northern Thessaly round the ancient Dodona, and near Olympus, its poetical counterpart, and the residence of Jupiter with his gorgeous train. Yet more clearly has he in the case of the Trojans enabled us to trace them to their fountain-head, again in the mountains, and beside the roots, of Ida, where they worshipped the Idæan Jove[813]. We have here the race without predecessors, residing in the very spot where they were planted by their divine progenitor, and coming down by a clear line of seven generations to the cousins Hector and Æneas.
Cases of Anchises and Æneas.
But although the conditions of chieftaincy are thus obviously fulfilled in the race of Dardanus, yet difficulty presents itself in a new form. Why is the term ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν applied to Anchises and to his son Æneas, but never to Priam, or to his son Hector, or to any of his family?
The answer to this question opens a curious chapter of Homeric history and speculation. In going through it I shall endeavour carefully to separate between positive statement, and interpretation or conjecture.
These facts then are on the face of the poem.
1. Anchises nowhere personally appears in it. And yet there was at Troy an assembly of δημογέροντες (Il. iii. 146-8). Of the persons there mentioned, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon were brothers of Priam; others, for example, Panthus and Antenor, were in the exercise of at the very least a subaltern sovereignty. They were present at Troy, while their sons fought in the Trojan ranks. The reason, therefore, of the absence of Anchises is not to be sought in his being represented by Æneas. Nor in the immunity of his dominions, through their being placed among the mountains, from war: for Æneas himself, before he came to Troy, had only been rescued by divine interposition from the hands of Achilles[814]. Why then does Anchises never appear? Either surely because of the high rank of his sovereignty, or because of some unexplained rivalry between the families.