1. He must be born of Jupiter ab antiquo.
2. He must hold a sovereignty, either paramount or secondary, and either in whole, or, like Æneas, by devolution in part, over some given place or tribe.
3. His family must have held this sovereignty continuously from the time of the primary ancestor.
4. He must be the head of a ruling tribe or house of the original Hellenic stock: and must be connected with marks of the presence of Hellenic settlement. These marks may, as in the case of Agamemnon, be supplied by a race or tribe: or they may be territorial, such as those afforded by the name of the river Selleeis, and more especially by the name Ephyre, and the family of cognate words.
Now each of the six persons, to whom alone Homer gives the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, partakes, by evidence either demonstrative or probable, of every one of these notes.
Negative proofs.
Among negative evidences that the title ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν conveys a peculiar sense, we may place the following:
1. The position of Priam in Troas, where he was the greatest man of North-western Asia, Il. xxiv. 543-6, and of Hector, or else Paris, as his heir, were such as called for the highest epithets of dignity. He had even a regular court of γέροντες, of whom it seems plain, that some at least, such as Antenor, were invested with some kind of sovereignty. Yet none of the Ilian family are called by the name of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
2. Alcinous in the Odyssey affords another example of a lord over lords, who does not belong to the historical Greek stem, and who therefore is not called ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. The example may appear weak, because of the divine descent of the Phæacians. But if this phrase had, like κρείων, been one of merely general ornament, why should it not have been applied to him as κρείων is, or to his brother Rhexenor, or his father Nausithous? If the divine descent of the Phæacians from Neptune renders the phrase inapplicable to them, this is of itself a proof of its very specific nature.
3. Again; it may be asked why Glaucus was not an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, as he was descended from an Æolid sovereign. The answer is, he was no longer the chieftain of any Hellenic clan. His grandfather Bellerophon had migrated simply as an individual fugitive into a South-Asian country, of which the people had no immediate ties of race with him; and, while apart from his original tribe, he could not inherit a title as its head.