4. Sarpedon was under the same disqualification as Glaucus his brother king. Besides this, he was not descended in the male line from Æolus, but only through his mother Hippodamia.
5. Again, among the Greeks. Why, it may be asked, was not Peleus, or why was not Achilles an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν? Here was a throne above thrones: for Patroclus was not only an ἄναξ, but was called Διογενὴς, which implies sovereignty; therefore Menœtius his father was the same: but Menœtius was in attendance at the court of Peleus. Phœnix again was tutor to that chief, though he ruled over the Dolopians by the gift of Peleus, as he tells us,
καί μ’ ἀφνειὸν ἔθηκε, πολὺν δέ μοι ὤπασε λαὸν,
ναῖον δ’ ἐσχατίην Φθίης, Δολόπεσσιν ἀνάσσων[879].
Besides that he occupied a great position, and was of the highest descent, I think it is clear from the Catalogue that the Myrmidons, over whom Peleus reigned, were Achæans, and therefore a strictly Hellic race.
And again, the character of Achilles makes it quite clear that his family were from the Hellic stock. For it is in him that Homer has chosen to exhibit the prime and foremost pattern of the whole Greek nation: and he could surely never have chosen for such a purpose any family of foreign, or of doubtful blood.
It is not however in every Hellic race or family, but only among the known representatives by descent of the principal or senior branches, that we are justified in expecting to find the patriarchal title. And still less do we know whether the Myrmidons, even though Hellic and Achæan, were a principal tribe of that stock.
The evidence as to the descent of Achilles may throw further light upon this part of the subject.
In those cases where a long line of ancestry purported to begin with Jupiter, as, for instance, the Trojan genealogy, it is doubtless natural to treat this as a sort of necessary introduction to a period, beyond which the memory of man, unaided as it was, did not run.
But when we find the paternity of a person contemporary with the Trojan war, or of some near ancestor of his, referred to Jupiter, the most proper interpretation of this legendary statement seems to be, that they were, so to speak, novi homines, who having come suddenly into the blaze of celebrity, and living among a nation accustomed to ask of every passing stranger who were his parents, yet having no parents to quote, or none worth quoting, gilded their origin by claiming some great deity for their father. I do not speak now of the distinct and yet cognate case, where a similar pretext was used to shield illegitimacy: as for example, not to travel from the line before us, in the instance of the son of Polydora[880], sister to Achilles himself. But the same principle applies to both: divine progenitorship was used to keep from view something that it was desirable to hide, whether this were the shame of a noble maiden, or the undistinguished ancestry of a great house or hero. Such a hero perhaps, according to this rule, was Hercules: such a house more clearly was that of the Æacids; for Æacus, grandfather of Achilles, was son of Jupiter[881]. He did not therefore represent a patriarchal family, and could not bear the title.