According to extra-Homeric tradition, the Myrmidons fled from Ægina to Thessaly under Peleus[882].
6. Further examples may be taken from the Pelopid family. The Menelaus of the Iliad belongs to the highest order: he is more kingly than the other kings[883]. In the Odyssey he desires to transplant Ulysses to a portion of his dominions (Od. iv. 174). And Ægisthus actually occupies for years, during the exile of Orestes, the Pelopid throne: the name of either Menelaus or Ægisthus is of the metrical value most convenient for union with the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν: but neither the one nor the other was the representative of the great Achæan house of Pelops, and accordingly neither the one nor the other receives the title.
7. Diomed is a Greek of the very highest descent: of him alone, among the kings before Troy, we may confidently say, that he was himself a hero, had a hero for his father, a hero for his uncle, and a hero for his grandfather. Œneus, Tydeus, Meleager, are three names not easily to be matched in early Greek story. They were likewise near the stock, as we may probably infer from the name of the founder of the race, Portheus, the Destroyer. He was father of Œneus and also of Ἄγριος the Rude, and Μέλας the Swarthy, all names indicating that the first stage of arrival within the precinct of civilization had not yet been passed. He commanded, too, one of the largest contingents: yet neither he nor his uncle Meleager, the Achilles of his day, is ever called ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
The reason doubtless is that, in the case of the Œneid family, there is no connection with a leading Greek ancestry. They are neither Æolid nor Pelopid; and they stand in no relation to the characteristic names of Ephyre and the Selleeis.
8. Let me notice, lastly, the case of Nestor. He had been a warrior of the first class. His rich dominions supplied a contingent of ninety ships to the war; larger even than that of Diomed, or of any chief whatever, except Agamemnon, who had one hundred. His father, Neleus, was of great fame. He had actually more influence in council than any other chief, and always took the lead there. He was descended from Neptune, who indeed was but his grandfather: while his grandmother, Tyro, was probably, as we have found, a granddaughter of Æolus.
But he could not be ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, because not in lineal male descent from the primary ancestor Æolus: nor was he the tribal head of the Hellenic race among which he ruled, which was an Achæan one (Il. xi. 759), since the Achæans owned the Pelopids for their chiefs. Also his father Neleus, apparently the younger twin, had migrated from the North, leaving Pelias the elder, as is probable, in possession. Thus Nestor presents none of the four notes of the ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν. Yet this title attached to an insignificant relative, Eumelus, his first cousin once removed, doubtless because he possessed them.
Persons with the notes yet without the title.
It is certainly true that there are a few cases where Homer has not applied the title of ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν to particular persons, to whom he might have given it consistently with the suppositions, as to its meaning, of which I have attempted to show the truth. They are, in one word, the ancestors of the persons to whom he has actually given the title. But all of these, such as Pelops and his line, Dardanus with his line as far as Tros, and the earlier descendants of Æolus, are persons mentioned in the poems for the most part but once, and rarely more than twice or thrice. Now, as Homer mentions frequently without the prefix, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, those to whom on other occasions he gives it, we are not entitled to require its application to all persons capable of bearing it, whom he mentions but once.
And again, if I am right in holding that this was strictly a title attaching to lineage, then it was wholly needless, when he had designated a particular person, as an ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, to grace his predecessors also with the title, because, as a matter of course, inasmuch as they were his predecessors, it attached to them. No historic aim then was involved, and no purpose would have been gained if Admetus, for example, had been mentioned with this title as well as his son Eumelus.