1. From the Homeric text, the phrase ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν appears not to have belonged to political preeminence or power, or to personal heroism, or to the distinction of wealth, or to divine descent as such; but to the archaic form of sovereignty which united it continuously with the headship in blood of a ruling family or clan, inhabiting the country which was the reputed cradle of the nation, or able to trace lineally its derivation from that country. A tradition of original descent from Jupiter attached in all cases essentially to the possession of the title.
2. In each of the six instances where Homer employs it, he appears to do so in strict conformity with the rules thus indicated.
3. The immediate cradle of those Greek races, which possessed this primitive title and descent, was Thessaly; and of Thessaly Hellas was either a synonym, or a part.
4. The origin of the races thus ruling Hellas is to be sought among the Helli, who dwelt in the mountains around Dodona, apparently with those institutions which have ever been characteristic of mountaineers; and who represent, more faithfully than the inhabitants of lowlands, the earliest type of human society, cast at a time when its relationship to the family was still palpable and near.
5. The resemblances of the Helli and the Dardans afford, together with the probabilities of the case, strong evidence of their having some common affinity to the same branch of the great stem, from which a large part of Europe was peopled with its ruling race.
6. Finally, we may with reasonable grounds conjecture, that the patriarchal system denoted by the patriarchal chieftaincies, which had been shaken before the Trojan war, was further and violently disturbed by it, and by its direct and indirect political consequences; and that this system had vanished before the line of the post-Homeric Greek poets, to be reckoned from Hesiod, had begun. Thus, the basis of the title being removed, the title itself naturally disappeared from literature as well as history; and if we find, that in later times the key to its meaning had been lost, it is but a new mark of the abruptness and width of the breach that lies between Homer and his successors, of the paucity of continuous traditions, and of the limited means possessed by the Greeks of the historic ages for research into the earlier periods of their national existence.
SECT. X.
On the connection of the Hellenes and Achæans with the East.
We have reached the close of this inquiry, so far as it regards the origin, character, and pursuits of the Pelasgians; the character of the Hellenic tribes, and their relations to the Pelasgians; and the position of the Achæans among the Hellenes, as the first national representatives of the Hellenic stock. But who were these Achæans, and whence did they come? We have at present been able only to describe them by negatives. They were not the descendants of a legendary Achæus: they did not take their name from a Greek territory, nor from any pursuit that they followed; and the word has no apparent root in the etymology of the Greek tongue.
But we have seen manifest indications that the Hellic name did not first come into being on the western side of the Dardanelles: and if the Achæi were the first leaders of the Helli, why should we not trace them too beyond the Straits, and thus follow perhaps the Helli also, by their means, and as represented in them, up to a fountain-head?