The Homeric evidence then up to this point stands as follows with reference to Athens and the Athenian contingent, or the principal and picked men of it, whichever be the best term for the passage. They were
1. Ionians, Il. xiii. 685.
2. ἑλκεχίτωνες, ibid.
3. Autochthonous, Il. ii. 547.
4. Undistinguished in the war.
5. Under the special patronage of Pallas or Minerva, Il. ii. 546, and Od. xi. 323, where the epithet ἱεράων, given to Athens, indicates a special relation to a deity.
The epithet ἑλκεχίτωνες suggests unwarlike habits, and, though more faintly, it also betokens textile industry. It stands in marked contrast with the ἀμιτροχίτωνες[200] of the valiant Lycians, whose short and spare tunic required no cincture to confine it. It corroborates the negative evidence afforded by the Iliad of some want of martial genius in the primitive Athens. It coincides with the tutelage of Pallas, for the Minerva of Homer has no more indisputable function than as the goddess of skilled industry[201]. All this tends to betoken that the inhabitants of the Homeric Attica were Pelasgian.
Again, the autochthonic origin, ascribed to the Athenians in the person of Erechtheus, amounts to an assertion that they were the first known inhabitants of the country: in other words, that they were Pelasgian.
The negative evidence is also important. There is nothing in Homer that tends to associate Athens with the Hellenic stem. The want of military distinction deserves a fuller notice.