It can hardly be without meaning, that of all the chiefs, considerable in the Iliad by their positions and commands, there are but two who are never named as in actual fight, or with any other mark of distinction, and these two are the heads of the two (as we suppose) emphatically Pelasgian contingents, from Athens and Arcadia respectively. Agapenor, who (being however of Ætolian extraction) leads the Arcadians, is named nowhere but in the Catalogue: Menestheus is repeatedly named, but never with reference to fighting. In the only part of the action of the poem where he is put forward, he shudders[202], and shows an anxiety for his personal safety, much more like a Trojan leader than a Greek one. Yet they were sole commanders, the first of no less than sixty ships, the second of fifty. There are no similar cases. The nearest to them are those (1) of Prothous[203], who commands 40 ships of the Magnesians, and Gourieus[204], who leads 22 of the Enienes and Perrhæbi: both of these are remote, Thessalian, and very probably Pelasgian tribes: (2) of Podarkes, who commands 40 ships, but only as deputy for his deceased brother Protesilaus, who is said to have been not only the elder, but the more valiant[205].
Agapenor, indeed, was evidently dependent in a peculiar sense on Agamemnon, in whose ships he sailed: but this could not affect his position as to personal prowess. The case of Menestheus is the more remarkable from this circumstance, that he is the only independent and single commander in charge of so many as fifty ships, who is not invested with the supreme rank of Βασιλεὺς or King. His father Peteos is however called Διοτρεφὴς Βασιλεὺς (Il. iv. 338), which marks him as having probably been a person of greater importance.
And what is true of the commanders is true also of the troops. Athens, and with her Arcadia, may justly be regarded as the only two undistinguished in Homer among those states of Greece which afterwards attained to distinction. For among the States which acquired fame in the historic ages, Argolis, Achaia, and Laconia hold through their chiefs very high places in the poem: Elis and Bœotia are conspicuous in the anterior traditions which it enshrines. Only Attica and Arcadia fail in exhibiting to us signs of early pre-eminence in the arts of war: which in a marked manner confirms the suppositions we have already obtained, as to the Pelasgian character of their inhabitants.
A sign, though a more uncertain one, that points in the same direction, is afforded by the choice of Athens, on the part of Orestes[206], as his place of habitation during the tyranny of Ægisthus in Mycenæ. The displaced, if they do not fly to the strong for protection, go among those who are weaker, and where they may most easily hold their ground, or even acquire power afresh. In other words, in the case before us, an Hellenic exile would very naturally betake himself among a Pelasgian people.
While however the indications of a predominating Pelasgian character among the Athenians at the epoch of the Troica appear to be varied and powerful, I must admit that they are crossed by one indication, which is at first sight of an opposite character, I mean that which is afforded by their name. Even though we were to surrender the entire passages in the Catalogue respecting them, it would still be difficult to contend that the name of Athens and of Athenians is forged in six other places of the poems where one or the other of them is found, besides that there is a second allusion to Erechtheus in the Odyssey. Here we have then, attached to a people whom we suppose Pelasgian, a name connecting them immediately with a deity commonly reputed to be of strong Hellic propensities: connecting them, indeed, in a manner so special as to be exclusive, because no other city or population in Homer takes its name from a deity at all. This indicates a relation of the closest description: and it is quite independent of the suspected passage, which represents Minerva as the nurse or foster-mother of Erechtheus.
Athenian relations with Minerva.
Now it will be found, upon close examination, that Minerva plays a very different part in the Iliad from Juno, the great protectress of the Greeks, and from Neptune, their actual comrade in fight. The difference even at first sight is this, that theirs appears to be a national, hers more a personal and moral sentiment. In Juno, it is sympathy with the Greeks as Greeks; in Neptune, antipathy to the Trojans as Trojans: but both cases are plainly distinguishable from the temper and attitude of Minerva.
Her protection of Ulysses, whose character is the human counterpart of her own, is the basis of the whole theurgy of the Odyssey, and is also strongly marked in the Δολώνεια. Again, she comes, in the first book[207], at the instance of Juno, to restrain and guide Achilles: for Juno, it is stated, loved both Agamemnon and Achilles alike; which may imply, that this was not the exact case with Minerva. So again, she inspires Diomed[208] for the work of his ἀριστεῖα, with a view to his personal distinction[209]. On each of the two occasions when the two goddesses come down together from heaven, it is Juno that makes the proposal. When Minerva prompts Pandarus to treachery, it is by the injunction of Jupiter, issued on the suggestion of Juno[210]. In the seventh book, however, she descends of herself on seeing that the Greeks lose ground, tells Apollo that she was come, as he was, with the intention to stay the battle[211], and the result of their counsel is one of the single fights (that between Hector and Ajax), which were sure to issue in glory to the Greek heroes. Still she has not the rabid virulence against Troy which distinguishes Juno, which makes her exact the decision for its destruction in the Olympian assembly, and which leads Jupiter to say to her sarcastically, that if she could but eat Priam and his children and subjects raw, then her anger would be satiated.
In fact, Juno has all the marks of a deity entirely Hellic: both in the passionate character of her attachment, and in the absence of all signs whatever of any practical relation between her and the Trojan people.