It contains, however, two remarkable notes of historical veracity. The horses of Eumelus, a Thessalian, are proclaimed to have been by far the best (μέγ’ ἄρισται): and the Myrmidons, again a Thessalian contingent, are here spoken of as having a number of separate chariots and horses; we are told (773), ‘the soldiers played at games.... The horses stood feeding, each near his own chariot, and the chariots were in their sheds.’ This is never said of any other contingent in the army. In strict harmony with this picture, Thessaly was conspicuous throughout the historic times of Greece, for the excellence of its breeds of horses, and the high character of its cavalry.
If all this be so, we cannot wonder at the high estimation in which the Catalogue of Homer was held by the Greeks of after-ages, as the great and only systematic record of the national claims of the respective states.
This was not merely literary or private estimation: the Catalogue had the place of an authoritative public document. Under the laws of Solon, for example, it received the honour of public recitation on solemn occasions. It was also quoted for the decision of controversies. In the critical moment, which preceded the first Persian war, the Athenian and Spartan envoys apply on the part of Greece to Gelon for his aid. He claims the command. In resisting this claim and urging their own right to lead the fleet, unless that post be claimed by the Lacedæmonians, the Athenians found their pretensions on the magnitude of their fleet, their autochthonism, and, finally, the testimony of Homer to the merits of Menestheus[494].
The Trojan Catalogue.
The Trojan Catalogue has less of organic connection than the Greek with the structure of the poem at large.
In proceeding to this portion of his work, the poet does not renew his ornamental similes, or his invocation to the Muse. He evidently meant to lower the tone of his strain: and moreover he was not about to tax memory as he had done in the former operation, the proper names being only about one fourth in number of those used for the Greeks, and none of them being arranged in long strings like the towns of Bœotia.
He now begins in what may be called a natural order: taking first that section of the army, which was supplied by the Troic sovereignties, principal and subordinate; and among these giving the first place to the troops of Ilion itself, as the most considerable, and as those chiefly concerned. The next is given to the Dardan forces, which were connected with the original seat of the race, and the following ones to the contingents supplied by the subordinate sovereigns of the rest of Troas.
His pursuit of this order reminds us, that the geographical distribution was in the case of the Trojan list simple, and did not require the aid of mental geometry, as he had only to follow, almost throughout, a single line of States along the European and Asiatic coasts. It also strengthens the presumption that, when Homer chose an order so different, and so much less natural and obvious, in the case of the Greeks, he must have been governed by some peculiar reason.
It will be observed that, of the eleven divisions of the Allies, the two first are the Pelasgians and the Thracians. As the blood of these two races flowed likewise in the veins of the Greeks, the precedence given to them may have been founded on this relationship. But this presumption is qualified by our finding that, doubtless on the ground of geographical order, the Lycian contingent, which had, at any rate, strong Greek affinities, comes last of all.
For a reason given elsewhere, we must consider the numbers assigned to the Greek contingents as approximate representations of their respective force: but the omission to particularize numbers at all in the Trojan Catalogue is itself an evidence of its historical character. The Trojan army was of a miscellaneous character: we also know that the allied contingents went and came, and that their absence from home, not prompted by the same powerful motives as that of the Greeks, was shortened by reliefs. Thus we find Rhesus with his Thracians just arrived in the Tenth Book[495]: Memnon comes to Troy after the death of Hector[496]: and we are told of the sons of Hippotion (Il. xiii. 792), who ἦλθον ἀμοιβοί, had come as reliefs, on the preceding day. An army thus collected piecemeal, and thus fluctuating in its composition, could not leave behind it the same accessible traditions. Again, the destruction of Troy itself obliterated what alone could have been their depository; nor had Homer, as a Greek bard, either the same motives or the same means for gathering detailed information, as he would naturally possess with reference to his own countrymen.