ψευσταί τ’ ὀρχησταί τε, χοροιτυπίῃσιν ἄριστοι,
ἀρνῶν ἠδ’ ἐρίφων ἐπιδήμιοι ἁρπακτῆρες.
An invective, which completely corresponds with the Greek belief concerning their general character in the Third Book[457]. The great Greek heroes are also beautiful; but their mere beauty, particularly in the Iliad, is for the most part kept carefully in the shade.
Trojan polity less highly organized.
We will turn now to the political institutions of Troy. Less advanced towards organization, and of a less firm tone than in Greece, they will help to explain how it could happen that a people should bear prolonged calamity and constant defeat, and could pass on to final ruin, for the wicked and wanton wrong of an individual prince.
It has been noticed, that the idea of hereditary succession was definite, as well as familiar, in Greece. In Troy it appears to have been less so. And this is certainly what we might expect from the recognition in any form, however qualified, of polygamy. It tends to confound the position of any one wife, although supposed supreme, with that of others; and in confounding the order of succession, as among the issue of different wives, it altogether breaks up the simplicity of the rule of primogeniture.
And again, if, as we shall presently see, the Trojan race had a less developed capacity for political organization, they would be less likely to establish a clear rule and practice of succession, which is a primary element of political order in well-governed countries.
The evidence as to the Asiatic rule of inheritance is, I admit, indirect and scanty: nor do I attempt to place what I have now to offer in a rank higher than that of probable conjecture.
1. Sarpedon was clearly leader of the Lycians, with some kind of precedence over Glaucus.
The general tenour of the poem clearly gives this impression. He speaks and acts as the person principally responsible[458]. But by birth he was inferior to Glaucus; for he was the grandson of Bellerophon only in the female line through Laodamia, while Glaucus stood alone in the male line through Hippolochus. I do not venture to rely much on the mere order of the names; and therefore I do not press the fact, which indeed is not needed for the argument, that it makes Laodamia junior to Hippolochus. It will be said that Sarpedon was in chief command, because he was of superior merit. But among the Greeks we have no instance in which superior merit gives preeminence as against birth. And the reputation of divine origin clearly could not put aside the prior right of succession.