3. Though Patroclus was in the first rank of warriors he is nowhere called βασιλεὺς or Διοτρεφής; but only Διογενὴς, which is a word apparently used with rather more latitude. The subordinate position of Menœtius, the father of Patroclus, makes it improbable that he should stand as a king in the Iliad. He appears to have been lieutenant to Achilles over the whole body of Myrmidons.
4. Eurypylus son of Euæmon[71], commander of a contingent of forty ships, and one of the ten acceptors of the challenge, is in one place addressed as Διοτρεφής. It is doubtful whether he was meant to be exhibited as a βασιλεὺς, or whether this is a lax use of the epithet; if it is so, it forms the only exception (apart from ix. 607) to the rule established by above thirty passages of the Iliad.
Upon the whole, then the evidence of the Iliad clearly tends to show that the title βασιλεὺς was a definite one in the Greek army, and that it was confined to nine persons; perhaps with some slight indistinctness on the question, whether there was or was not a claim to that rank on the part of one or two persons more.
Conditions of Kingship in the Iliad.
Upon viewing the composition of the class of kings, whether we include in it or not such cases as those of Meges or Eurypylus, it seems to rest upon the combined basis of
1. Real political sovereignty, as distinguished from subaltern chiefship;
2. Marked personal vigour; and
3. Either, a. Considerable territorial possessions, as in the case of Idomeneus and Oilean Ajax;
b. Extraordinary abilities though with small dominions, as in the case of Ulysses; or, at the least,
c. Preeminent personal strength and valour, accepted in like manner as a compensation for defective political weight, as in the case of Telamonian Ajax.