TWO NOTES ON THE HOMERIC CATALOGUE
by
J. M.
COOK
In themselves the notes here offered have little to do with Mycenaean
studies. But the Catalogue in the second book of the Iliad has long been regarded as central to such studies, and it has acquired a new significance in
the eyes of those who believe it to be a document preserved from late Mycenaean times. So these notes may not be altogether irrelevant. The lack of
footnotes to them indicates that I have found hardly any discussion of the
topics here considered.
(i)
ALLITERATION AND ASSONANCE
The poet, or poets, who composed the Catalogue of Achaean contingents
and Trojan allies faced a set of circumstances very different from those of
normal epic narrative and discourse. There was a wide range of different formulae available for introducing the various contingents. The names of towns
in each division of the Achaean Catalogue were evidently in no regular order
and could be placed in the verse at the poet's preference. And with a norm
of one epithet per three place names, most commonly applied to the last
name in a line, the chosen order of names must often have determined which
name received the epithet (and in some cases the choice of a particular epithet determined the order of the names). Thus the possible combinations
were manifold, and an unusually conscious effort of selective composition
must have been imposed on the poet. It is questionable whether a poet could
easily have improvised this catalogue; and if it was thought out with some
care before being sung, a considerable degree of elaboration may be expected.
In a stretch of over 300 hexameter lines examples of alliteration and
assonance are bound to occur; they could not be altogether lacking unless
the poet had been at pains to avoid them. And since some of the lines in the
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J. M. Cook
Catalogue show no deliberate attempt to use such effects, it could be argued
that the examples that do occur are accidental. The present note, though
concerned only with the epithets of places, is designed to show that the poet's
choice was in fact partly governed by a liking for alliterative devices.
Taking the Catalogue in its present form as a finished product of Ionic
composition, we must presumably reckon that the aspirate was not sounded.
Thus "EAOC; 't"' ~rpOCAOV 7t't"OALe:&pOV will have had the value Elost' epalon ptolietron, and in IIu&wvoc 't"E 7te:'t"p~e:aaocv the name will have been sounded Putona. On this assumption we may reckon that out of some 72 epithets distributed among 205 place names about 30 have a distinct alliterative force
in their contexts. This is of course not a very high proportion; but we must
bear in mind that sound devices in the lines are not confined to noun-epithet
combinations. To show that some of these 30 epithets have been selected for
their alliterative value we may begin with examples where the choice of epithet is a striking one. An obvious instance is the word xAw(J.ocx6e:aaoc, which
is of unique occurrence and not very certain meaning; its sole appearance is
in the phrase 'I&w(J.'Yjv xAw(J.ocx6e:aaocv, and here the long sound -W(J.- is common
to both words. Thisbe has the rare epithet 7tOAU't"P~pwv, and the combination
in fact gives a light alliteration; but there is a much more noticeable one
if we have listened to the preceding name with its long syllable ""p'Yj- (Eu't"p'YjaLv 't"e: 7tOAU't"P~pwvoc 't"e: EHa~'Yjv). There is also an instance of duplicate epithets with the same meaning and metrical value (a phenomenon sometimes
said not to occur in Homer). The poet gives us 7toAua't"ocrpuA6v &' 'Ia't"LocLocv
but also XOCL cX.(J.7te:A6e:v't"' 'E7tL~OCUpOV. Here the epithet applied to Epidauros
could have been applied equally to Histiaia in:the masculine or feminine form,
but the alliteration would not have been nearly so effective. In more elaborate groups the alliteration is especially noticeable: for instance, XOLA'YjV
AOCXe:~OCL(J.OVOC x'Yj't"we:aaocv and 7t6ALV 't"' 'OAooaa6voc Ae:UX~V, or "hwvoc 't"e: (J.'Yj't"EpOC
(J.~AWV, and we may add <I>&LpWV 't"' Ilpoc; cX.xpL't"6rpUAAOV, where the unique (and
virtually duplicate) epithet gives a better alliteration than the normal e:LVOaLrpuAAoV.
It may be objected that some of the alliterative epithets were peculiarly
applicable to the places they describe: e.g. ~w~wv'Yjv ~uaxe:L(J.e:pov, 'OPX0(J.e:vov
MLVUe:LOV, IIu&wvoc 't"e: 7te:'t"p~e:aaocv, and let us add 'EAAOC8oc XOCAALYUVOCLXOC: and
Thisbe abounded in doves in Dodwell's day, and does still. There is truth
in this; for it was part of the poet's task to have his facts right. But there
are other epithets that are almost universally applicable. There is scarcely
any place in Greece that is not windy or dear to its inhabitants; and it must
have been considerations of sound rather than sense that prompted the selection of Arait(h)yree and Enispe for their special epithets: ' ApocL&upE'Yjv 't"' epoc't"e:LV~V and ~ve:(J.6e:aaocv 'EVLa7t'Yjv. The effect here is such that one cannot
help wondering whether the name may not occasionally have been invented
Two Notes on the Homeric Catalogue
105
to accompany the epithet. Naturally, alliteration and assonance are far from
being the sole factors governing the application of epithets. But they were
evidently important considerations at the stage when the Catalogue was
being set in a permanent hexameter form; and any study of the Catalogue
should take account of them. Sound devices of this sort are of course characteristic of the Homeric epos as a whole; but the Catalogue was exceptional
in the opportunity that it offered for studied effects of this sort, and the use
that was actually made of them seems to suggest that artistry as sophisticated as is to be found anywhere in the Ionic epos was used in the composition of the Catalogue. In fine, we may say that the Catalogue, in the finished form in which it has been handed down, is very far from being a primitive document.
(ii)
THE TROJAN ALLIES
The Trojan Catalogue is peculiarly arid outside the Troad itself. A reason can be suggested for this. In Homer's time the main area of Greek settlement in Asia Minor was the central part of the west coast where the Aeolic
and Ionic dodekapoleis were formed. But the Ionic epic poets evidently
knew that the migration to that coast dated after the heroic age; and consequently their tradition did not tolerate any explicit mention of their own
settlements. With one notable exception, the Aeolis and Ionia are a blank
in the Catalogue, indeed, as far as Greek settlements go, in the whole epic
tradition. The one exception is easily explained. Miletus, as we learn from
later writers, had a tradition of Cretan settlement; excavation has shown
the existence of a unique Cretan and Mycenaean town there, and the place
also seems to occupy a unique position in the Hittite documents. Evidently,
then, Miletus had a unique prehistory of which the Ionic poets were not altogether unaware.
Some scholars have maintained that the Catalogue of Achaeans and
Trojans, in substantially its present form, is a document transmitted more
or less directly from Mycenaean Greece. If this were the case, the explanation given above would be false; for the detailed information about the Trojan
allies would have an independent origin, and the poets of Ionia could have
played no decisive role in its construction. In attempting to show which of
these two views is preferable, we will confine ourselves to two lines of enquiry.
First, if this catalogue were an old historical document, we should expect
to find a fairly uniform degree of knowledge, or ignorance, about the different regions outside the Troad from which the Asiatic allies came; whereas, if it
had been constructed by poets living in Ionia, we might expect to sense a greater knowledge of, or interest in, any regions that were likely to be familiar to
them. Now, it is evident that knowledge of Asia Minor outside the Troadis very
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J. lVI. Cook
meagre. In 27 lines (11. II 851-877) there are only four epithets applied to
places in this part of the Catalogue; and in general there is a lack of topographical knowledge to lend verisimilitude to the list. But there are two notable exceptions. One is the land of the Maeonians (or Lydians), where the
Catalogue knows of the Gygaean Lake and Mt Tmolos; and the other is
Miletus, where it mentions the wooded mountain of Phthires (a not very
complimentary reference that the Milesians may not have enjoyed) and the
beds of the Maeander and the lofty summits of Mycale. In the latter case
there is no doubt that an Ionic poet would have been in a position to enrich
the Catalogue from personal knowledge of the locality; and the special
knowledge of geographical features of the Lydian territory a couple of days'
march from Smyrna would also lend itself to the same explanation. Granted
that Ionia as such cannot figure in the list but that Lydia and Caria each
furnish a contingent, these are precisely the two points in the Trojan Catalogue where an Ionian would be expected to have the advantage of local
knowledge; and the most natural assumption therefore is that an Ionic poet
has grasped these two opportunities of embroidering the toponymic setting
of the Asiatic allies. If this is so, the obscurity in which more distant regions
are shrouded will correspond to Ionic ignorance of their topography. One
minor point here: the last entry in the Catalogue is the Lycians from the
eddying Xanthos river. There seems to be no trace of any Bronze Age settlement in this part of Lycia, and the earliest relics of human habitation yet
discovered at Xanthos do not go back before the eighth century. Thus here
again the Catalogue seems to reflect contemporary Ionic geographical knowledge.
Before turning to the second line of enquiry we may consider for a moment the Homeric epithets of the great Mycenaean citadels in relation to
contemporary knowledge. Tiryns is named only in the Catalogue, and is
there distinguished by the epithet ' walled'. In the Iliad Mycenae twice
receives the epithet 'of much gold' (7toMxpua~~); and Pylos is normally
called 'sandy'. Now, the extraordinary feature of Tiryns which has so impressed visitors in ancient and modern times is the splendid state of preservation of its walls, which, unlike others, survived the collapse of Mycenaean
power almost intact. The wealth of Mycenae is also famous; the place spouted gold for Schliemann and Papademetriou, and before that for Veli Pasha,
and before that it must have yielded gold to much earlier diggers because the
beehive tombs were evidently robbed before classical times, leaving only
the name Treasuries as a memory of the wealth found in them. In late Mycenaean times the palace of Nestor's family was a number of miles from the
sea and its situation could not have been called sandy; this epithet, together with the topographical connotations of Nestor's Pylos in the Odyssey,
implies that the Ionic poets had the coastland of classical Pylos in mind when
they sang of Nestor's home. And to take a last example, it is naturally the
Two Notes on the Homeric Catalogue
10 7
Hellenic Acropolis of Athens with its religious buildings, and not the Mycenaean rulers' citadel, that springs to our mind when we read in Homer of the
temple of Athena there. These are not matters to insist upon, because naturally
they can be interpreted in different ways; but in these most illustrious instances, of which two are drawn from the Catalogue, it can at least be argued
that the circumstantial detail is more naturally referred to contemporary
Ionic knowledge than to Mycenaean tradition.
Our second line of enquiry concerns the personal names of Asiatic allies
whom the poet does not seem to consider of Greek origin. If we omit the
Lycian leaders as being closely connected with Achaean families in the legends
and out of place in Lycia in heroic times-out of place also as allies of Troy
against their Achaean kin-the Anatolian allies are Paphlagonians, Halizonians, Mysians, Phrygians (whose presence in Asia Minor at the time of
the Trojan War is very embarrassing), Maeonians and Carians. The majority
of their leaders have personal names of Greek stamp; and indeed, to judge
by this evidence, the barbarian allies look more Greek almost than the Achaeans
themselves. It has been maintained with some confidence that what we have
in the Trojan Catalogue is barbarian names presented in hellenised forms;
and in general this hypothesis is as difficult to rebut as it is to sustain. But
the matter would be resolved if it could be shown that some of these ' hellenised' names were a Greek poet's invention.
Invented names are of course common in Homer, and they are not confined to strings of appropriate ones like the nautical Phaeacian youth (Od.
VIII III-II9) or Thetis' sea nymphs (11. XVIII 39-49). We may instance
0e:pcrh"YJ~ the impudent braggart, OUXctAEYCilV at the gate who with Antenor
formed the vocal opposition to the war party, noMi:ao~ as the name both
of a seer and of a seer's son, 'H1tUTLa"Yj~ as the patronymic of a herald (whose
own name, Periphas, was explained by Eustathius as derived from 1te:pLn<7><;
CPCil\le:L\I), 'Ap(J.O\lLa'Y)~ the carpenter, K01tpe:u~ the servile father of a socially superior son, 'E1te:Lye:U~ whose hasty temper can be inferred from his killing
of his noble young nephew, ' Ay&.crTPOCPO~ who could not get back to his chariot in time because he was ranging the battlefield too widely, two murderers
(MctLCil\l and nOAucp6vT"Yj~) whose fathers were At(J.Cil\l and AUT6cpo\lo~, and
,AV&e:(J.LCil\l, the father of Simoeisios whose birth and death form a charming
pastoral idyl (11. IV 473-489). With such names in mind we may turn to the
Trojan Catalogue.
The leaders of the Halizonians are Hodios (or, in Ionic at least, Odios)
and Epistrophos. They come T"YjA6&e:\I €~ , AM~"Yj~, wherever that may be.
Hodios is a good name for a man who travels a long way. It is appropriately
borne by one of a pair of heralds in the Iliad (IX 170) ; and one cannot help
wondering whether these two heralds' names are not deliberately contrasted,
because the second one, Eurybates, whose name naturally suggests a more
open-legged immobile stance, is described as having hunched shoulders when
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M. Cook
he is mentioned in the Odyssey (XIX 246). We might therefore suggest that
Eurybates, unlike Hodios, is conceived of as being no walker 1.
To return to the Halizonian leaders, if Hodios is a man who makes a
journey, his counterpart Epistrophos ought to be the one who turns, whether
in the sense of turning/ranging about, or better of turning back as Menelaus did in Il. III 370 when he grasped Paris by his helmet crest and started
to drag him back (e:AX£ 8' tmcr't"peljiw;) towards his companions. The name
Epistrophos is also not unique; it occurs in the Catalogue in two other pairs,
one of whom is the Phocian leaders, grandchildren of Naubolos. This Phocian pair is Schedios and Epistrophos; and since the name Schedios should
imply a fighter at close range, his counterpart Epistrophos would here be the
one who turns away from fighting at close quarters, assuming that in these
pairs of names the functions are contrasted. If this is so, Schedios is in danger
of being killed in the thick of battle, and Hodios, who makes the single journey, is likewise expendable; but we should expect the two Epistrophoi to
be secure from injury, unless by mischance from a stray missile. In fact,
in the Iliad both Schedios and Hodios were killed; but there is no word of
the two Epistrophoi being injured.
Thus, like the Phocian pair, the two Halizonians in the Catalogue seem
to have lived up to their names. Hodios made the single journey; but Epistrophos, as the man who turns back, had his return guaranteed. If the poet
meant this, the Halizonian pair is no more historical than MM. Aller et Retour 2.
Unfortunately for this line of thought the third Epistrophos offers no
such contrast: his brother Mynes and he were both overthrown in the sack
of Lyrnessos by Achilles (11. 1I 692). And it may therefore be that the contrasting of the other two pairs is illusory, and that the argument developed
above depends on fortuitous coincidences. But in that case we must reco1 There is admittedly room for argument whether Eurybates, the companion of
Hodios, is the same man as Odysseus' herald Eurybates mentioned in the Odyssey.
In the Iliad Agamemnon appears to have had a herald called Eurybates (I 320), and
so had Odysseus (11 184) . In IX 170 Hodios and Eurybates are named as heralds by
Agamemnon, but to accompany Odysseus, who was present, no doubt with his herald,
at the time. We cannot profitably pursue the question further.
In a long article called ~OIlOfLOC btWllUfL0'l, REG XXXIX, 1926, 381-447, which is
concerned with significant names in Homer but from a point of view quite different to
that discussed here, M. Sulzberger has remarked on Eurybates as being a typical herald
name in Homer, and Eurymedon as a typical .lh;pCX7tW'I's name (Agamemnon and Nestor
had one each).
2 In Act V, Scene V of Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare makes the corpses of Epistrophus and Cedius lie together on the battlefield, victims of the bastard Margarelon's
martial rage. But this is his error.
Two Notes on the Homeric Catalogue
109
gnise a very special characteristic of the name Epistrophos. Otherwise unknown, it occurs three times in the Catalogue, in each case as the second in
a pair of names and preceded by xod, and it is the favourite name in this
position (always of course in the latter part of the line) ; for the only other
second-in-pair name with the same metrical value is Ialmenos, which
occurs once. In each of the three pairs the first-named person has sufficient
entity to appear elsewhere in the Iliad, but none of the Epistrophoi are ever
heard of again. If the name Epistrophos had no special significance and it
was a matter of t historical' chance which of the six names recurred in the
action of the Iliad, the odds against three of the names recurring and none
of those three being Epistrophos would be 63 to I. The name should therefore have some significance; and if it is is not a badge of protection (as suggested above) it looks like the mark of a grade lower than cannon fodder, the
people who were literally non-entities. In any case the appearance of artificiality that adheres to the pair of Halizonian leaders is not an isolated phenomenon here. In the Trojan Catalogue the names of the lords of Miletus,
look specially appropriate ones for the settlers and champions of a colonial
foundation; and the name of the Mysian leader, Ennomos, is in tune with
the character of one who did not use his skill as a seer to save himself from
death at the hands of Achilles. These Greek names, then, cannot be historical, and it follows that some at least of the personal names, as well as some
of the epithets and scenery in the Catalogue, must have been the invention
of the Ionic poets.
University of Bristol.