power and name prevailed; and Helen, the daughter of Tyndareus is, as we have also seen, characteristically with him the Argive Helen. Thus then it may now be lawful to say, we are supplied with a meaning for the name which makes it especially appropriate in the mouth of Agamemnon, the head of the Pelopids. For they were the race who, coming in at the head of the Achæans, had from the West overpowered and superseded the Argive power of the East, while they also held as heirs to it by marriage: and if a royal Argive house at the epoch of the war survived only in Helen and her sister Clytemnestra, she in part at least represented its title, and, as a lawful wife of Menelaus, added to his throne whatever authority the name and rights of her race were capable of conferring. Having, I trust, seen enough to justify the belief that some at least of these names in the mind of Homer had a definite as well as a more general meaning, let us now, taking them in succession, proceed to examine what that meaning is. Among the three great Homeric appellatives, let us direct our attention first to the one, which is presumably the oldest. The word Aavaoì, from the comparative paucity of the signs and indications connected with it, evidently answers to this description. We will take first the Homeric, and then the later, evidence respecting it. Of the former, the greater number of particulars are negative. Indeed we have but two positive notes to dwell upon; both of these, however, are of great importance. 1. The Danaan name is with Homer a standing appellation of the Greeks. I think, however, it can be shown that it never means the Greek nation, but always the Greek armament or soldiery. It is used in the Iliad one hundred and forty-seven times. The name 'Apyeio is employed oftener, namely, one hundred and seventy-seven times in the plural, besides eleven times in the singular as a personal epithet: and 'Axaloì much more frequently still. If we observe the shadings, attached to these words respectively by means of the epithets which Homer annexes to them, we shall find they establish perceptible distinctions. The epithets of Aavaoì are exclusively military epithets : The epithets of 'Apyeîou are as follows: I. όμωροι, Il. iv. 242. xiv. 479. Upon these we may observe, first, that they are few in number; secondly, that they are used with extreme rarity; being only applied in four passages altogether, whereas the word Aavaoì has epithets in twenty-two. Thirdly, this word only twice in the whole of the poems has a military epithet attached to it. For I must follow those, who do not translate ióuwpoι as corresponding with eyxeríuwpo: (1) because the Greeks were not archers, (2) because the derivation from a, 'the voice,' giving the sense of braggart, harmonises exactly with the accompanying phrase ἀπειλάων ἀκόρη To: as well as (3) for the presumptive, but in Homer by no means conclusive, reason, that lov in composition is long. The epithets of 'Axauoi are numerous, highly varied, and of very frequent use. 1. ἀπειλητῆρες. 2. μάχης ακόρητοι. 3. ἀνάλκιδες. 4. δίοι. 5. ἑλικῶπες. 6. εὐκνήμιδες. 8. καρηκομόωντες. They are these: 9. μεγάθυμοι. 12. χαλκοχίτωνες. 13. ὑπερκύδαντες. 14. ἀρηίφιλοι. 15. φιλοπτόλεμοι. These epithets are used in nearly one hundred and thirty passages, and they may be classified as comprising, (1) One or two words of sarcastic reproach, very rarely used. (2) Words descriptive of courage and spirit: such are μεγάθυμοι, μένεα πνείοντες. (3) Words indicating that disposition to brag, which is more or less traceable in the military conduct of the Greeks, as well as glaringly palpable among the Trojans. (4) Words descriptive of personal beauty: λIK@TTES and καρηκομόωντες. (5) The word diot, which signifies generally the possession of some kind of excellence. (6) Words relating to well made and well finished armour: εὐκνήμιδες, χαλκοκνήμιδες, χαλκοχίτωνες. And of the epithets of the three appellatives respectively we may say, (1) Those of 'Axatoì are highly diversified, extended, and elevated in meaning: and are not suitable for soldiers exclusively. (2) Those of Apyeîo are so slight and rare that they may be passed over. (3) Those of Aavaoì are most properly neither those of chiefs, nor of a nation at large, but of a soldiery. In the Odyssey the Danaan name is used thirteen times but it never signifies either the Greeks contemporary with the action of that poem, or the Greek nation in its prior history: it is employed always retrospectively, and always of the soldiery in the Trojan war. It will be observed by readers of the poems, that Homer often brings two of the three great appellatives, or even all the three, into juxtaposition so near, as would be inconvenient upon the supposition that they are purely synonymous. For instance, in Il. i. 71, we have 'Apyeîoi and'Axatoì in the same line, and in Il.i.90, 91, Aavaoi and 'Axauoi in two successive lines. It is, I think, obvious, that this inconvenience will be mitigated or removed, if it can be shown that each of these three names, though they were most commonly applied to mean the same body of persons, nevertheless had its own shade of meaning. And we shall presently have to examine cases, where a determination of this kind appears to be required by the sensek. All the rest of the Homeric evidence connected with the name Aavaoì is of a negative character. It is never used in the singular number, either as an adjective, or as a substantive. Nor is it ever applied to women: a point not immaterial, in connection with the question, whether with Homer it does not mean the Greeks of the army exclusively. There is, again, nothing in his use of it which associates it with a park Inf. pp. 410, II. ticular class of the army, either the lower or the higher; but it appears to be essentially general, comprehensive, and, I may add, likewise invariable in its meaning. Still less should we expect to find it, nor do we find it, connected with the inhabitants of any particular part of the country: it has not, like the Cadmean or Cephallenian name, a local habitation within Greece. Nor has it in itself any root, or any derivative, which would associate it with any territory, as Aiyaλeis refers us to Αιγίαλος, or even as Αρκαδες is related to 'Αρκαδίη. Its use in the Iliad is in exact harmony with that in the Odyssey: it is never associated with the history of the Greeks or any part of them in short, there is no clear evidence of its existence or application beyond the limits of the camp. Neither has it any thing related to the physical character of the country, or to any of the races known to have inhabited it, or to any employment or habit of life, or to any deity. It floats before us like Delos on the Ægaan, without any visible or discoverable root. And the only question is, whether the slight positive evidence at our command is not so limited, and so hemmed in on all sides by negatives, as to determine the hypothesis that may be drawn from it to one particular form, by forbidding us to move, except in one particular direction. It is quite plain that the Danaan name must have had some root, lying very deep in the history or legends of Greece since it would not have been possible for Homer, as a poet of the people, handling a subject the most profoundly national, to describe the Greek army under any name, except one associated with some of the most splendid, or the most venerable, traditions of the country. |
