The Catalogue
of Ships

Twenty-nine Achaean contingents, forty-six named captains, one hundred and eighty towns, and one thousand one hundred and eighty-six ships drawn up on the beach at Troy — followed by the sixteen peoples who came to defend the city against them.

Ten tongues were mine, ten mouths, a voice unbreakable, and a heart of bronze within me, unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, remembered for me all who came under Ilion. 2.489–492
1,186
Achaean ships
29
Contingents
46
Named captains
180
Towns named
16
Trojan allies
Order Side

The Fleet

one hull drawn per ten ships

The Catalogue's real content is not the total but its distribution: 1,186 ships shared out very unevenly among twenty-nine peoples. Drawn to scale, the roll shows what the verse states only in passing — that Agamemnon led by far the most men, and that the war's second-best fighter brought twelve hulls.

Compiled from this project's line-for-line translation of Book 2, one entry per contingent, each keyed to its Greek line numbers. Ship totals are the poem's own; they sum to the traditional 1,186. The Trojan roll gives no ship counts — the allies came overland, and the poet counts them in peoples rather than hulls.

The Iliad — Wrath, Sing, Goddess · Contents