The Iliad · wrath, sing, goddess
the poem’s principal persons, gods, peoples, and places — with pronunciations, epithets, kin, and linked citations
Say: uh-BAN-teez
The Euboean contingent of the Catalogue of Ships, holding Chalcis, Eretria, Histiaea, Cerinthus, Dios, Carystus and Styra, and led by Elephenor son of Chalcodon. The poem marks them twice over: they wear their hair long behind and shorn in front, and they are spearmen who close to break corslets rather than fight at range.
Kin: led by Elephenor, Chalcodon's son.
Refs: 2.536, 2.541, 2.542, 4.464. Books 2, 4.
See also: Achaeans.
Say: uh-BY-dos
A town on the Asian shore of the Hellespont, held with Sestus and Arisbe by Asius' contingent of Trojan allies. It is named twice more for the men who come from it: Democoon, Priam's bastard son, who kept the fast mares there, and the Phaenops whose shape Apollo borrows to shame Hector.
Refs: 2.836, 4.500, 17.584. Books 2, 4, 17.
See also: Asius, Arisbe, Hellespont.
Say: AK-uh-mas
Two men of the name fight on the Trojan side, and the poem keeps them apart. The first is a son of Antenor, named with his brother Archelochus in the Catalogue and again among Hector's captains at 11.60; in Book 14 he stands over Archelochus' body and kills Promachus in vengeance, vaunting over him, and Meriones runs him down as he mounts his chariot at 16.342. The second is a Thracian leader, Eussorus' son, "the man who was best among the Thracians," whom Telamonian Ajax kills at 6.8; Ares had worn his likeness to rally the Trojans a book earlier (5.462).
Kin: the Trojan Acamas is Antenor's son and Archelochus' brother; the Thracian is Eussorus' son.
Kills: Promachus (14.476–477). Killed by: Meriones (16.342); the Thracian Acamas by Ajax (6.8).
Refs: 2.823, 2.844, 5.462, 6.8, 11.60, 12.100, 14.476, 14.478, 14.488,
16.342. Books 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 16.
See also: Antenor, Archelochus, Peiroos, Thracians, Meriones.
Say: uh-KEE-uh
The Achaeans' homeland, named in the formula "horse-pasturing Argos and Achaea of the beautiful women" that closes the terms of the duel in Book 3, and turned against the army as a taunt in Menelaus' reproach — "Women of Achaea, men of Achaea no longer" (7.96).
Say: uh-KEE-unz
The poem's default name for the Greeks besieging Troy, used interchangeably with Argives and Danaans for the same host. After Zeus and the Trojans it is the commonest name in the Iliad: the army is the standing audience before which honor is won and lost, the assembly that must be persuaded, and the collective whose griefs the second line of the poem announces (1.2).
Epithets: "the long-haired Achaeans" (κάρη κομόωντες Ἀχαιοί, 2.11); "the strong-greaved Achaeans" (ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί, 1.17); "the bronze-shirted Achaeans" (χαλκοχίτωνες Ἀχαιοί, 1.371).
Also called: Argives; Danaans — metrically convenient synonyms for the same host, not distinct peoples. The Myrmidons and Hellenes are Achilles' own contingent and are not synonyms for the whole army.
Refs: 1.2, 1.17, 1.371, 2.11, 2.51 …and throughout.
Books 1–24.
See also: Argives, Danaans, Myrmidons, Hellenes, Achaea, Agamemnon.
Say: uh-KIL-eez
The poem's subject, greatest of the Achaeans, whose wrath is its announced theme and its first word. Agamemnon's seizure of Briseis drives him from the fighting; his refusal of the embassy in Book 9 hardens the quarrel past mending; and Patroclus' death in his own armor brings him back not to win the war but to kill Hector. The Iliad ends not with that vengeance but with him giving the body up to Priam, having been argued out of his rage by an old man who kisses his hands.
Epithets: "swift-footed" (πόδας ὠκύς / ποδάρκης, 1.58); "brilliant" (δῖος, 1.7); "Zeus-sprung" (διογενής, 1.489).
Also called: Peleus' son; Aeacus' grandson; Thetis' son.
Kin: son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis; grandson of Aeacus; father of Neoptolemus, reared on Scyros. Companion of Patroclus; foster-son of Phoenix.
Refs: 1.1, 1.58, 1.348, 9.199, 16.2, 18.22, 22.330, 24.596 …and throughout.
Books 1–2, 4–24.
See also: Patroclus, Hector, Agamemnon, Thetis, Peleus, Aeacus, Briseis, Priam, Phoenix.
Say: AK-tor
A name borne by more than one man of the older generation, all of them fathers rather than fighters. The poem's Actors include Azeus' son, in whose house Astyoche bore Ares' twin sons Ascalaphus and Ialmenus; the father of Menoetius, and so Patroclus' grandfather (11.785, 16.14); the father of Echecles (16.189); and the father of the twins Cteatus and Eurytus, called both "Actor's line" and "the two sons of Actor," who crowd past Nestor's horses in his reminiscence of the Epeian games.
Kin: variously father of Menoetius, of Echecles, and of the Molione twins.
Refs: 2.513, 2.621, 11.750, 11.785, 13.186, 16.14, 16.189, 23.638.
Books 2, 11, 13, 16, 23.
See also: Menoetius, Patroclus, Amarynceus.
Say: AD-uh-mas
Son of Asius, one of the Trojan captains who storm the wall in Book 12. In the fighting at the ships he stabs Antilochus' shield and slips back into the ranks "dodging doom," but Meriones catches him with a spear-cast in the groin and he dies writhing like a roped bull. Deiphobus names him among the dead Trojan leaders at 13.771.
Kin: son of Asius, Hyrtacus' son.
Killed by: Meriones (13.567–575).
Refs: 12.140, 13.561, 13.566, 13.760, 13.771. Books 12, 13.
See also: Asius, Meriones, Antilochus.
Say: ad-MEE-tus
Father of Eumelus and husband of Alcestis, "brilliant among women, loveliest of the daughters of Pelias." He does not come to Troy: the name is a patronymic throughout, marking his son, who brings eleven ships from Pherae and drives the best horses in the Achaean host.
Kin: husband of Alcestis; father of Eumelus.
Refs: 2.713, 2.714, 23.289, 23.391, 23.532. Books 2, 23.
See also: Eumelus, Alcestis.
Say: uh-DRAS-tus
King of Sicyon in the older generation — "Sicyon, where Adrastus first was king" — and owner of Arion, the swift horse "whose line was from the gods," against which Antilochus is told even a better driver could not have won. His daughters marry into the poem's Argive houses: Aegialeia is named as Diomedes' wife at 5.412, and Tydeus married a daughter of his after settling at Argos (14.121). The translation spells him Adrastus and the Trojan-side leader Adrestus, keeping two men distinct whom one spelling would merge; see `canon.md`.
Kin: father of Aegialeia; father-in-law of Tydeus.
Say: uh-DRES-tus
Three Trojan-side men bear this spelling. One leads the contingent from Adresteia and Apaesus with his brother Amphius, sons of Merops of Percote, who foresaw their deaths and could not keep them home. The second is the suppliant of Book 6, thrown from a bolting chariot, who clasps Menelaus' knees and offers ransom. Menelaus is on the point of granting it when Agamemnon runs up and shames him — "Soft-hearted Menelaus!" — so that Menelaus pushes the man back with his hand and Agamemnon does the killing (6.62–65). A third falls to Patroclus. The translation reserves Adrastus for the Sicyon king.
Kin: the Percotian Adrestus is Merops' son and Amphius' brother.
Killed by: Agamemnon (6.63–65); the third by Patroclus (16.694).
Say: EE-uh-kus
Peleus' father and Achilles' grandfather, himself sprung from Zeus (21.189). He never appears: in all its occurrences the name is a patronymic, and the translation keeps the generations apart by a fixed rule — "Aeacus' son" is Peleus, "Aeacus' grandson" is Achilles, except inside the fixed epithet formulas, where "the swift-footed son of Aeacus" and "Aeacus' blameless son" mean Achilles. See `translation/CONVENTIONS.md`.
Kin: son of Zeus; father of Peleus; grandfather of Achilles.
Refs: 2.860, 2.874, 9.184, 16.15, 16.140, 16.854, 21.178, 21.189 …and
throughout. Books 2, 9–11, 16–18, 21, 23.
Say: ee-NEE-us or uh-NEE-us
Leader of the Dardanians and, after Hector, Troy's best fighter. Son of Anchises and Aphrodite, he is twice snatched from death by gods who have plans for him — by his mother and Apollo when Diomedes crushes his hip with a boulder (5.311ff), and by Poseidon when Achilles has him beaten, in the scene that gives the poem its one glance past its own ending: Aeneas is destined to escape, "so that the race of Dardanus not perish seedless," and his line will rule the Trojans hereafter (20.302–308).
Also called: Anchises' son.
Kin: son of Anchises and Aphrodite; of the line of Dardanus through Assaracus.
Refs: 2.820, 5.166, 5.311, 5.445, 13.459, 16.620, 17.323, 20.302 …and
throughout. Books 2, 5–6, 8, 11–17, 20, 23.
See also: Anchises, Aphrodite, Dardanus, Dardanians, Achilles, Diomedes.
Say: ee-SEE-pus
A Trojan twin, killed with his brother Pedasus by Euryalus in the general rout of Book 6. The poem gives the pair a full genealogy at the moment of their death: the water-nymph Abarbarea bore them to Bucolion, Laomedon's eldest son, got in secret while he was shepherding. The name is also a river of the Troad, one of those the gods turn against the Achaean wall (12.21).
Kin: son of Bucolion and the nymph Abarbarea; twin of Pedasus.
Killed by: Euryalus (6.20–28).
Say: EE-thee
Agamemnon's mare, lent to Menelaus for the chariot race at Patroclus' funeral — a gift to Agamemnon from Echepolus son of Anchises, made so that he might stay home from the war. Nestor's son Antilochus is warned that she will "pour shame" on his horses, and her fury nearly carries Menelaus past him at the finish.
Kin: yoked with Menelaus' own horse Podargus.
Refs: 23.295, 23.408, 23.524. Book 23.
See also: Podargus, Menelaus, Antilochus, Echepolus.
Say: ee-TOH-lee-unz
The contingent from Pleuron, Olenus, Pylene, Chalcis and Calydon, led to Troy by Thoas son of Andraemon with forty ships. The Catalogue explains the odd succession: Oeneus' sons were dead and Meleager with them, so the whole rule fell to Thoas. Their older war against the Curetes over Calydon is the setting of Phoenix's Meleager story in Book 9.
Kin: led by Thoas, Andraemon's son.
Refs: 2.638, 2.643, 4.527, 9.529, 9.531, 13.218, 23.633. Books 2, 4–5, 9,
13, 15, 23.
Say: ag-uh-MEM-non
Commander of the whole Achaean expedition and Achilles' antagonist in the quarrel that starts the poem. His refusal to give Chryseis back brings the plague, and his taking of Briseis in compensation drives Achilles from the fighting; the disaster that follows is his to answer for, and in Book 19 he answers for it by blaming Blindness sent from Zeus. His authority rests on the sceptre whose descent Hephaestus to Zeus to Hermes to Pelops to Atreus to Thyestes to himself the poem traces at 2.101–108: he rules "many islands and all of Argos," and he is consistently a worse fighter than the men he commands.
Epithets: "lord of men" (ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, 1.7); "wide-ruling" (εὐρὺ κρείων, 1.102); "shepherd of the people" (ποιμὴν λαῶν, of Agamemnon at 2.243) — the last is a general royal epithet, used of Atreus and others too.
Also called: Atreus' son — in the singular this means Agamemnon unless the scene is Menelaus'; see `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Atreus, grandson of Pelops; brother of Menelaus; husband of Clytemnestra.
Refs: 1.24, 1.130, 2.100, 2.107, 4.148, 9.114, 11.91, 19.86 …and throughout.
Books 1–11, 13–14, 16–19, 23–24.
See also: Achilles, Menelaus, Atreus, Briseis, Chryseis, Blindness.
Say: uh-JEE-nor
Antenor's son, "a man blameless and strong," and the last Trojan to stand in Achilles' path before Hector. Apollo puts courage in him at 21.545 and he turns to face the charge, breaking off his own debate with the formula the poem gives its cornered men — "But why does my own heart argue these things with me?" (21.562, as at 11.407, 17.97, 22.122, 22.385). He casts, and Apollo snatches him away in mist, then wears his shape to decoy Achilles from the walls: the trick that lets the routed Trojans get inside the gates.
Kin: son of Antenor; father of Echeclus (20.474).
Refs: 4.467, 11.59, 12.93, 13.490, 15.340, 20.474, 21.545, 21.595, 21.600.
Books 4, 11–16, 20–21.
Say: AY-jaks
Telamon's son, from Salamis with twelve ships: the biggest man in the army and its best fighter after Achilles, whom Helen picks out from the wall as "gigantic Ajax, wall of the Achaeans." He carries a tower-like shield of seven oxhides and an eighth layer of bronze, made by Tychius of Hyle. The lot chooses him to duel Hector in Book 7, and they part at nightfall exchanging gifts; he is one of the three sent to Achilles in Book 9, where his short blunt speech comes nearest to moving him; and in Book 15 he holds the last deck alone against the fire, giving ground plank by plank. Unqualified "Ajax" means him unless the line marks the other.
Epithets: "wall of the Achaeans" (ἕρκος Ἀχαιῶν, 3.229).
Also called: Telamonian Ajax; Telamon's son; the great Ajax.
Kin: son of Telamon; half-brother of Teucer.
Refs: 2.557, 3.229, 7.183, 7.219, 9.622, 15.727, 17.132 …and throughout.
Books 1–18, 23.
See also: Ajax son of Oïleus, Ajaxes, Telamon, Teucer, Hector, Achilles.
Say: AY-jaks, son of oh-EYE-lyoos
Leader of the Locrians with forty ships: "the lesser Ajax, in no way so big as Telamonian Ajax / but far smaller: a little man, in a linen corslet, / but with the spear he surpassed all Hellenes and Achaeans" (2.528–530). He is the fastest Achaean in the chase — most of the kills in the Book 14 rout are his, "for there was no one like him for speed of foot" when men broke and ran — and the savage half of the pair: it is he who cuts off Imbrius' head in wrath for Amphimachus and sends it "rolling like a ball through the crowd" to fall at Hector's feet (13.202–205). In the footrace of the games Athena trips him at a dead run into the cattle-dung, and he stands spitting it out while the Argives laugh at him (23.774–784).
Also called: swift Ajax; the lesser Ajax; Oïleus' son. Unqualified "Ajax" is the Telamonian — see `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Oïleus; half-brother of Medon, Oïleus' bastard son (13.694–695).
Refs: 2.527, 13.203, 13.701, 14.520, 23.473, 23.754, 23.774. Books 2, 13–14,
23.
Say: AY-jak-seez
The dual — Telamonian Ajax and Ajax son of Oïleus fighting as a single unit, and the poem's standing image of a defensive line that holds. They are always found where the wall or the ships are about to break: marshaling the towers in Book 12, addressed first by Poseidon when he comes to rally the army in Book 13, carrying Imbrius' body off like two lions with a goat, and holding the line over Patroclus' corpse in Book 17. The Book 4 simile of a black storm-cloud coming on before the West Wind is given to them together.
Also called: the two Ajaxes.
Refs: 2.406, 4.273, 4.280, 12.265, 13.46, 13.197, 17.507, 17.732, 18.157.
Books 2, 4–8, 10, 12–13, 16–18.
See also: Ajax, Ajax son of Oïleus, Poseidon, Patroclus.
Say: uh-LAS-tor
At least three men. One is a Pylian, named among Nestor's captains at 4.295 and twice paired with Mecisteus son of Echius as a stretcher-bearer, carrying the wounded off to the ships (8.333, 13.422). Another is a Trojan-side victim in Odysseus' rally at 5.677. The third is named only as a father: Tros, "Alastor's son," is the suppliant who reaches for Achilles' knees and is killed anyway at 20.463.
Refs: 4.295, 5.677, 8.333, 13.422, 20.463. Books 4–5, 8, 13, 20.
Say: al-KATH-oh-us
A Trojan captain, Aesyetes' son, married to Anchises' eldest daughter Hippodameia. Idomeneus kills him in one of the poem's strangest deaths: Poseidon charms his eyes and shackles his limbs so that he stands unmoving "like a grave-pillar or a tree in high leaf" and cannot dodge, and his heart goes on beating hard enough to shake the spear standing in it. Deiphobus calls Aeneas to avenge the man who reared him.
Kin: son of Aesyetes; husband of Hippodameia, Anchises' eldest daughter; brother-in-law and foster-father to Aeneas.
Killed by: Idomeneus (13.427–444).
Say: al-SIM-uh-don
Son of Laerces and grandson of Haemon, one of the five company-commanders Achilles sets over the Myrmidons when Patroclus goes out (16.197). In Book 17 he finds Automedon fighting alone from Achilles' chariot with Patroclus dead and Hector wearing the armor, tells him he has lost his wits, and takes the reins so that Automedon can fight on foot.
Kin: son of Laerces, grandson of Haemon.
Refs: 16.197, 17.467, 17.475, 17.481, 17.500, 17.501. Books 16, 17.
Say: al-FEE-us
The great river of the western Peloponnese, "which flows wide through the Pylians' land." It marks Nestor's country in his reminiscences — the cattle-raid that reached its sacred stream by midday, the ford named in the Catalogue — and as a river-god it heads a Pylian genealogy: Alpheius begot Ortilochus, who fathered Diocles, whose twin sons Aeneas kills at 5.541–560.
Say: AL-teez
Lord of the Lelegians, "holding steep Pedasus on the Satnioeis," and father of Laothoe, one of Priam's wives. He is named only through his grandsons: Lycaon recites the descent while begging Achilles for his life at 21.85, and Priam names him again mourning Lycaon and Polydorus at 22.51, recalling the dowry "the famous name" gave with his daughter.
Kin: father of Laothoe; grandfather of Lycaon and Polydorus.
Say: am-uh-RIN-syoos
An Epeian lord of the older generation, father of Diores. Nestor's last long reminiscence is of the funeral games his sons held for him at Buprasium, where Nestor beat every man there at boxing, wrestling, running and the spear, and lost only the chariot race to the two sons of Actor — the memory he offers Achilles as he accepts a prize he no longer has to compete for.
Kin: father of Diores.
Say: AM-uh-zonz
A people of women who fight, named only in the back-story and only twice: Priam recalls campaigning against them in Phrygia in his youth, and Bellerophon is set to fight them as the third of the impossible tasks he survives.
Epithets: "the match of men" (ἀντιάνειραι, 3.189).
Refs: 3.189, 6.186. Books 3, 6.
See also: Priam, Bellerophon.
Say: am-FID-uh-mas
Two men. One is of Cythera, a link in the descent of the boar's-tusk helmet Odysseus wears on the night raid: Autolycus stole it, gave it to Amphidamas at Scandeia, who gave it to Molus, whose son Meriones lends it on. The other is of Opoeis, whose son Patroclus killed as a boy in a quarrel over dice — "a child's act; I did not mean it" — the killing that brought him to Peleus' house.
Kin: the Cytheran is a guest-friend of Molus; the Opoeisian is father of the boy Patroclus killed.
Say: am-FIM-uh-kus
Two men, both leaders in the Catalogue. The Epeian is a son of Cteatus, of Actor's line, one of four captains from Elis; Hector spears him in the chest as he comes into the fighting at the ships and is reaching to strip his helmet when Ajax drives him back, and the lesser Ajax kills Imbrius in wrath for him. The other is a Carian, son of Nomion and brother of Nastes, one of the pair who "went to war decked in gold, like a girl."
Kin: the Epeian is Cteatus' son, of Actor's line; the Carian is Nomion's son and Nastes' brother.
Killed by: Hector (13.185–187).
Refs: 2.620, 2.870, 2.871, 13.185, 13.189, 13.195, 13.203. Books 2, 13.
Say: an-KY-seez
Aeneas' father by Aphrodite, who "conceived him to Anchises herding cattle" on the spurs of Ida. He does not fight: he belongs to the genealogy Aeneas recites to Achilles at 20.208–241, the Dardanian line running Dardanus — Erichthonius — Tros — Assaracus — Capys — Anchises — Aeneas, the branch that survives when Priam's does not. A different Anchises, of Sicyon, is the father of the Echepolus who bribed Agamemnon with a mare to be let off the war (23.296).
Kin: son of Capys; father of Aeneas by Aphrodite; father-in-law of Alcathous.
Refs: 2.819, 5.247, 5.313, 13.428, 17.491, 20.208, 20.240, 23.296.
Books 2, 5, 12–13, 17, 20, 23.
See also: Aeneas, Aphrodite, Dardanus, Capys, Alcathous, Echepolus.
Say: an-DROM-uh-kee
Hector's wife, daughter of Eëtion of Thebe-under-Placus, whose father and seven brothers Achilles killed in the sack of that city — so that, as she tells Hector, he is now father and mother and brother to her as well as husband. She meets him at the Scaean Gates in Book 6 with their son in her arms and begs him to fight from the wall; he refuses, and the scene ends with the child frightened by his own father's helmet. She is at her loom, ordering a bath for him, when the wailing tells her he is dead (22.437–515), and she leads the lament over his body in the poem's last scene.
Epithets: "white-armed" (λευκώλενος, 6.371).
Kin: daughter of Eëtion; wife of Hector; mother of Astyanax.
Refs: 6.371, 6.377, 6.395, 6.405, 8.187, 17.208, 24.723. Books 6, 8, 17, 24.
Say: an-TEE-nor
The wisest of the Trojan elders and the one who says plainly what the war is about. He had hosted Menelaus and Odysseus on the embassy that first asked for Helen back, and he identifies them for Priam from the wall; in Book 7 he tells the assembly to give Helen and her goods to the Atreidae, since "it is with sworn oaths made false that we fight," and Paris refuses. Many of his sons die in the poem — Archelochus, Acamas, Iphidamas, Coon, Polybus — and Agenor is the last to face Achilles.
Kin: husband of Theano, Athena's priestess in Troy; father of Archelochus, Acamas, Agenor, Iphidamas, Coon, Polybus, and others.
Refs: 2.822, 3.148, 3.203, 3.262, 6.299, 7.347, 11.221, 14.463, 21.546.
Books 2–7, 11–12, 14–15, 19–21.
See also: Theano, Agenor, Acamas, Archelochus, Iphidamas, Coon, Helen, Paris.
Say: an-TIL-oh-kus
Nestor's son, the youngest of the Achaean captains and among the fastest. He kills the first Trojan of the general fighting (4.457) and fights hard through the middle books; but his two great scenes are late. It falls to him to carry the news of Patroclus' death to Achilles, and he does it holding Achilles' hands, afraid he will cut his own throat (18.32). In the funeral games he takes second place in the chariot race by forcing Menelaus into a narrow gully — his father having coached him at length in exactly such guile — and then gives the mare back when Menelaus challenges him on oath, in a scene of tact that ends the quarrel.
Also called: Nestor's son.
Kin: son of Nestor; brother of Thrasymedes.
Refs: 4.457, 5.565, 13.396, 15.585, 16.317, 17.685, 18.2, 18.32, 23.514,
23.541 …and throughout. Books 4–6, 13–18, 23.
See also: Nestor, Menelaus, Achilles, Patroclus, Thrasymedes.
Say: an-TIM-uh-kus
The Trojan who took Paris' gold and argued in the assembly against giving Helen back — and who urged that Menelaus be killed on the spot when he came as an envoy. Agamemnon kills two of his sons, Peisander and Hippolochus, in Book 11 and refuses their ransom on the strength of it: "now you will pay for your father's foul outrage." A third son falls to Leonteus at 12.188.
Kin: father of Peisander, Hippolochus, and Hippomachus.
Say: AN-tih-fus
Three men. On the Achaean side, a son of Thessalus and grandson of Heracles, who leads thirty ships with his brother Pheidippus from Cos and the Calydnian islands. On the Trojan side, a son of Talaemenes who leads the Maeonians with Mesthles, and a true-born son of Priam whom Agamemnon kills at 11.104 — he and his bastard half-brother Isus riding one chariot, both of them men Achilles had once caught on Ida watching sheep and released for ransom.
Kin: variously son of Thessalus; son of Talaemenes; son of Priam.
Killed by: Agamemnon (11.109), the Priamid.
Say: AF-uh-ryoos
Son of Caletor, one of the younger Achaean captains who keep company with Meriones and Deïpyrus on guard duty in Book 9 and in the line Idomeneus calls to in Book 13. Aeneas kills him there with a spear-thrust to the turned throat, so that shield and helmet crumple down on him.
Kin: son of Caletor.
Killed by: Aeneas (13.541–544).
Say: af-roh-DY-tee
Paris' patron and the cause, through the judgment implied at 24.29–30, of the war itself. She rescues Paris out of the duel in a mist and carries him to Helen's bedchamber, then bullies Helen into following — the poem's coldest scene between goddess and woman. In Book 5 she comes to save Aeneas, her son, and Diomedes wounds her hand; she flees weeping to Olympus, where Dione comforts her and Zeus tells her to keep to the works of marriage and leave war alone. She lends Hera the embroidered strap of desire in Book 14, and in the theomachy Athena knocks her flat with a blow to the breast.
Epithets: "laughter-loving" (φιλομειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη, 3.424).
Also called: Cypris — used in Book 5 only.
Kin: daughter of Zeus and Dione; mother of Aeneas by Anchises.
Refs: 3.374, 3.389, 3.424, 5.131, 5.312, 5.330, 5.375, 14.188, 21.416, 24.699.
Books 2–5, 9, 14, 19–24.
See also: Paris, Helen, Aeneas, Anchises, Dione, Diomedes, Hera, Athena.
Say: ap-ih-SAY-on
Two Trojan-side men, killed in the same words. Phausius' son falls to Eurypylus at 11.578, struck "in the liver below the midriff," and Paris shoots Eurypylus in the thigh as he strips the body. Hippasus' son, a Paeonian and "their best in battle after Asteropaeus," falls to Lycomedes at 17.348 in a line repeated verbatim from the first.
Kin: one is Phausius' son; the other Hippasus' son.
Killed by: Eurypylus (11.578–579); Lycomedes (17.348–349).
Refs: 11.578, 11.582, 17.348. Books 11, 17.
See also: Eurypylus, Lycomedes, Asteropaeus, Paris.
Say: uh-POL-oh
Troy's chief defender among the gods and the poem's first mover: Chryses' prayer brings him down from Olympus "like nightfall," and his arrows loose the plague that starts the quarrel (1.43–53). He fights on the Trojan side throughout — snatching Aeneas and Hector out of danger, standing off Diomedes at 5.437–444, levelling the Achaean wall — and his decisive act is to strike Patroclus from behind with the flat of his hand, knocking off helmet and corslet and leaving him dazed for Euphorbus and Hector (16.788–806). He puts strength in Hector one last time in Book 22 and then leaves him when Zeus's scales sink. In Book 24 he keeps Hector's body from disfigurement and shames the gods into ransoming it.
Epithets: "who strikes from afar," standalone "the far-striker" (ἑκηβόλος / ἕκατος, 1.15 / 1.385); "the worker-from-afar" (ἑκάεργος, 1.147); "god of the silver bow" (ἀργυρότοξος, 1.37); "the Lycian-born" (Λυκηγενής, 4.101); "famed for the bow" (κλυτότοξος, 4.101); "of the golden sword" (χρυσάορος, 5.509).
Also called: Phoebus; Smintheus — the cult title of Chryses' prayer (1.39).
Kin: son of Zeus and Leto; brother of Artemis.
Refs: 1.36, 1.43, 1.370, 1.479, 4.101, 5.437, 16.788, 21.545, 22.213, 24.18
…and throughout. Books 1–2, 4–5, 7–13, 15–18, 20–24.
See also: Chryses, Artemis, Leto, Patroclus, Hector, Aeneas.
Say: ar-KEL-oh-kus
One of Antenor's sons, named in the Catalogue and again among the captains of the Trojan storming-parties at the wall, always paired with his brother Acamas as "skilled in all fighting." Telamonian Ajax kills him in Book 14 with a cast meant for Polydamas: the spear takes him where head and neck join and shears both tendons, so that his head strikes the ground before his knees do. Ajax then calls across to Polydamas to say whether the man is a fair exchange for Prothoenor.
Kin: son of Antenor; brother of Acamas.
Killed by: Ajax (14.463–468).
Refs: 2.823, 12.100, 14.463. Books 2, 12, 14.
See also: Antenor, Acamas, Ajax, Polydamas, Prothoenor.
Say: uh-REE-thoh-us
Three men. The first is the fighter of Nestor's Book 7 reminiscence, called by his surname the Club-man because he fought with neither bow nor long spear but smashed companies apart with a club of iron; Lycurgus killed him by craft in a narrow lane where the club was useless, and stripped the armor that passed to Ereuthalion. The same man is named at 7.8–10 as the father of Menesthius of Arne, whom Paris kills, by ox-eyed Phylomedusa. A third Areithous is a Thracian charioteer, Rhigmus' aide, whom Achilles spears in the back at 20.487.
Kin: the Club-man is husband of Phylomedusa and father of Menesthius.
Killed by: the Club-man by Lycurgus (7.142–145); the Thracian aide by Achilles (20.487–489).
Refs: 7.8, 7.10, 7.137, 7.138, 20.487. Books 7, 20.
See also: Menesthius, Lycurgus, Ereuthalion, Nestor, Rhigmus, Achilles.
Say: AIR-eez
The war-god, who fights on the Trojan side and is the least dignified of the Olympians in the poem's handling of him. Athena leads him off the field by the hand in Book 5 and then, at Diomedes' shoulder, rams the mortal's spear into his belly, so that he bellows like ten thousand men and flees to Zeus, who tells him he is the most hateful of the gods. In Book 21 Athena knocks him flat with a boundary-stone and he covers seven acres falling. His son Ascalaphus is killed at Troy (13.518) and he is barred from avenging him by Zeus's designs.
Epithets: "bane of mortals" (βροτολοιγός, 5.31); "blood-stained" (μιαιφόνος, 5.31); "stormer of walls" (τειχεσιπλήτης, 5.31); "rushing" (θοῦρος, 5.30); "insatiate of war" (ἆτος πολέμοιο, 5.388); "brazen Ares" (χάλκεος Ἄρης, 5.704); "massive" (ὄβριμος, 5.845); "turncoat" (ἀλλοπρόσαλλος, 5.831).
Also called: Enyalius — chiefly in the formula "the equal of Enyalius, slayer of men" for Meriones (2.651).
Kin: son of Zeus and Hera; father of Ascalaphus and Ialmenus by Astyoche.
Refs: 5.30, 5.31, 5.385, 5.859, 13.521, 15.113, 21.391, 21.406 …and
throughout. Books 2–13, 15–24.
See also: Athena, Diomedes, Ascalaphus, Aphrodite, Zeus.
Say: AR-jyvz or AR-gyvz
One of the poem's three interchangeable names for the whole Greek host, taken from Argos and used without distinction from Achaeans and Danaans — the choice among them is metrical, not ethnic. Helen is "Argive Helen" (2.161); the plague and the grief are the Argives' as often as the Achaeans'; and the assemblies, the funeral games, and the fighting at the ships are all narrated with the three names in rotation.
Also called: Achaeans; Danaans — the same host under three names. The Myrmidons and Hellenes are Achilles' own contingent and are not synonyms for the army.
Refs: 1.79, 1.119, 2.109, 2.159, 5.3, 7.350, 9.22 …and throughout.
Books 1–19, 21–24.
Say: AR-gos
Agamemnon's realm — the sceptre makes him "lord over many islands and all of Argos" (2.108) — and, loosely, the whole Greek mainland the army came from and hopes to go home to: "horse-pasturing Argos," "Achaean Argos, udder of the plowland." The Catalogue gives a narrower Argos, held with Tiryns by Diomedes (2.559); Hera names it first of the three cities dearest to her, with Sparta and Mycenae, and offers all three for Troy's destruction (4.52–53). Bellerophon's Ephyra lies "in a fold of horse-pasturing Argos" (6.152).
Refs: 1.30, 2.108, 2.559, 4.52, 6.152, 9.22, 9.141, 19.115, 24.437.
Books 1–7, 9, 12–15, 19, 24.
Say: uh-RY-on
Adrastus' horse, "whose line was from the gods," named once: Nestor coaches Antilochus that if he takes the turn well no one will catch him — not even a man driving Arion, nor the horses of Laomedon.
Kin: Adrastus' horse.
Refs: 23.346. Book 23.
See also: Adrastus, Nestor, Antilochus, Laomedon.
Say: uh-RIZ-bee
A town on the Trojan side, held with Sestus and Abydos by Asius son of Hyrtacus, whose tall fire-colored horses came from there, from the river Selleïs — a detail the poem repeats verbatim when he storms the wall (2.838 = 12.96). Axylus, killed by Diomedes in Book 6, lived there and kept an open house by the road; and it is to Arisbe that Eëtion of Imbros sends Lycaon after ransoming him.
Say: AR-tuh-mis
Apollo's sister, huntress and killer of women, who takes the Trojan side in the theomachy and is humiliated for it: Hera catches both her wrists in one hand, strips the bow from her shoulders, boxes her about the ears with it until the arrows spill, and she flees weeping to Zeus's knees like a dove from a hawk (21.479–513). Elsewhere she works chiefly in the back-stories, as the god whose anger kills — Andromache's mother, Bellerophon's daughter, Niobe's six daughters, and the boar sent against Calydon when Oeneus forgot her offering.
Epithets: "who showers arrows" (ἰοχέαιρα, 5.53); "of the golden reins" (χρυσήνιος, 6.205).
Kin: daughter of Zeus and Leto; sister of Apollo.
Refs: 5.51, 5.53, 6.205, 6.428, 9.533, 20.39, 21.471, 24.606. Books 5–6, 9,
16, 19–21, 24.
See also: Apollo, Leto, Hera, Niobe, Andromache, Bellerophon, Calydon.
Say: as-KAL-uh-fus
A son of Ares, who with his brother Ialmenus leads thirty ships from Aspledon and Minyan Orchomenus; Astyoche bore the two of them in Actor's house, having gone up to her upper chamber where the god lay with her in secret. He stands the night watch in Book 9 and dies in Book 13, when Deiphobus' cast — aimed elsewhere — takes him through the shoulder. Ares knows nothing of it, penned on Olympus by Zeus's designs, until Hera tells him at 15.110; then he beats his thighs and calls for his armor.
Kin: son of Ares and Astyoche; brother of Ialmenus.
Killed by: Deiphobus (13.518–520).
Refs: 2.512, 9.82, 13.478, 13.518, 13.526, 15.112. Books 2, 9, 13, 15.
Say: as-KLEE-pee-us
The healer, father of the army's two physicians, Podaleirius and Machaon, who lead thirty ships from Tricca and Ithome. He does not appear: the name is a patronymic throughout, and the poem calls him "the blameless healer" whenever Machaon is fetched to a wound. His own healing knowledge came from Chiron, who "once gave his father" the soothing drugs Machaon uses on Menelaus (4.219).
Kin: father of Machaon and Podaleirius; taught by Chiron.
Refs: 2.731, 4.194, 4.204, 11.518, 11.614, 14.2. Books 2, 4, 11, 14.
Say: AY-see-us
Three men bear the name. The chief one is Hyrtacus' son, leader of the contingent from Percote, Sestus, Abydos and Arisbe, "whom horses carried from Arisbe, tall and fire-colored, from the river Selleïs" — a couplet repeated verbatim in Book 12 when he alone of the Trojan captains refuses Polydamas' advice to dismount and drives his chariot at the gate. Idomeneus spears him under the chin, and he falls like an oak cut for ship-timber, bellowing and clawing at the bloody dust. A second Asius is Hecuba's brother, son of Dymas, whose likeness Apollo borrows to urge Hector on (16.717); a third is the father of Phaenops of Abydos (17.583).
Kin: the leader is son of Hyrtacus and father of Adamas; the second is son of Dymas and brother of Hecuba.
Killed by: Idomeneus (13.387–393).
Refs: 2.837, 2.838, 12.96, 12.110, 12.140, 13.384, 13.771, 16.717, 17.583.
Books 2, 12–13, 16–17.
See also: Adamas, Idomeneus, Polydamas, Arisbe, Hecuba, Phaenops.
Say: as-ter-oh-PEE-us
Leader of the Paeonians of the long lances, at Troy eleven days when he dies, and picked out by Sarpedon with Glaucus as the best of the allies after himself. In Book 21 he stands up out of the Scamander to face Achilles, throws both spears at once — "for he was a two-handed fighter" — grazes Achilles' elbow with one and pins the other's shield with the first cast to draw the blood of a god's gift. Achilles kills him with the sword and strips him; the corslet and the Thracian sword become prizes at Patroclus' games.
Kin: son of Pelegon; grandson of the river Axius by Periboea, daughter of Acessamenus.
Killed by: Achilles (21.179–182).
Refs: 12.102, 17.351, 21.140, 21.162, 21.170, 23.560, 23.808. Books 12, 17,
21, 23.
See also: Axius, Pelegon, Achilles, Paeonians, Sarpedon, Glaucus.
Say: as-TY-uh-naks
Hector's infant son, carried to the Scaean Gates in his nurse's arms and frightened by his own father's helmet. The poem glosses the name twice and both times the gloss is the child's doom: his father called him Scamandrius, "but the others Astyanax — for Hector alone was the saving of Ilion" (6.402–403); and Andromache, keening over the body, repeats it — "Astyanax, 'the lord of the city,' as the Trojans call him by name: for you alone guarded their gates and their long walls" (22.506–507). She foresees him pushed from other men's tables and fatherless.
Also called: Scamandrius — Hector's own name for him.
Kin: son of Hector and Andromache; grandson of Priam.
Refs: 6.403, 22.500, 22.506. Books 6, 22.
See also: Hector, Andromache, Scamandrius, Priam.
Say: uh-THEE-nuh
The Achaeans' fiercest divine partisan and, with Hera, the implacable enemy of Troy. She checks Achilles' sword-hand in Book 1, seizing him by the hair and visible to him alone; she stops the army's flight to the ships in Book 2; and on Zeus's word — obtained by Hera — she goes down to make the Trojans break the truce first (4.64–73). In Book 5 she mounts Diomedes' chariot herself and guides his spear into Ares' belly. Her last work is the cruelest: she takes Deiphobus' shape to persuade Hector to stand, hands Achilles his spear back, and leaves Hector calling for a brother who is not there (22.214–247).
Epithets: "grey-eyed," standalone "grey-eyes" (γλαυκῶπις, 1.206 / 8.373); "the driver of the spoil" (ἀγελείη, 4.128); "Unwearied one" (Ἀτρυτώνη, 2.157) — translated, not transliterated; "she of the mighty father" (ὀβριμοπάτρη, 5.747); "guardian of the city" (ἐρυσίπτολις, 6.305).
Also called: Pallas; Tritogeneia (4.515).
Kin: daughter of Zeus.
Refs: 1.194, 1.200, 2.156, 4.73, 5.1, 5.856, 21.406, 22.214 …and throughout.
Books 1–11, 13–24.
Say: uh-THEE-nee-unz
The contingent from Athens, "the district of great-hearted Erechtheus," under Menestheus son of Peteos with fifty ships. They are a minor presence in the fighting: "masters of the war-cry" when Agamemnon comes on them in his review of the army, and picked men holding the line against Hector's charge at the ships in Book 13, where Stichius, Pheidas and Bias fight beside Menestheus. Iasus, son of Sphelus, is set a captain over them, and Aeneas kills him at 15.332.
Kin: led by Menestheus, Peteos' son.
Refs: 2.550, 4.328, 13.196, 13.689, 15.337. Books 2, 4, 13, 15.
See also: Menestheus, Peteos, Erechtheus, Stichius, Bias, Iasus.
Say: AY-tree-us or AY-troos
Father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, and the man from whose hand the sceptre passed to Thyestes and so to Agamemnon in the descent traced at 2.101–108. He is dead before the poem opens and never acts in it: in nearly all of the name's 181 occurrences it is a patronymic, and "Atreus' son" in the singular means Agamemnon unless the scene is Menelaus's — the duel of Book 3, the oath-breaking and the wounding of Book 4, the fight over Patroclus' body. The dual "Atreus' sons" means the two brothers together. See `canon.md` for the rule.
Kin: son of Pelops; brother of Thyestes; father of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
Refs: 1.7, 2.105, 2.106, 2.249, 3.271, 9.340, 11.131 …and throughout.
Books 1–11, 13–14, 16–17, 19, 22–24.
Say: aw-JEE-us
An Epeian king of the older generation, "lord of men," named only in genealogy and in Nestor's long reminiscence of the Pylian cattle-raid. He had kept four prize-winning horses that came to Elis for the games and sent their driver home grieving — the debt that provoked Neleus' raid. Nestor's first kill in that fight was Augeias' son-in-law Mulius, husband of his eldest daughter, tawny-haired Agamede.
Kin: grandfather of Polyxeinus through Agasthenes; father of Agamede; father-in-law of Mulius.
Refs: 2.624, 11.701, 11.739. Books 2, 11.
See also: Nestor, Epeians, Elis, Mulius, Agamede, Polyxeinus.
Say: aw-TOM-uh-don
Achilles' charioteer, "the man he honored most after Achilles breaker of men, and trustiest at his post to await the shout of battle" (16.146–147). He yokes Xanthus and Balius for Patroclus and drives him out; when Patroclus is dead he fights on alone from the chariot, swooping like a vulture on geese and taking no man, because one man cannot both hold the immortal horses and use a spear — until Alcimedon asks who took his wits and takes the reins from him. He drives Achilles back to the war in Book 19 and helps serve Priam his supper in Book 24.
Kin: son of Diores (17.429, 17.474).
Refs: 9.209, 16.145, 16.864, 17.429, 17.459, 17.474, 19.396, 24.574.
Books 9, 16–17, 19, 23–24.
See also: Achilles, Patroclus, Alcimedon, Alcimus, Xanthus (horse).
Say: AK-see-us
The Paeonian river, twice praised in the same phrase — "the wide-flowing Axius, whose water spreads fairest over the earth" — as the country the Paeonians of the curved bows come from, with Amydon, under Pyraechmes. As a river-god he lay with Periboea, eldest daughter of Acessamenus, and begot Pelegon, so that Asteropaeus recites him as the head of his own line when Achilles asks who he is (21.157–160).
Refs: 2.849, 2.850, 16.288, 21.141, 21.157, 21.158. Books 2, 16, 21.
See also: Asteropaeus, Pelegon, Paeonians, Pyraechmes, Amydon.
The constellation set on the Shield of Achilles among the Pleiades, the Hyades and Orion — "the Bear, which men also call by the name of the Wagon, who turns in her own place, keeping watch on Orion, and alone has no share in the baths of Ocean" (18.487–489). The one occurrence; the token's other appearances in the poem are the imperative "Bear up."
Also called: the Wagon.
Refs: 18.487. Book 18.
See also: Orion, Ocean, Achilles, Hephaestus.
Say: buh-LAIR-uh-fon
Glaucus' grandfather, whose story is the long back-piece of the Book 6 meeting with Diomedes. Proetus, believing his wife Anteia's lie, sent him to Lycia with "baneful signs" scratched in a folded tablet — the poem's one mention of writing — and the Lycian king set him three tasks meant to kill him: the Chimaera, the Solymi, the Amazons. He survived all three and an ambush besides, and was given the king's daughter and half his kingly honor. He ended hated by the gods, wandering the Aleian plain alone and eating out his heart, his son killed by Ares and his daughter by Artemis. His guest-friendship with Oeneus is what stops Glaucus and Diomedes from fighting.
Kin: son of Glaucus, grandson of Sisyphus; father of Isander, Hippolochus and Laodameia; grandfather of Glaucus and, through Laodameia and Zeus, of Sarpedon.
Refs: 6.155, 6.162, 6.190, 6.196, 6.200, 6.217, 6.220. Book 6.
See also: Glaucus, Hippolochus, Sarpedon, Proetus, Anteia, Chimaera, Oeneus, Diomedes.
Say: BY-us
Three men. One is a Pylian, "Bias, shepherd of the people," named among the captains Nestor is arraying at 4.296. Another is an Athenian, "brave Bias," in Menestheus' company at the ships (13.691). The third is named only as a father: Achilles kills "Laogonus and Dardanus, the two sons of Bias," tumbling both from their horses, one with a spear-throw and one with the sword (20.460–462).
Kin: the third is father of Laogonus and Dardanus.
Refs: 4.296, 13.691, 20.460. Books 4, 13, 20.
See also: Nestor, Menestheus, Laogonus, Achilles.
Ἄτη personified — the ruinous folly that comes over a man before he acts. Phoenix makes her the runner the limping Prayers can never catch: "Blindness is strong and sound of foot, and far outruns them all, and gets in first over all the earth tripping mankind" (9.505–507). Agamemnon builds his whole apology on her in Book 19, calling her "the eldest daughter of Zeus, who blinds all men," whose feet are soft and walk over men's heads, and telling how she once blinded Zeus himself over the birth of Heracles, so that he seized her by her shining braids and flung her out of heaven forever. She also takes Patroclus' mind at 16.805, when Apollo has struck him.
Kin: eldest daughter of Zeus.
Refs: 9.504, 9.505, 9.512, 16.805, 19.91, 19.126, 19.129, 19.136.
Books 9, 16, 19.
Say: bee-OH-shunz
The first contingent of the Catalogue of Ships, under five leaders — Peneleos, Leïtus, Arcesilaus, Prothoenor and Clonius — with fifty ships and a hundred and twenty young men to each. They hold the left of the line at the muster, and turn up again where the fighting is thickest: Hera watches two of them killing Argives in Book 5, and Hector cuts down Arcesilaus, "a leader of the bronze-shirted Boeotians," at 15.330.
Kin: led by Peneleos, Leïtus, Arcesilaus, Prothoenor and Clonius.
Refs: 2.494, 2.510, 2.526, 5.710, 13.685, 13.700, 15.330. Books 2, 5, 13, 15.
See also: Peneleos, Leïtus, Arcesilaus, Prothoenor, Achaeans.
Say: BOR-ee-us
The north wind, personified and genealogically active. He is the cold blast behind the snow-simile of Book 19; he desired Erichthonius' three thousand mares as they pastured, covered them in the likeness of a dark-maned stallion, and got twelve foals so light they ran over standing grain without breaking it (20.223–226); and in Book 23 Iris fetches him with Zephyrus from the feast in Zephyrus' house, at Achilles' prayer, to make Patroclus' pyre burn.
Refs: 19.358, 20.223, 23.195, 23.208. Books 19, 20, 23.
See also: Zephyrus, Iris, Erichthonius, Patroclus, Achilles.
Say: bry-SEE-is
Achilles' prize, taken from him by Agamemnon in compensation for Chryseis, and so the occasion — not the cause — of the quarrel that is the poem's subject. Achilles had taken her out of Lyrnessus, where he killed her husband Mynes; she goes from his hut unwilling, led out by Patroclus. Agamemnon offers her back in Book 9 with an oath he never touched her, and swears that oath publicly over a boar in Book 19. Her one speech is the lament for Patroclus, who had promised to make her Achilles' wedded wife in Phthia and who "was gentle, always" — after which the women wail "for Patroclus in show; but each for her own sorrows." She is restored to Achilles' side in the poem's last book.
Epithets: "fair-cheeked" (καλλιπάρῃος, 1.184).
Also called: the daughter of Briseus.
Kin: daughter of Briseus; widow of Mynes of Lyrnessus.
Refs: 1.184, 1.323, 1.346, 2.689, 9.107, 19.246, 19.282, 24.676.
Books 1–2, 9, 19, 24.
See also: Briseus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Patroclus, Chryseis, Mynes, Lyrnessus.
Say: BRY-syoos
Briseis' father, who never appears and is never described. The name occurs only in the periphrasis "the daughter of Briseus" — Achilles' complaint to Thetis (1.392) and, twice over, in Agamemnon's list of amends and Odysseus' verbatim relaying of it (9.132 = 9.274).
Kin: father of Briseis.
Say: kad-MEE-unz
The Thebans of the earlier war, named only in the back-story of Tydeus' embassy. Sent forward alone from the Asopus, he found them feasting in Eteocles' house, challenged them to contests and won every one with Athena's help; they set fifty young men to ambush him on the road home, and he killed all but one. Agamemnon tells the story to shame Diomedes, and Athena tells it again herself to shame him further; Diomedes recalls it to her on the night raid.
Refs: 4.385, 4.388, 4.391, 5.804, 10.288. Books 4, 5, 10.
See also: Tydeus, Diomedes, Athena, Eteocles, Thebes, Maeon.
Say: KAL-kus
The army's seer, "far the best of bird-readers, who knew what is, what will be, and what was before," and who had guided the ships to Ilion by the craft Apollo gave him. He names the plague's cause only after Achilles guarantees his safety, and Agamemnon answers him as "seer of evils" — the exchange that opens the quarrel. Odysseus recalls his reading of the serpent and the nine sparrows at Aulis, which fixed the war at nine years and a tenth. In Book 13 Poseidon takes his shape to rally the two Ajaxes, and Ajax son of Oïleus knows the god by his footprints going away — "and that is not Calchas."
Also called: Thestor's son.
Kin: son of Thestor.
Refs: 1.69, 1.86, 1.105, 2.300, 2.322, 13.45, 13.70. Books 1, 2, 13.
See also: Apollo, Agamemnon, Achilles, Poseidon, Ajax son of Oïleus, Aulis.
Say: KAL-ih-don
Oeneus' city in Aetolia, "rocky Calydon" of the Catalogue and "lovely Calydon" of Phoenix's tale. Artemis raised the war between the Curetes and the Aetolians over it in anger at Oeneus' forgotten harvest-offering, and it is the city Meleager would not defend until his wife described what a sacked town looks like — the exemplum Phoenix presses on Achilles in Book 9. Poseidon takes the shape of Thoas, who rules "all Pleuron and steep Calydon," to stir Idomeneus; and Diomedes names it in reciting Portheus' three sons.
Refs: 2.640, 9.530, 9.531, 9.577, 13.217, 14.116. Books 2, 9, 13, 14.
See also: Meleager, Oeneus, Aetolians, Curetes, Phoenix, Thoas, Artemis.
Say: KAP-uh-nyoos
One of the Seven against Thebes and father of Sthenelus, Diomedes' charioteer. He does not appear: the name is a patronymic throughout — "Sthenelus, Capaneus' son" — and it carries the argument his son makes at 4.404–410, that the sons who took seven-gated Thebes with a smaller host were better men than the fathers who perished there by their own recklessness.
Kin: father of Sthenelus.
Refs: 2.564, 4.367, 4.403, 5.108, 5.109, 5.241, 5.319. Books 2, 4, 5.
Say: kuh-SAN-druh
Priam's daughter, "the loveliest of Priam's daughters," whom Othryoneus asked for without bride-gifts, promising to drive the Achaeans out of Troy; Priam bowed his head to it, and Idomeneus killed him for it. She has one living appearance, in the last book: she has climbed Pergamus and is the first to see her father coming back with the herald and the body on the bier, and her cry through the city brings all Troy out to the gates. The poem says nothing of her prophecy.
Kin: daughter of Priam and Hecuba.
Refs: 13.366, 24.699. Books 13, 24.
See also: Priam, Othryoneus, Hector, Idomeneus.
Say: seb-RY-oh-neez
Hector's half-brother, "a bastard son of far-famed Priam," who takes the reins after Archeptolemus is killed and drives for Hector through the rest of the poem. He is the man Hector left the chariot to when the Trojans went at the wall on foot, and it is he who tells Hector the Trojans are being driven on the other wing. In Book 16 Patroclus kills him with a jagged stone that crushes both brows together and drops his eyes into the dust at his feet, so that he goes over the rail "like a diver" — and Patroclus mocks him for it before the fight over his body, where he lies "mighty in his mightiness, his horsemanship all forgotten."
Kin: bastard son of Priam; brother of Hector.
Killed by: Patroclus (16.737–743).
Refs: 8.318, 11.521, 12.91, 13.790, 16.727, 16.738, 16.756, 16.776.
Books 8, 11–13, 16.
Say: KY-ron
"The most righteous of the Centaurs," named four times and always as a source of gifts to the house of Peleus. He taught the healing drugs Achilles knows and passed on to Patroclus, and which reach Menelaus' arrow-wound through Machaon's hands, Asclepius having had them from him. And he gave Peleus the Pelian ash from the peak of Pelion, "to be death for heroes" — the spear no other Achaean could swing, which Patroclus alone of Achilles' arms leaves behind when he borrows the rest.
Refs: 4.219, 11.832, 16.143, 19.390. Books 4, 11, 16, 19.
See also: Achilles, Peleus, Patroclus, Machaon, Asclepius, Pelion.
Say: KROH-mee-us
At least four men, on both sides. One is a Pylian, in the group Nestor is arraying at 4.295. A son of Priam of the name is taken with his brother Echemmon, both from one chariot, when Diomedes falls on them like a lion among cattle (5.160). A Lycian falls in Odysseus' rally at 5.677, and another Trojan-side man to Teucer's bow at 8.275. A fifth is alive in Book 17, ranged among the Trojan allies Hector harangues and then, with Aeneas and Hector, drawing back from Automedon's rescuers and leaving Aretus dead.
Refs: 4.295, 5.160, 5.677, 8.275, 17.218, 17.494, 17.534. Books 4, 5, 8, 17.
See also: Nestor, Diomedes, Odysseus, Teucer, Aretus, Automedon.
Say: KRY-see
The town of Apollo's priest Chryses, over which the god "stands guard" with Cilla and Tenedos in the prayer that brings the plague. It is where the hecatomb has to go: Odysseus sails there with the girl and the beasts, and the ceremony on its shore — the prayer, the thigh-bones, the paean sung all afternoon — is the poem's fullest account of a sacrifice made right.
Refs: 1.37, 1.100, 1.390, 1.431, 1.451. Book 1.
See also: Chryses, Chryseis, Apollo, Cilla, Tenedos, Odysseus.
Say: kry-SEE-is
Daughter of the priest Chryses, given to Agamemnon out of the plunder of Eëtion's Thebe. Agamemnon refuses her ransom and says he prefers her to Clytemnestra, "since she is not her inferior in build or bearing, in mind or in any work of her hands" — so the god's arrows come, and when he is forced to give her up he takes Briseis instead. Odysseus commands the ship that carries her home and puts her in her father's arms at the altar. She never speaks.
Epithets: "fair-cheeked" (καλλιπάρῃος, 1.143).
Kin: daughter of Chryses.
Refs: 1.112, 1.143, 1.182, 1.310, 1.369, 1.439. Book 1.
See also: Chryses, Chryse, Agamemnon, Apollo, Briseis, Odysseus.
Say: KRY-seez
Apollo's priest, whose daughter Agamemnon holds as a prize. He comes to the ships with a ransom past counting and the god's wreaths on a golden staff; the army approves, Agamemnon sends him off harshly, and his prayer walking alone along the shore brings the plague that begins the poem. When Odysseus returns the girl to his arms at the altar of Chryse he prays a second time — "Once before you heard me when I prayed" — and the plague stops. He does not appear again.
Kin: father of Chryseis.
Say: KLIT-ee-us
One of Priam's brothers, a son of Laomedon, who sits with Lampus and Hicetaon among the elders at the Scaean Gates, "finished with war now because of age, but speakers of quality." He is named in both Trojan genealogies — the elder-list of Book 3 and Aeneas' recital of the house of Dardanus at 20.238 — and his son Caletor, carrying fire toward a ship, is killed by Ajax under Hector's eyes; Hector calls on the Trojans to save "the son of Clytius" and cast at Ajax for him. A second Clytius is the father of an Achaean Dolops killed by Hector at 11.302.
Kin: son of Laomedon; brother of Priam, Tithonus, Lampus and Hicetaon; father of Caletor.
Refs: 3.147, 11.302, 15.419, 15.427, 20.238. Books 3, 11, 15, 20.
See also: Priam, Laomedon, Lampus, Hicetaon, Caletor, Dolops.
Say: SEER-uh-nus
Meriones' aide and charioteer, who had followed him from well-founded Lyctus in Crete. Hector casts at Idomeneus, misses, and hits Coeranus instead — the spear under the jaw and ear, dashing his teeth out at the roots and cutting the tongue through the middle, so that he crashes from the chariot and pours the reins to the ground. The poem stops to say that his driving up had saved Idomeneus, on foot and in danger: "to him he came as light, and beat off the pitiless day — and lost his own life." A different Coeranus is a Lycian killed by Odysseus at 5.677.
Killed by: Hector (17.610–619).
Say: KOH-on
Antenor's eldest son, who stabs Agamemnon mid-forearm from the side, unseen, after watching him strip his fallen brother Iphidamas — "strong grief came down over his eyes." Agamemnon shudders but fights on, spears him as he drags the body away by the foot, and cuts his head off over Iphidamas. The wound is what drives Agamemnon from the field, and he is still carrying it in Book 19 when he comes late to the assembly of reconciliation.
Kin: son of Antenor; brother of Iphidamas.
Killed by: Agamemnon (11.256–261).
Say: kos
"Cos, city of Eurypylus," an island of the Catalogue's southeast group, sending thirty ships under Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Heracles. It matters chiefly in the back-story Hera and Zeus each rehearse: after the sack of Troy, Hera laid Zeus's mind asleep and Sleep roused the winds that carried Heracles far off course to "well-peopled Cos," for which Zeus hunted the gods through his house and would have flung Sleep into the sea.
Say: KREE-tunz
Idomeneus' contingent, eighty ships from Knossos, Gortyn and hundred-citied Crete, led by him with Meriones. They are named almost always through their leader, in the formulas "Idomeneus, leader of the Cretans" and "counselor of the bronze-shirted Cretans" that carry his long exchange with Meriones in Book 13. Helen points them out from the wall — Idomeneus standing among them "like a god, and the Cretan captains gathered around him" — and Agamemnon finds them arming in his review of the army.
Kin: led by Idomeneus and Meriones.
Refs: 2.645, 3.230, 4.251, 4.265, 13.219, 13.255, 23.450, 23.482.
Books 2–4, 13, 23.
Idomeneus' island, "hundred-citied Crete" of the Catalogue, whose towns — Knossos, Gortyn, Lyctus, Miletus, chalk-white Lycastus, Phaestus, Rhytium — the poem lists in full. Helen recalls that Menelaus was often host to Idomeneus "whenever he came from Crete." Idomeneus gives its royal line to Othryoneus as a boast just before he kills him: Zeus begot Minos, Minos begot Deucalion, and Deucalion begot Idomeneus, "lord over many men in wide Crete."
Say: KROH-nos
Zeus's father, deposed and shut away: Zeus "put Cronos down beneath the earth and the barren sea" (14.203–204), and he sits now at the nethermost limits of earth and sea with Iapetus, in Tartarus, taking no joy in Hyperion the Sun (8.479–481) — the gods gathered around him below are the Titans Hera swears by (14.274–279). He never acts. Of the name's 109 occurrences almost all are the patronymic "Cronos' son," which means Zeus; Hera and Poseidon are also his children, and Poseidon's claim to equal honor rests on it: "Three brothers are we, whom Rhea bore to Cronos" (15.187).
Epithets: "crooked-counseled Cronos" (ἀγκυλομήτεω Κρόνου, 2.205).
Kin: with Rhea, father of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera and Demeter.
Refs: 2.205, 4.59, 5.721, 8.479, 14.203, 14.274, 15.187, 15.225 …and
throughout, chiefly as the patronymic of Zeus. Books 1–9, 11–22, 24.
See also: Zeus, Rhea, Poseidon, Hera, Hades, Iapetus, Titans.
Say: kyoo-REE-teez
The besiegers of Calydon in Phoenix's tale of Meleager, fighting the Aetolians over the head and hide of the boar Artemis sent against Oeneus' orchards. While Meleager fought they could not hold their ground outside the wall, though they were many; when he withdrew in anger at his mother they came on until the chamber itself was under bombardment. The exemplum Phoenix presses on Achilles turns on their advance.
Refs: 9.529, 9.532, 9.549, 9.551, 9.588. Book 9.
See also: Meleager, Aetolians, Calydon, Oeneus, Phoenix, Artemis.
Say: DAN-ay-unz or DAN-uh-unz
The third of the poem's interchangeable names for the whole Greek host, alongside Achaeans and Argives; the choice among the three is metrical, not ethnic. It is the name in Chryses' curse — "may the Danaans pay for my tears by your arrows" (1.42) — and the one the Catalogue uses for the leaders it is about to list. Agamemnon's standing address to the army is "Friends, Danaan heroes, squires of Ares."
Epithets: "the Danaans of swift colts" (ταχύπωλοι Δαναοί, 4.232).
Also called: Achaeans; Argives — the same host under three names. The Myrmidons and Hellenes are Achilles' own contingent and are not synonyms for the army.
Refs: 1.42, 1.56, 2.110, 2.487, 4.232, 4.257, 7.382, 8.161 …and throughout.
Books 1–17, 19–21, 23–24.
Say: dar-DAY-nee-uh
The city Dardanus founded on the lower slopes of many-springed Ida, "for holy Ilion was not yet built on the plain, a city of mortal men" (20.216–218) — the elder settlement of the Trojan line, named in Aeneas' genealogy. Elsewhere it is a region paired with Troy as the home of the women who will mourn: Achilles means to make "some deep-girdled woman of Troy or Dardania" wipe the tears from her cheeks, and promises the same women will keen night and day around Patroclus' body.
Refs: 18.123, 18.339, 20.216. Books 18, 20.
See also: Dardanus, Dardanians, Troy, Ida, Aeneas.
Say: dar-DAY-nee-unz
Aeneas' people, Trojan-side allies of the house of Dardanus, led by "the good son of Anchises" with Antenor's sons Archelochus and Acamas. The name lives chiefly in two fixed address-formulas that recur across the battle books: "Hear from me, Trojans and Dardanians and allies," and the rallying line "Trojans and Lycians and Dardanians who fight at close quarters — be men, my friends; remember your rushing courage" (8.173–174, repeated verbatim five times). The Dardanian gates of Troy are named for them, and Euphorbus, who strikes Patroclus first, is introduced simply as "a Dardanian."
Kin: led by Aeneas, Anchises' son.
Refs: 2.819, 3.456, 7.348, 8.173, 11.286, 15.425, 16.806, 17.184.
Books 2–3, 5, 7–8, 11, 13, 15–17, 22.
Say: DAR-duh-nus
Founder of the Trojan line and its eponym: "Dardanus first was begotten by cloud-gatherer Zeus, and he founded Dardania" (20.215–216), in the days before Ilion stood on the plain. Aeneas recites the descent to Achilles, and Poseidon saves Aeneas so "the race of Dardanus not perish seedless" — Zeus having loved Dardanus beyond all his mortal children, and having come to hate the line of Priam (20.302–306). He never acts: outside the two genealogies the name is the patronymic "Dardanus' descendant," used of Priam throughout and of the ancient Ilus at 11.166–372. A second Dardanus, a son of Bias, is killed with his brother Laogonus by Achilles at 20.460.
Kin: son of Zeus; father of Erichthonius; ancestor of Tros, Ilus, Laomedon, Priam, and through Assaracus of Aeneas.
Refs: 3.303, 5.159, 7.366, 11.166, 11.372, 20.215, 20.303, 21.34, 24.171.
Books 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 20–22, 24.
See also: Priam, Aeneas, Dardania, Erichthonius, Ilus, Zeus, Bias.
Personified daybreak, whose formulas divide the poem into days. She rises from her bed beside illustrious Tithonus "to bring light to the immortals and to mortal men" (11.1–2), spreads over all the earth in her saffron robe, and rises out of the streams of Ocean at 19.1 on the day Achilles arms. Her fixed line — "and when early-born rosy-fingered Dawn appeared" — opens days from Book 1 to the poem's close. She acts once in her own right, going up to high Olympus to announce the light to Zeus and the other gods (2.48); and in Book 8 she is what the Trojans wait for, sitting all night by their fires.
Epithets: "rosy-fingered Dawn" (ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, 1.477); "early-born" (ἠριγένεια, 1.477); "Dawn in her saffron robe" (κροκόπεπλος Ἠώς, 8.1); "fair-throned Dawn" (ἐΰθρονος Ἠώς, 8.565). Note χρυσόθρονος "of the golden throne" is Hera's, not Dawn's — all four occurrences are hers or Zeus's; CONVENTIONS.md was corrected accordingly on 2026-07-27.
Kin: consort of Tithonus, Laomedon's son.
Refs: 1.477, 2.48, 8.1, 8.565, 9.240, 11.1, 19.1, 23.109, 24.695, 24.788.
Books 1–2, 6, 8–9, 11, 19, 23–24.
Personified, and twinned with Sleep: "Sleep, the brother of Death" (14.231), "the twin brothers Sleep and Death" (16.672 = 16.682). Zeus, unable to keep Sarpedon alive, has Apollo wash the body in the running river, anoint it with ambrosia and give it to the two of them as escorts, who set him down in wide Lycia for his brothers and kinsmen to bury — "for that is the honor-right of the dead." Agamemnon uses the name unpersonified at 4.270 in the oath-breaking scene: "Death and sorrows hereafter will be theirs."
Kin: brother of Sleep.
Refs: 4.270, 14.231, 16.454, 16.672, 16.682. Books 4, 14, 16.
Say: dee-IF-oh-bus
A son of Priam and Hecuba, one of the more active Trojan fighters and the shape Athena wears to kill Hector. He leads the third storming-party at the wall with Helenus, and in Book 13 he is everywhere: he grieves for Asius and kills Hypsenor in vengeance, vaunts over him, then strikes Ascalaphus down with a cast meant for Idomeneus and is wounded in the arm by Meriones over the body, so that Polites has to lead him out of the fighting. In Book 22 Athena takes his likeness "in body and unwearying voice," offers to stand with Hector, and vanishes; Hector calls for a spear and finds no one there — "he is inside the wall, and Athena has tricked me."
Kin: son of Priam and Hecuba; brother of Hector, Paris, Helenus and Polites.
Kills: Hypsenor (13.410–412); Ascalaphus (13.516–520).
Refs: 12.94, 13.156, 13.402, 13.413, 13.516, 13.534, 22.227, 22.294, 24.251.
Books 12–13, 22, 24.
See also: Priam, Hector, Athena, Helenus, Ascalaphus, Idomeneus, Meriones.
Say: dih-MEE-tur
The grain-goddess, never present and never speaking. She stands behind the poem's fixed way of saying "mortal": Ajax will not give way "to any man who is mortal and eats the grain of Demeter" (13.322), and Lycaon's plea to Achilles begins from the same phrase — "it was at your table first that I ate the grain of Demeter." She has a winnowing simile at 5.500, where "tawny-haired Demeter in the driving wind divides the grain from the husks"; a precinct at Pyrasus in the Catalogue; and a place in Zeus's list of loves, "the lady Demeter of the lovely braids."
Kin: daughter of Cronos and Rhea; sister of Zeus.
Refs: 2.696, 5.500, 13.322, 14.326, 21.76. Books 2, 5, 13, 14, 21.
Say: dyoo-KAY-lee-on
Two men. The first is Idomeneus' father, son of Minos and grandson of Zeus, named only in the line Idomeneus recites over Othryoneus — "Minos got a son, blameless Deucalion; and Deucalion fathered me, lord over many men in wide Crete" — and otherwise carried as the patronymic "Deucalion's son," which the poem uses of Idomeneus at the moments of his greatest exposure (12.117, 17.608) and Meriones uses to address him. The second is a Trojan Achilles kills in Book 20, pierced through the arm where the tendons of the elbow join, so that he stands waiting with his arm hanging heavy and sees death in front of him.
Kin: the Cretan is son of Minos and father of Idomeneus.
Killed by: the Trojan by Achilles (20.478–483).
Refs: 12.117, 13.307, 13.451, 13.452, 17.608, 20.478. Books 12–13, 17, 20.
Say: dee-IP-ih-rus
An Achaean captain of the second rank, one of the seven leaders of the night sentries in Book 9 and one of the men Poseidon rallies and Idomeneus calls to in Book 13. Helenus kills him there at close quarters, shearing his helmet away with a great Thracian sword — the helmet knocked spinning off between the fighters' feet for some Achaean to pick up — and gloomy night comes down over his eyes. His death is what stirs Menelaus to the duel with Helenus that follows.
Killed by: Helenus (13.576–580).
Say: dy-oh-MEE-deez
Tydeus' son, lord of Argos and Tiryns with eighty ships, and the Achaean whose aristeia fills Book 5. Athena kindles unwearying fire from his helmet and shield, takes the mist from his eyes so that he may know god from man, and licenses him to wound Aphrodite — which he does, drawing the ichor from her hand as she carries Aeneas off — and then mounts his chariot herself and rams his spear into Ares' belly. He is the poem's model of the young man who takes rebuke in silence: Agamemnon rakes him at 4.365 and he does not answer, and pays it back in the assembly of Book 9. He meets Glaucus between the lines, discovers their grandfathers' guest-friendship, and exchanges armor rather than blows; he goes with Odysseus on the night raid and kills Dolon and Rhesus; and he is wounded in the foot by Paris' arrow at 11.377.
Epithets: "good at the war-cry" (βοὴν ἀγαθός, 2.563).
Also called: Tydeus' son.
Kin: son of Tydeus of the Seven against Thebes; his charioteer is Sthenelus, Capaneus' son.
Refs: 2.563, 4.365, 5.1, 5.114, 5.330, 5.855, 6.122, 6.235, 9.31 …and
throughout. Books 2, 4–11, 14, 16, 21, 23.
See also: Tydeus, Sthenelus, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Glaucus, Odysseus, Dolon.
Say: dy-OH-nee
Aphrodite's mother in this poem, named only in the scene after Diomedes wounds her. Aphrodite falls on her knees; Dione gathers her daughter in her arms, strokes her, and comforts her with a catalogue of gods who have suffered at mortal hands — Ares bound in a jar by Otus and Ephialtes, Hera and Hades shot by Heracles — before warning that a man who fights the immortals does not come home to his children.
Kin: mother of Aphrodite by Zeus.
Say: dy-OR-eez
Two men. The first is an Epeian leader, Amarynceus' son, captain of the third of the four Elian companies, whose death closes the general fighting of Book 4: a jagged stone thrown by Peiroos of the Thracians crushes both tendons and the bones beside his right ankle, and he falls back in the dust stretching out his hands to his companions, and Peiroos runs up and spears him beside the navel. The second is Automedon's father, named only in the patronymic "Diores' son" during the fight over Patroclus' body.
Kin: the Epeian is son of Amarynceus; the second is father of Automedon.
Killed by: Peiroos (4.517–526).
Refs: 2.622, 4.517, 17.429, 17.474. Books 2, 4, 17.
See also: Amarynceus, Peiroos, Epeians, Automedon.
The star Sirius, "the star men call by name the Dog of Orion" — brightest of all, rising at harvest-time among many stars in the milking-dark of night, "made an evil sign, and brings great fever down on wretched mortals." It is what Achilles' bronze looks like to Priam as he comes across the plain (22.26–32), the simile that opens the last hunt of Hector. The name's other occurrences in the poem are the insult: Achilles' "Dog's eyes and a deer's heart" to Agamemnon (1.225), the vaunt "Dog! Again you have run out from under death" that Diomedes and then Achilles throw at Hector (11.362 = 20.449), and Achilles' one-word refusal of Hector's dying plea (22.345).
Also called: the Dog of Orion.
Refs: 1.225, 11.362, 20.449, 22.29, 22.345. Books 1, 11, 20, 22.
Say: DOH-lon
The Trojan scout of Book 10, son of the herald Eumedes, "ugly to look at, but swift-footed," and an only son among five sisters. He volunteers to spy on the ships and asks as his price the horses and chariot of Achilles; Odysseus and Diomedes let him run past them and take him, and he is caught green with fear, his teeth chattering. He tells them everything they ask — the watch, the disposition of the allies, the new-come Thracians of Rhesus and their horses — and is begging with his hand out to Diomedes' chin when Diomedes shears through both tendons of his neck and "the head of the still-speaking man was mingled with the dust." His spoils go on Odysseus' stern as an offering for Athena.
Kin: son of Eumedes the herald.
Killed by: Diomedes (10.454–457).
Refs: 10.314, 10.374, 10.390, 10.412, 10.426, 10.447, 10.478, 10.571. Book 10.
See also: Eumedes, Odysseus, Diomedes, Rhesus, Hector, Athena.
Say: DOH-lops
Two men. The Achaean is Clytius' son, killed by Hector in the rally of Book 11 and named only in the list of that killing. The Trojan is Lampus' son and Laomedon's grandson, "a master of the spear" and "the strongest son that Lampus fathered": he springs on Meges as he strips Croesmus and stabs his shield, but Phyleus' old corslet from Ephyra turns it; Meges shears the plume off his helmet, and while the two fight Menelaus comes up unseen from behind and drives a spear through his chest. Hector rallies his kinsmen over the armor — "do you not see how they swarm over Dolops's armor?"
Kin: the Achaean is son of Clytius; the Trojan is son of Lampus, grandson of Laomedon, and Hector's kinsman.
Killed by: the Achaean by Hector (11.302); the Trojan by Menelaus (15.540–543).
Refs: 11.302, 15.525, 15.536, 15.555. Books 11, 15.
See also: Clytius, Lampus, Meges, Menelaus, Hector, Melanippus.
The messenger Zeus sends to deceive Agamemnon — "baneful Dream" — with the false promise that he may take Troy now, because the immortals are no longer divided and Hera has bent them by her begging. It stands above Agamemnon's head in the likeness of Nestor, "whom Agamemnon honored most of the elders," delivers the word exactly as charged, and flies away; Agamemnon reports it to the council as "a divine Dream" and acts on it, and the army's near-flight to the ships follows.
Invoked, never acting: one of the standing witnesses of the poem's oaths. Two lambs are brought "for Earth and Sun" at the truce of Book 3, and Priam's oath-prayer calls on "Rivers, and Earth, and you two below who punish the dead." Hera swears by Earth, wide Heaven and the down-flowing water of Styx that she has not moved Poseidon; Agamemnon swears by Zeus, Earth, the Sun and the Erinyes that he never touched Briseis. The related "Earth-shaker" is a fixed epithet of Poseidon, not this entity.
Refs: 3.104, 3.278, 15.36, 19.259, 20.310, 21.462. Books 3, 15, 19–21.
Say: EK-ee-us
Three men. One is a father only: "Mecisteus, Echius' son," one of the two loyal companions who twice stoop under a wounded man and carry him groaning to the ships (8.333 = 13.422). An Achaean of the name is killed by Polites in the rout of Book 15, in the same onset in which Polydamas kills that Mecisteus. A third is a Trojan, one of nine men Patroclus brings down in heaps at 16.415–418.
Kin: the first is father of Mecisteus.
Killed by: the Achaean by Polites (15.339); the Trojan by Patroclus (16.416).
Say: EE-lis
"Brilliant Elis" in the western Peloponnese, the Epeians' country in the Catalogue, bounded by Hyrmine, Myrsinus at the land's edge, the Olenian rock and Alesium, and sending forty ships under four leaders; the Echinae islands lie "across the sea facing Elis." It is the setting of Nestor's long reminiscence in Book 11: the cattle-raid in which he killed Itymoneus, the debt owed the Pylians "in brilliant Elis," and Augeias' seizure of the four prize-winning horses that had come there for the games.
Say: EN-oh-mus
"Ennomus the bird-reader," who leads the Mysians with Chromis in the Catalogue, where the poem adds the notice that his birds did not save him from black doom: he was broken under the hands of Achilles in the river, with the other Trojans (2.858– 861). He is still among the allied captains Hector harangues at 17.218, so the Catalogue's notice runs ahead of the narrative. A second man of the name is killed by Odysseus with Thoon in Book 11.
Killed by: Achilles, in the Scamander (2.860–861); the second by Odysseus (11.422).
Refs: 2.858, 11.422, 17.218. Books 2, 11, 17.
See also: Chromis, Mysians, Achilles, Scamander, Odysseus, Thoon.
Say: EE-nops
A name borne by three fathers, none of whom appears. One is the Trojan who herded by the banks of the Satnioeis, where a blameless naiad nymph bore him Satnius, killed by Ajax son of Oïleus (14.444–446). Another is father of the Trojan Thestor, whom Patroclus hooks out of his chariot by the jaw like a fish (16.401). The third is father of Clytomedes, the boxer Nestor beat at the funeral games of Amarynceus.
Kin: father, severally, of Satnius, Thestor and Clytomedes.
Refs: 14.444, 14.445, 16.401, 23.634. Books 14, 16, 23.
See also: Satnius, Thestor, Clytomedes, Nestor, Patroclus, Satnioeis.
Say: eh-PEE-unz
The people of Elis and Buprasium, forty ships under four leaders — Amphimachus and Thalpius, Diores, and Polyxeinus — and "the shining Epeians" who hold part of the line at the ships with the Locrians and Phthians under Meges and Amphion. Their larger role is retrospective: Nestor's Book 11 reminiscence is entirely about them, the debt they owed the Pylians, the Molione brothers, and the battle by the Alpheius; and the funeral games they held for lord Amarynceus at Buprasium are the measure Nestor sets against Patroclus'.
Kin: led by Amphimachus, Thalpius, Diores and Polyxeinus.
Refs: 2.619, 4.538, 11.688, 11.694, 11.737, 13.686, 15.519, 23.630.
Books 2, 4, 11, 13, 15, 23.
See also: Elis, Nestor, Diores, Meges, Amarynceus, Buprasium.
Say: eh-PEE-us
Panopeus' son, "huge and strong, skilled in fist-fighting," who claims the boxing prize before the fight and gets it: "I claim to be the best. Is it not enough that I fall short in battle?" He drops Euryalus with one blow to the cheek — the man leaps at it like a fish under the North Wind and goes down — then sets him upright again with his own hands. In the weight-throw he takes the lump of pig-iron first, whirls, lets it fly, and the Achaeans laugh at him.
Kin: son of Panopeus.
Refs: 23.665, 23.689, 23.694, 23.838, 23.839. Book 23.
See also: Panopeus, Euryalus, Achilles, Polypoetes, Leonteus.
Say: ee-PIS-troh-fus
Three men, all named in Book 2 and none of them again. Two are Catalogue leaders: the Phocian, who leads forty ships with his brother Schedius, sons of Iphitus Naubolus' son; and the Halizonian, who leads with Odius "from far away, from Alybe, where silver has its birthplace." The third is one of the "spear-mad sons of lord Euenus" whom Achilles cut down with Mynes at the sack of Lyrnessus, where he took Briseis.
Kin: the Phocian is son of Iphitus, brother of Schedius; the third is son of Euenus, brother of Mynes.
Killed by: the third by Achilles (2.692).
Refs: 2.517, 2.692, 2.856. Book 2.
See also: Schedius, Odius, Phocians, Halizones, Mynes, Briseis, Lyrnessus.
Say: er-yoo-THAY-lee-on
The champion young Nestor killed, and the standing proof of what Nestor once was. He wore the armor Ares gave Areithous the Club-man, which Lycurgus took by craft in a narrow lane and gave in old age to Ereuthalion, his aide; wearing it he challenged all the Pylian best by the walls of Pheia, and they trembled and no man dared until Nestor, youngest-born of all, went out and killed him. "The tallest and the strongest man I ever killed: a great sprawl of him lay there, this way and that." Nestor tells it twice, both times to shame men into fighting.
Killed by: Nestor (7.153–156).
Say: ee-RIN-ee-eez
The avenging powers a curse calls up, and the poem's guarantors of oaths and of due order. Amyntor's curse on Phoenix summons "the hateful Erinyes"; Althaea, beating the earth and calling on Hades and Persephone for her son's death, is heard "out of Erebus" by an Erinys "who walks in mist." Iris tells Poseidon that "the Erinyes always side with the elder-born," and Agamemnon lays his blindness on Zeus, Fate, and the Erinys who walks in mist. They are witnesses under the earth in his oath at 19.259, and they stop the mouth of Achilles' speaking horse (19.418).
Epithets: "who walks in mist" (ἠεροφοῖτις, 9.571).
Refs: 9.454, 9.571, 15.204, 19.87, 19.259, 19.418, 21.412.
Books 9, 15, 19, 21.
See also: Phoenix, Amyntor, Althaea, Meleager, Agamemnon, Blindness, Xanthus (horse).
Say: yoo-EE-mon
Eurypylus' father, who never appears: in all seven occurrences the name is the patronymic, and almost always in the fixed phrase "Eurypylus, Euaemon's shining son" — which carries him through the Catalogue, his killing of Hypsenor, the volunteering for the duel with Hector, and finally his own wounding, "Euaemon's Zeus-sprung son, hit in the thigh by the arrow."
Kin: father of Eurypylus.
Refs: 2.736, 5.76, 5.79, 7.167, 8.265, 11.575, 11.810. Books 2, 5, 7, 8, 11.
Say: yoo-MEE-deez
Dolon's father, "the sacred herald — rich in gold and rich in bronze," named only to place his son: the wealth is what makes Dolon's offer of ransom credible when Odysseus and Diomedes take him. The name appears three times in Book 10 and nowhere else, twice in the formula "Dolon, Eumedes' son" that introduces the scout's two truthful answers.
Kin: father of Dolon.
Say: yoo-MEE-lus
Leader of eleven ships from Pherae and Iolcus, and owner of the best horses in the host: the Muse-question at 2.761–767 answers that the finest were "the mares of Pheres' line, which Eumelus drove," matched in coat and years, reared by Apollo in Pereia. He is "supreme in horsemanship" and rises first for the chariot race in Book 23, but Athena — retaliating for Apollo's sabotage of Diomedes — shatters his yoke, and he is thrown and comes in last, dragging his chariot. Achilles pities him and proposes second prize; Antilochus objects, and Eumelus is given Asteropaeus' corslet instead.
Also called: Admetus' son.
Kin: son of Admetus and Alcestis, "brilliant among women, loveliest of the daughters of Pelias" (2.715); grandson of Pheres.
Refs: 2.714, 2.764, 23.288, 23.354, 23.381, 23.481, 23.558, 23.565. Books 2,
23.
See also: Admetus, Alcestis, Athena, Diomedes, Antilochus, Asteropaeus.
Say: yoo-FOR-bus
The Dardanian who strikes Patroclus first — from behind, between the shoulders, after Apollo has already dazed him — then pulls his spear free and runs back into the crowd rather than face even an unarmed man. The poem gives him a resumé in the same breath: he outshone all men of his age at the spear, at horsemanship and in the footrace, and had brought down twenty men his first time out with a chariot. Dying, Patroclus names him second of his three killers, after Apollo. In Book 17 he claims the body from Menelaus and is speared through the throat; his blood-soaked hair, "hair like the Graces'," braided in gold and silver, gets the poem's olive-sapling simile.
Also called: Panthous' son — the patronymic also serves Polydamas and Hyperenor.
Kin: son of Panthous.
Kills: wounds Patroclus (16.806–815).
Killed by: Menelaus (17.45–60).
Refs: 16.808, 16.850, 17.47, 17.59, 17.81. Books 16–17.
See also: Patroclus, Menelaus, Panthous, Polydamas, Apollo, Hector, Graces.
Say: yoo-RY-uh-lus
Third captain of the Argive contingent under Diomedes, behind Diomedes himself and Sthenelus, "a godlike man." He kills four Trojans in the Book 6 rout, among them the twins Aesepus and Pedasus, whom the water-nymph Abarbarea bore to Bucolion. In Book 23 he alone stands up to Epeius at boxing — Diomedes girds him and talks him up — and is knocked flat with a blow to the cheek, led away through the gathering with his feet trailing, spitting thick blood, his wits astray.
Kin: son of Mecisteus, son of Talaus. His father once came to Thebes for the burial of fallen Oedipus and beat all the sons of Cadmus (23.679–680).
Kills: Dresus, Opheltius, Aesepus and Pedasus (6.20–28).
Say: yoo-RIP-ih-lus
Thessalian leader of forty ships from Ormenion and Hypereia, and one of the nine who stand up to answer Hector's challenge in Book 7. He kills Hypsenor the Scamander-priest's son in Book 5 and Melanthius in Book 6, and in Book 11, coming to the rescue of the hard-pressed Ajax, is shot through the right thigh by Paris. His wound is the hinge of the plot: Patroclus, sent by Achilles to ask after the wounded, meets him limping from the field, and though on an errand he will not abandon him — he cuts the arrow out, washes the wound and lays on a root Chiron taught Achilles. Patroclus is still sitting in his hut at 15.390, delighting him with talk, when the Trojans storm the wall; the delay is the last thing between him and his own death. A different Eurypylus is the hero of Cos (2.677).
Also called: Euaemon's son — the recurring line is "Euaemon's shining son."
Kin: son of Euaemon.
Kills: Hypsenor (5.76–83); Melanthius (6.36); Apisaon (11.578).
Refs: 2.736, 5.76, 6.36, 7.167, 11.583, 11.809, 12.2, 15.392, 16.27. Books 2,
5–8, 11–12, 15–16.
Say: yoo-RIS-thyoos
The king Heracles served, present only in the back-story. Athena complains at 8.362–369 that Zeus forgets how often she was sent to rescue his son "worn to breaking under Eurystheus's labors" — among them the descent to Hades to fetch the hound. His birth is the point of Agamemnon's Blindness-parable in Book 19: Hera, trapping Zeus in an oath, hurried this child into the light before his month and held back Alcmene's labor, so that the rule Zeus meant for Heracles fell to Eurystheus, and Zeus groaned ever after to see his son "doing shameful labor under Eurystheus's tasks." His herald Copreus carried the orders (15.639–640).
Kin: son of Sthenelus, son of Perseus.
Refs: 8.363, 8.367, 15.640, 19.123, 19.133. Books 8, 15, 19.
See also: Heracles, Hera, Alcmene, Blindness, Sthenelus, Perseus, Copreus.
Say: ay-EE-tee-on
King of Thebe-under-Placus, lord over the Cilician men, and Andromache's father. Achilles sacked his city before the poem opens — the raid that also took Chryseis — and killed him there, but "did not strip him: his heart stood in awe of that," burning him in his armor and heaping a mound over which the mountain nymphs planted elms. Achilles killed all seven of his sons in one day and ransomed his wife back. The spoils of Thebe run through the poem: the lyre Achilles is singing to when the embassy arrives, the horse Pedasus, and the lump of self-smelted iron he sets up as a prize at Patroclus' games, "that the huge strength of Eëtion used to throw." Two other men bear the name: Eëtion of Imbros, who ransomed Lycaon (21.43), and the father of Podes, Hector's feast-companion (17.575).
Kin: father of Andromache and of seven sons; father-in-law of Hector.
Killed by: Achilles (6.414–420).
Refs: 1.366, 6.396, 6.416, 8.187, 9.188, 16.153, 21.43, 22.472, 23.827. Books
1, 6, 8–9, 16–17, 21–23.
See also: Andromache, Achilles, Hector, Thebe, Placus, Chryseis, Podes.
Personified only where the translation capitalizes her; elsewhere μοῖρα is the common noun "fate," and the death-line formula μοῖρα κραταιή is rendered "fate the overpowering." She walks the shield of Achilles beside Strife and Tumult, "deadly Fate, holding one man fresh-wounded and alive, another unwounded, another dead, dragging him by the feet through the fighting," her cloak red with the blood of men (18.535–538). Elsewhere she is a spinner: what she "spun for him with her thread at his birth" is said of Achilles by Zeus (20.127–128) and of Hector by Hecuba (24.209–210), in the same wording. Agamemnon names her with Zeus and the Erinys as the causes of his blindness, and the horse Xanthus names "a great god, and strong Fate" as the killers of Patroclus.
Refs: 18.535, 19.87, 19.410, 20.127, 24.209. Books 18, 19, 20, 24.
See also: Strife, Blindness, Erinyes, Xanthus (horse), Zeus, Hecuba.
Say: GAR-guh-ron
The peak of Ida where Zeus's precinct and smoking altar are, and the seat from which he watches the war: he halts his horses there at 8.48–52, pours mist around them, and sits "looking out at the Trojans' city and the ships of the Achaeans." It is where Hera comes to him arrayed in the kestos, and where he sleeps after, "broken by sleep and love, his wife in his arms," while Sleep runs to Poseidon with the news; and where Iris and Apollo find him wreathed in a fragrant cloud when he wakes.
Say: GLAW-kus
Co-leader of the Lycians with Sarpedon, and one of the two men — with Asteropaeus — whom Sarpedon picks out as best of the allies after himself. In Book 6 he meets Diomedes between the lines and answers the challenge with the poem's most famous image, "As the generation of leaves, so is the generation of men," then recites the Bellerophon story; the two discover their grandfathers' guest-friendship, refuse to fight, and exchange armor — at which "Zeus took Glaucus's wits away," gold for bronze, a hundred oxen's worth for nine. Teucer's arrow through his bared arm takes him out of the fight at the wall; Apollo heals it at his prayer in Book 16 so that he can rally the Lycians over Sarpedon's body. In Book 17 he rounds on Hector for letting Sarpedon's corpse go and threatens to take the Lycians home. His great-grandfather Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, bears the same name (6.154).
Kin: son of Hippolochus; grandson of Bellerophon; cousin of Sarpedon through Laodameia.
Kills: Iphinous (7.13–16); Bathycles (16.593–598).
Refs: 2.876, 6.119, 6.234, 7.13, 12.309, 12.387, 16.492, 16.530, 17.140.
Books 2, 6–7, 12, 14, 16–17.
See also: Sarpedon, Diomedes, Hippolochus, Bellerophon, Teucer, Apollo, Hector.
Divine craftswomen and, in Book 14, marriageable persons. They wove the ambrosial robe Aphrodite is wearing when Diomedes cuts her hand (5.338). Hera buys Sleep's help against Zeus by offering him "one of the younger Graces" to marry, and he names his price: Pasithea, "whom I myself have longed for all my days." Their name is also the poem's measure of male beauty — Euphorbus dies with "hair like the Graces'."
Also called: the younger Graces (14.267, 14.275); Pasithea is the one named.
Say: HAY-deez
Lord of the dead, and by metonymy the underworld itself — most of the poem's forty-six occurrences are the destination in phrases like "went down to the house of Hades," which is where the wrath of the proem sends "many strong souls of heroes" in the fourth line. As a person he is the third of Cronos' sons: Poseidon's account of the lots at 15.187–193 gives Zeus the wide heaven, himself the grey sea, and "Hades the misty dark," with earth and Olympus common to all three. Heracles shot him at Pylos "among the dead, and gave him over to pain" (5.395–397); Athena wears his helmet to hide from Ares (5.845); and in the theomachy he leaps screaming from his throne, afraid Poseidon will crack the earth open and expose his "terrible, mouldering houses, which the very gods abhor" (20.61–65). Achilles learns from Patroclus' ghost that there is a soul and an image in his house "but the wits are not in it at all."
Epithets: "the gate-closer" (πυλάρτης, 8.367); "of the famed colts" (κλυτόπωλος, 5.654).
Also called: Aïdoneus (5.190, 20.61).
Kin: son of Cronos and Rhea; brother of Zeus, Poseidon and Hera.
Refs: 1.3, 5.395, 5.654, 5.845, 8.367, 9.158, 15.188, 15.191, 16.856, 20.294,
22.213, 23.103 …and throughout. Books 1, 3, 5–9, 11, 13–16, 20–24.
See also: Zeus, Poseidon, Persephone, Erebus, Patroclus, Heracles.
Say: HEE-mon
Three men. The first is a Pylian, "the lord Haemon," one of the five captains Nestor is arraying his companions around when Agamemnon reaches him in Book 4. The second is a Cadmean, father of Maeon — one of the two leaders of the fifty-man ambush the Thebans set for Tydeus, and the only man Tydeus let go home alive. The third is named once as Alcimedon's grandfather, father of Laerces, among the Myrmidons.
Say: HEE-bee
Daughter of Zeus and Hera, and the gods' cup-bearer: the poem's first sight of Olympus at the opening of Book 4 has her pouring nectar among the seated gods while they look out at the city of the Trojans. She also works as Hera's groom, setting the bronze eight-spoked wheels on the chariot when her mother goes to war (5.722), and it is she who bathes Ares and dresses him in graceful clothing after Paiëon has healed his belly-wound.
Epithets: "the lady Hebe" (πότνια Ἥβη, 4.2).
Kin: daughter of Zeus and Hera; sister of Ares.
Priam's eldest son, Troy's champion, and the man on whom the city rests — "for Hector alone was the saving of Ilion" (6.403). He is the poem's second protagonist: he duels Ajax to a standstill in Book 7, breaks the Achaean gate with a stone in Book 12, fires the ships in Book 15, and strips Achilles' armor from Patroclus' body, the act that brings Achilles back and destroys him. His domestic scene with Andromache and the infant Astyanax at the Scaean Gates (6.390–496) is set against his own certainty that Ilion will fall; he twice rejects Polydamas' counsel to withdraw, the second time fatally. In Book 22 he waits alone outside the wall, runs three times around the city, is tricked by Athena in Deiphobus' shape, and takes Achilles' spear through the gullet. Achilles drags his body for twelve days until Priam ransoms it, and the poem closes on his burial.
Epithets: "of the flashing helmet" (κορυθαίολος, 2.816); "glorious" (φαίδιμος, 4.505); "man-slaughtering" (ἀνδροφόνος, 1.242 — given last to his own head at 24.724); "breaker of horses" (ἱππόδαμος, 7.38), rendered "tamer of horses" in the line that ends the poem (22.161, 24.804).
Also called: Priam's son — the default referent of the patronymic, though it also serves Paris, Helenus, Deiphobus, Polydorus, Lycaon and the Book 24 roll-call.
Kin: son of Priam and Hecuba; husband of Andromache, daughter of Eëtion; father of Astyanax; brother of Paris, Helenus, Deiphobus, Polydorus, Lycaon, Cassandra and Laodice.
Kills: Patroclus (16.818–863), with Apollo and Euphorbus striking before him; Amphimachus, Schedius, Asaeus, Autonous and many more.
Killed by: Achilles (22.326–330).
Refs: 1.242, 2.816, 3.38, 6.390, 6.440, 7.38, 12.445, 16.818, 18.284, 22.326,
24.724, 24.804 …and throughout. Books 1–24.
See also: Achilles, Priam, Andromache, Astyanax, Polydamas, Patroclus, Ajax, Apollo, Deiphobus.
Say: HEK-yoo-buh
Priam's wife and Hector's mother. She meets Hector at the palace in Book 6 and offers him wine, then leads the older women to lay the loveliest robe of her Sidonian store on Athena's knees — a prayer Athena refuses. On the wall at 22.79–89 she bares her breast and begs him to come inside; she leads the lament over his body twice, at the wall and at the bier, where she says his flesh is unmarked and "dear to the gods you were while you lived with me." In Book 24 she opposes Priam's journey to the ships outright, calling Achilles savage and faithless and wishing she could eat his liver, then yields and makes her husband pour a libation before he goes.
Epithets: "gentle-giving" (ἠπιόδωρος, 6.251).
Kin: daughter of Dymas, sister of Asius (16.718); wife of Priam; mother of Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Laodice, Cassandra and the rest.
Refs: 6.293, 6.451, 16.718, 22.234, 22.430, 24.193, 24.283, 24.747. Books 6,
16, 22, 24.
See also: Priam, Hector, Andromache, Athena, Achilles, Dymas, Asius.
Say: HEL-un
Menelaus' wife, taken to Troy by Paris, and the cause the whole war is fought over — "Argive Helen, for whose sake so many Achaeans have perished at Troy." The poem handles her almost entirely through her own speech, and every scene of it is self-reproach: she names herself "dog-face" to Priam on the wall while identifying the Achaean captains for him, calls herself "the dog, the evil-scheming horror" to Hector, and wishes a storm had carried her off the day she was born. Aphrodite compels her to Paris' bed in Book 3 with a threat, and she goes in silence. She speaks last of the three women who lament Hector, mourning the only man in Troy who never gave her a hard word: "there is no one else now in wide Troy gentle to me, or kind: they all shudder at me."
Epithets: "of the trailing robe" (τανύπεπλος, 3.228).
Kin: daughter of Zeus (3.418, "Helen sprung of Zeus"); wife of Menelaus; taken by Paris; she names a daughter left behind at Sparta (3.175).
Refs: 2.161, 3.121, 3.171, 3.228, 3.418, 6.343, 7.350, 24.761. Books 2–4, 6–9,
11, 13, 19, 22, 24.
See also: Paris, Menelaus, Priam, Hector, Aphrodite, Antenor, Laodice.
Say: HEL-uh-nus
Priam's son, "far the best of bird-readers," whose counsel twice sets the plot moving: at 6.75–101 he sends Hector back into the city to have Hecuba petition Athena, which produces the Andromache scene; and at 7.44–53 he hears "the voice of the gods who are forever," relays that it is not yet Hector's fate to die, and prompts the challenge that brings on the duel with Ajax. He also fights — he leads one of the storming-parties at the wall with Deiphobus, kills Deïpyrus with a Thracian sword, and is shot in the bow-hand by Menelaus and carried out. Priam curses him by name among the nine surviving sons in Book 24. A different Helenus, son of Oenops, is one of the Achaeans Hector and Ares kill at 5.707.
Kin: son of Priam and Hecuba; brother of Hector, Paris and Deiphobus.
Kills: Deïpyrus (13.576–580).
Refs: 5.707, 6.75, 7.44, 12.94, 13.576, 13.582, 24.249. Books 5–7, 12–13, 24.
See also: Priam, Hector, Deiphobus, Menelaus, Cassandra, Deïpyrus.
Say: HEL-us
Not yet a name for Greece: in this poem it is a district of Phthia, listed in the Catalogue with Alos, Alope, Trachis and Phthia as the country of Achilles' contingent, and fixed as "Hellas of the beautiful women." Achilles offers it as his marriage-market — "There are Achaean girls enough through Hellas and through Phthia" — and Phoenix fled from it to Peleus after the quarrel with his father Amyntor, crossing "Hellas of the wide spaces." Bathycles, the richest of the Myrmidons, had his home there.
Refs: 2.683, 9.395, 9.447, 9.478, 16.595. Books 2, 9, 16.
See also: Hellenes, Phthia, Achilles, Phoenix, Myrmidons, Bathycles.
Say: HEL-eenz
Still a narrow regional term, twice only. At 2.684 it is one of the three names of Achilles' own contingent — "and they were called Myrmidons, and Hellenes, and Achaeans" — and at 2.530 the lesser Ajax "with the spear surpassed all Hellenes and Achaeans," a pairing that keeps the two distinct. It is not a name for the whole host; that is Achaeans, Argives, Danaans.
See also: Hellas, Myrmidons, Achaeans, Achilles, Ajax son of Oïleus.
Say: HEL-uh-spont
The strait beside the Achaean camp, always "strong-flowing" or "wide" or "boundless," and the poem's standing figure for the far edge of the beachhead. Nestor proposes the barrow of the unnamed dead be heaped "beside the wide Hellespont" so that men sailing by in later ages will see it; Achilles threatens to load his ships and be seen sailing it at earliest light; Poseidon's wall-destroying flood in Book 12 smooths the beach "along the strong-flowing Hellespont." It bounds the Thracian contingent in the Catalogue and, in Priam's mind, the whole extent of his former wealth.
Refs: 2.845, 7.86, 9.360, 12.30, 15.233, 17.432, 18.150, 23.2, 24.346, 24.545.
Books 2, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17–18, 23–24.
Say: hih-FES-tus or hih-FEE-stus
The smith-god, lamed and comic in Book 1 — where he bustles round the hall pouring nectar to break up his parents' quarrel, and tells how Zeus once caught him by the foot and flung him from the threshold of heaven to fall all day and land on Lemnos — and formidable everywhere after. He made Agamemnon's sceptre and the houses of the gods; his name stands by metonymy for fire ("the flame of Hephaestus," 2.426). His great work is the armor and the shield of Achilles, forged at Thetis' asking, with the earth, heaven, sea, two cities, the plowing and harvest, the vineyard, the herd and the lions, the dancing-floor and the river of Ocean on it (18.478–608). In Book 21 Hera sets him on the Scamander: he burns the plain, then the river itself, until the water boils in its channel and the god begs off.
Epithets: "crook-footed" (ἀμφιγυήεις, 1.607); "famed for craft" (κλυτότεχνης, 1.571); "famed" (περικλυτός, 1.607).
Kin: son of Hera (1.572, 21.330); husband of Charis (18.382).
Refs: 1.571, 1.600, 2.101, 2.426, 14.239, 18.137, 18.369, 18.473, 20.36,
21.342, 21.367, 21.381. Books 1–2, 5, 8–9, 14–15, 17–23.
See also: Hera, Thetis, Achilles, Charis, Scamander, Zeus, Lemnos.
Say: HEER-uh or HAIR-uh
Zeus's wife and sister, and the Achaeans' most relentless partisan — she will trade Argos, Sparta and Mycenae, the three cities dearest to her, for the sack of Troy (4.51–56), and Zeus says she would eat Priam and his sons raw if she could get at them. She sets the poem going by putting the assembly into Achilles' mind (1.55), and her Book 14 deception is its central act of divine mischief: she borrows the kestos from Aphrodite, buys Sleep with the promise of Pasithea, and takes Zeus on Gargaron so that Poseidon can turn the battle while he sleeps. Zeus's fury when he wakes — and his reminder of the time he hung her from heaven with anvils on her feet — does not change her; she extorts his consent for Troy's fall in Book 4 and again in Book 21, and sends Hephaestus against the river to save Achilles.
Epithets: "white-armed" (λευκώλενος, 1.55); "ox-eyed lady Hera" (βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη, 1.551); "eldest goddess" (πρέσβα θεά, 5.721); "of the golden throne" (χρυσόθρονος, 1.611).
Kin: daughter of Cronos and Rhea; sister and wife of Zeus; sister of Poseidon and Hades; mother of Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
Refs: 1.55, 1.400, 1.536, 4.5, 4.50, 5.721, 8.198, 14.159, 14.292, 15.5, 19.407
…and throughout. Books 1–2, 4–5, 7–11, 13–16, 18–21, 24.
See also: Zeus, Athena, Sleep, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Poseidon, Hebe, Ares.
Say: HER-uh-kleez
Always in the past tense, and always as the measure of a generation stronger than this one. His Troy is the earlier sack: he came for the horses of Laomedon "with only six ships and fewer men, and sacked the city of Ilion, and widowed her streets," and Laomedon cheated him of the horses (5.638–651). Sleep and Hera between them wrecked his homecoming and blew him to Cos, for which Zeus hurled gods through the house; Poseidon shows Aeneas the wall the Trojans built him against the sea-monster. Achilles takes him as the precedent for his own death — "not even the might of Heracles escaped his doom" — and Agamemnon takes his birth as the great instance of Blindness, when Hera's trick handed his rule to Eurystheus. He wounded Hades at Pylos, and he battered Nestor's Pylos so hard that eleven of Neleus' twelve sons were killed.
Epithets: "the might of Heracles" (βίη Ἡρακληείη, 2.658) — the periphrasis is kept, and is the usual form of the name.
Kin: son of Zeus and Alcmene; father of Tlepolemus by Astyocheia and of Thessalus.
Refs: 2.658, 2.666, 5.638, 11.690, 14.255, 15.25, 18.117, 19.98, 20.145. Books
2, 5, 11, 14–15, 18–20.
See also: Zeus, Hera, Alcmene, Eurystheus, Laomedon, Tlepolemus, Sarpedon, Nestor.
Say: HUR-meez
The gods' messenger and escort. He passes the sceptre from Zeus to Pelops in the Book 2 genealogy, steals Ares out of the bronze jar where the sons of Aloeus had him bound, fathers Eudorus on Polymele, and is paired against Leto in the theomachy — where he declines to fight, saying it is a hard thing to trade blows with the wives of Zeus. His great scene is Book 24: Zeus sends him to bring Priam through the Achaean camp unseen, and he comes as a young man, takes the reins, drugs the gate-keepers, opens the gate, identifies himself at Achilles' door, and comes back before dawn to wake the old man and drive him out again. Every occurrence of "Argus" in the poem is inside his fixed epithet.
Epithets: "the slayer of Argus" (ἀργεϊφόντης, 2.103); "the guide" (διάκτορος, 2.103) — rendered "the courier" in its later occurrences (20.34, 24.339).
Kin: son of Zeus; father of Eudorus by Polymele (16.181–186).
Refs: 2.103, 5.390, 14.490, 16.181, 20.35, 21.497, 24.334, 24.339, 24.461,
24.679, 24.694. Books 2, 5, 14–16, 20–21, 24.
See also: Zeus, Priam, Achilles, Eudorus, Leto, Ares, Pelops.
Say: hy-suh-TAY-on
One of Priam's brothers, a son of Laomedon, and one of the Trojan elders sitting at the Scaean Gates in Book 3 who watch Helen come and say she is worth the suffering. He does not fight. In the poem he functions mainly as a patronymic: his son Melanippus, who had herded cattle at Percote until the war came close, is rebuked by Hector into the front line and shot in the chest by Antilochus.
Epithets: "scion of Ares" (ὄζος Ἄρηος, 3.147), varied as "sprig of Ares" in the genealogy at 20.238.
Kin: son of Laomedon; brother of Priam, Tithonus, Lampus and Clytius; father of Melanippus.
Refs: 3.147, 15.546, 15.576, 20.238. Books 3, 15, 20.
See also: Priam, Laomedon, Melanippus, Antilochus, Hector.
Say: HIP-uh-sus
A name attached to men on both sides, never a character himself. On the Trojan side he is father of Charops and of Socus, "such a pair of men," both killed by Odysseus in Book 11 — Odysseus taunts the dying Socus as "son of war-minded Hippasus, breaker of horses." A second Hippasus is the father of Hypsenor, killed by Deiphobus at 13.411; a third the father of Apisaon of Paeonia, killed by Lycomedes at 17.348. The last two die in the same verbatim line, hit "in the liver below the midriff."
Kin: father of Charops and Socus; also named as father of Hypsenor and of Apisaon.
Refs: 11.426, 11.431, 11.450, 13.411, 17.348. Books 11, 13, 17.
Say: hip-OL-oh-kus
Glaucus' father, son of Bellerophon and brother of Isander and Laodameia — so the link between the Lycian house and Sarpedon, who is Laodameia's son by Zeus. He does not appear: the name is Glaucus' patronymic throughout, and his one act reported is sending his son to Troy with the charge "always to be the best, and to hold his head above all others" (6.207–208), the line Peleus also gives Achilles. A second Hippolochus is a son of Antimachus, killed with his brother Peisander by Agamemnon in Book 11, who shears off his hands and his head and sends him rolling like a stone through the crowd.
Kin: son of Bellerophon; father of Glaucus; brother of Isander and Laodameia.
Refs: 6.119, 6.144, 6.197, 6.206, 7.13, 11.122, 11.145, 12.309, 12.387, 17.140.
Books 6–7, 11–12, 17.
See also: Glaucus, Bellerophon, Sarpedon, Laodameia, Antimachus, Agamemnon.
Say: hip-OTH-oh-us
Two men. The chief one leads the Pelasgian spearmen of Larisa in the Catalogue with his brother Pylaeus, and dies in Book 17 in the fight over Patroclus' body: he has run a shield-strap round the dead man's ankle-tendons and is dragging him off by the foot "doing a favor to Hector and the Trojans" when Telamonian Ajax spears him through the helmet's cheek-piece and the brain runs out along the socket. He falls face-down on the corpse, "far from deep-soiled Larisa; nor did he repay his dear parents the price of his rearing." Priam's son Hippothous is a different man, named once in the roll-call of the nine sons Priam curses (24.251).
Kin: the Pelasgian is son of Lethus, son of Teutamus; brother of Pylaeus.
Killed by: Ajax (17.293–303).
Refs: 2.840, 2.842, 17.217, 17.288, 17.313, 17.318, 24.251. Books 2, 17, 24.
See also: Lethus, Larisa, Pelasgians, Ajax, Patroclus, Priam.
Say: HY-lee
A Boeotian town by the Cephisian lake, listed in the Catalogue. Two men are placed there: Oresbius "of the glancing waist-guard," who lived there hoarding his wealth with care and is killed by Hector in the Book 5 roll-call; and Tychius, "far the best of leather-cutters," who made the seven-hide tower shield Ajax carries against Hector.
Say: HUR-tuh-kus
Asius' father, and in the poem only that: every occurrence is the patronymic "Asius, Hyrtacus' son," including the couplet the poem repeats verbatim from the Catalogue when Asius storms the wall — "whom horses carried from Arisbe, tall and fire-colored, from the river Selleïs" (2.838 = 12.96). Hector names him twice in the same formula when he searches the front for his missing captains in Book 13.
Kin: father of Asius, leader of the men of Percote, Sestus, Abydos and Arisbe.
Refs: 2.837, 2.838, 12.96, 12.110, 12.162, 13.760, 13.771. Books 2, 12–13.
Say: EYE-duh
The mountain above Troy, "of the many springs, mother of wild things," from whose peaks the eight rivers of the Troad run down to the sea. It is Zeus's station for most of the poem: he comes there from Olympus in Book 8, sits on Gargaron looking out at the city and the ships, thunders from it, and sends Iris and Apollo out from it with his orders. Hera climbs it to seduce him; the earth-quake of the theomachy shakes "all the roots of many-springed Ida." Aeneas was got on its spurs, "a goddess bedded with a mortal"; Apollo herded Laomedon's cattle "in the spurs of wooded, many-folded Ida"; and Agamemnon's oath calls on "Father Zeus, ruling from Ida."
Epithets: "Ida of the many springs, mother of wild things" (πολυπίδαξ Ἴδη, μήτηρ θηρῶν, 8.47).
Refs: 2.821, 3.276, 8.47, 11.184, 12.19, 14.283, 15.151, 20.59, 21.449.
Books 2–4, 7–8, 11–17, 20–24.
See also: Gargaron, Zeus, Hera, Troy, Scamander, Simois, Aeneas.
Say: eye-DEE-us
Priam's herald, "wise" and "war-minded," and the poem's chief instrument of truce. He carries the oath-offerings and the mixing-bowl for the Book 3 duel, and rouses Priam to come out to the plain. In Book 7 he and Talthybius force their staffs between Ajax and Hector to stop the duel at nightfall; then he goes alone to the Achaean assembly with Paris' offer of the treasure but not of Helen, hears it refused, and takes Agamemnon's answer back — the truce for the burning of the dead. In Book 24 he drives the mule-wagon of ransom to Achilles' hut and is left holding the teams outside. A different Idaeus is a son of Dares the Hephaestus-priest, who leaps from his chariot in Book 5 and is snatched away in darkness by Hephaestus so that the old man should not lose both sons.
Epithets: "the far-calling herald" (ἠπύτα κῆρυξ, 7.384).
Refs: 3.247, 5.11, 5.20, 7.276, 7.372, 7.381, 7.413, 24.325, 24.470. Books 3,
5, 7, 24.
See also: Priam, Talthybius, Hector, Ajax, Dares, Hephaestus, Achilles.
Say: eye-DOM-uh-nyoos or eye-DOM-ih-nee-us
Leader of the Cretans of hundred-citied Crete, with Meriones, and one of the Achaean elder statesmen — Agamemnon gives him a cup that is always full and honors him "beyond all the Danaans of swift colts." He is one of the men Achilles names in Book 1 as fit to arbitrate, and one of the nine who volunteer against Hector. His aristeia fills the middle of Book 13: Poseidon, in the likeness of Thoas, sends him back into the fight, and though "his hair was half-grey" he kills Othryoneus, Asius, Alcathous and Oenomaus before Aeneas comes at him and he gives ground, admitting his legs are no longer what they were. In Book 23 he is first to see Diomedes coming out of the dust and quarrels with the lesser Ajax over whose horses lead.
Epithets: "famed with the spear" (δουρὶ κλυτός, 2.645).
Kin: son of Deucalion (13.451); grandson of Minos.
Kills: Othryoneus (13.370–373); Asius (13.387–393); Alcathous, Oenomaus, Erymas.
Refs: 1.145, 2.645, 4.252, 4.265, 13.210, 13.361, 13.370, 13.467, 23.450.
Books 1–8, 10–13, 15–17, 19, 23.
See also: Meriones, Cretans, Poseidon, Asius, Othryoneus, Aeneas, Deucalion.
Say: il-ee-OH-nyoos
A Trojan, the only son of Phorbas "rich in flocks, whom Hermes loved beyond all the Trojans, and gave him wealth." Peneleos spears him under the brow at the root of the eye, pushes the eyeball out, and drives the point through the nape; then draws his sword, hews through the neck, and holds up head, helmet and the spear still standing in the eye "like a poppy-head" to show the Trojans — telling them to carry word to Ilioneus' father and mother to start wailing. It is the poem's grimmest single image, and the Trojans' limbs shake at the sight.
Kin: only son of Phorbas.
Killed by: Peneleos (14.489–500).
Say: EYE-lus
An ancestor of the Trojan kings, given in Aeneas' recital of the line at 20.231–236: Tros' eldest son, brother of Assaracus and Ganymede, and father of Laomedon — so Priam's grandfather. The poem does not gloss his name against Ilion. He is dead long before the action, and what survives him is his tomb, "the man-made mound," a fixed landmark in the middle of the plain: Hector holds his night council beside it, Agamemnon's rout streams past it, Paris shoots Diomedes from behind its pillar, and Priam and Idaeus drive past it on the road to the ships.
Kin: son of Tros; brother of Assaracus and Ganymede; father of Laomedon; great-grandfather of Hector.
Refs: 10.415, 11.166, 11.372, 20.232, 20.236, 24.349. Books 10–11, 20, 24.
Say: IM-bros
An island off Troy, always "rugged," and in the poem a marker of the sea-road rather than a place with people. Poseidon's undersea cave lies "midway between Tenedos and rugged Imbros"; Iris dives into the sea "midway between Samos and rugged Imbros" on her way to Thetis; Hera and Sleep pass over it and Lemnos on the way to Ida. Eëtion of Imbros is the guest-friend who ransomed Lycaon out of Lemnos, and Hecuba names it in her lament as one of the places across the sea Achilles sold her sons into.
Refs: 13.33, 14.281, 21.43, 24.78, 24.753. Books 13–14, 21, 24.
Say: IF-ih-klus
Father of Protesilaus and Podarces, and "rich in flocks," son of Phylacus; he does not appear, and both his sons are named by the patronymic when the Phylacean contingent is handed on from the first man killed at Troy to his younger brother (2.703–708, 13.698). The Iphiclus Nestor claims to have outrun in the games at Buprasium — "good runner though he was" — belongs to the same back-story generation, but the text does not say he is the same man.
Kin: son of Phylacus; father of Protesilaus and Podarces.
Refs: 2.705, 13.698, 23.636. Books 2, 13, 23.
See also: Protesilaus, Podarces, Phylacus, Nestor, Phylace.
Say: if-ID-uh-mas
Antenor's son, "a good man and a big one," and the answer to the Muse-question of who first came against Agamemnon in his aristeia. Reared in Thrace by his mother's father Cisses, who tried to keep him there by giving him his daughter, he left the bridal chamber "chasing the report of the Achaeans" with twelve ships, beached them at Percote, and walked the rest of the way to Ilion. His thrust bends on Agamemnon's war-belt "like lead"; Agamemnon wrenches the spear from his grip and cuts his neck, and he "slept a sleep of bronze," far from the wife he had bought with a hundred cattle and a promise of a thousand goats and sheep. His brother Coon wounds Agamemnon in the forearm trying to drag the body clear and is beheaded over it.
Kin: son of Antenor and Theano; grandson of Cisses; brother of Coon.
Killed by: Agamemnon (11.238–241).
Refs: 11.221, 11.234, 11.257, 11.261. Book 11.
See also: Antenor, Coon, Agamemnon, Theano, Cisses, Percote.
Say: EYE-ris
The gods' runner, and the poem's most reliable instrument: she carries Zeus's word and no one else's business is ever her own. She rouses the Trojan assembly in Priam's likeness at 2.786, leads the wounded Aphrodite out of the fighting and up to Olympus (5.353–369), turns Hera and Athena back from the field with Zeus's threat (8.398–425), and brings Achilles unarmed to the ditch on Hera's secret errand (18.166–202). She has one line of her own judgment — telling Poseidon that the hearts of the great can turn (15.203) — and Poseidon calls it the mark of a messenger who knows what is fitting. In Book 23 she carries Achilles' prayer to the winds; in Book 24 she goes down through the sea to Thetis and then to Priam, and her speech to him repeats Zeus's word almost exactly.
Epithets: "wind-footed swift Iris" (ποδήνεμος ὠκέα Ἶρις, 2.786); "swift-footed Iris" (πόδας ὠκέα Ἶρις, 2.790); "of the golden wings" (χρυσόπτερος, 8.398); "storm-footed" (ἀελλόπος, 8.409).
Refs: 2.786, 3.121, 5.353, 8.398, 11.185, 15.157, 18.166, 24.143 …and
throughout. Books 2–3, 5, 8, 11, 15, 18, 23–24.
See also: Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Thetis, Priam, Achilles.
Say: JAY-sun
In the back-story only: "shepherd of the people," to whom Hypsipyle bore Euneus, the king of Lemnos who sends wine-ships to the Achaean camp and gives a thousand measures separately to Agamemnon and Menelaus (7.467–471). The poem's interest in him is entirely through his son, who buys Lycaon when Achilles sells him into Lemnos (21.41) and whose silver mixing-bowl — paid as Lycaon's price to Patroclus — becomes the foot-race prize in Book 23.
Kin: by Hypsipyle, father of Euneus.
Say: lay-UR-teez
Odysseus's father, who never appears: in every one of his occurrences the name is a patronymic for his son. It carries the fixed vocative "Zeus-sprung son of Laertes, Odysseus of many devices" (2.173), used by Athena, Agamemnon, Nestor, Diomedes and Achilles in turn; Helen names Odysseus to Priam from the wall as "Laertes' son, resourceful Odysseus" (3.200).
Kin: father of Odysseus.
Refs: 2.173, 3.200, 4.358, 8.93, 9.308, 10.144, 19.185, 23.723. Books 2–4, 8–10,
19, 23.
See also: Odysseus.
Say: LAM-pus
One of the elders sitting with Priam at the Scaean Gates — "finished with war now because of age, but speakers of quality, like cicadas" — and one of Laomedon's sons, so Priam's brother; the genealogy Aeneas recites to Achilles puts him with Clytius and Hicetaon (20.238). His son Dolops, "the strongest son that Lampus fathered," is killed by Menelaus while fighting Meges (15.525–543). The name also belongs to one of Hector's four chariot-horses, called by name at 8.185.
Kin: son of Laomedon; brother of Priam, Tithonus, Clytius and Hicetaon; father of Dolops.
Refs: 3.147, 8.185, 15.526, 20.238. Books 3, 8, 15, 20.
See also: Laomedon, Priam, Clytius, Hicetaon, Dolops, Hector.
Say: lay-OD-ih-see
Two women. Priam's daughter, "loveliest of the daughters of Priam" (3.124), married to Antenor's son Helicaon; Iris takes her likeness to fetch Helen to the wall, and Hecuba is leading her when she meets Hector in Book 6. A second Laodice is one of Agamemnon's three daughters, offered to Achilles with Chrysothemis and Iphianassa in the embassy's list of gifts (9.145 = 9.287).
Kin: Priam's daughter is the daughter of Priam and Hecuba, and wife of Helicaon; the other is a daughter of Agamemnon.
Refs: 3.124, 6.252, 9.145, 9.287. Books 3, 6, 9.
See also: Priam, Hecuba, Helicaon, Antenor, Agamemnon, Chrysothemis, Iphianassa.
Say: lay-OM-uh-don
Priam's father, dead before the poem, and its standing example of a man who cheats gods. Poseidon tells the story twice: he and Apollo served him a whole year at a stated wage — Poseidon building the city wall, Apollo herding cattle on Ida — and at the term he robbed them by force and threatened to bind them and sell them overseas and cut off their ears (21.441–457, cf. 7.452–453). He also refused Heracles the horses promised for a service, and Heracles sacked Ilion for it (5.640–651). His horses remain the standard of excellence: Nestor tells Antilochus no man will pass him, not driving Arion nor "the horses of Laomedon, best of the breed reared here" (23.348).
Kin: son of Ilus; father of Priam, Tithonus, Lampus, Clytius, Hicetaon and Bucolion.
Refs: 3.250, 5.269, 5.640, 5.649, 7.453, 20.236, 21.444, 21.452, 23.348.
Books 3, 5–7, 15, 20–21, 23.
See also: Priam, Poseidon, Apollo, Heracles, Ilus, Lampus, Tros.
Say: lay-OTH-oh-ee
One of Priam's wives, daughter of Altes lord of the Lelegians, and mother of Lycaon and Polydorus — the two sons Achilles kills within a book of each other. Lycaon names her as he supplicates: "to a short life my mother bore me — Laothoe, daughter of the old man Altes" (21.84–89). Priam, watching from the wall, counts the same two as missing and says that if they are dead it is grief to his heart and their mother's, "a queen among women" (22.46–53).
Kin: daughter of Altes; wife of Priam; mother of Lycaon and Polydorus.
Say: LEM-nos
The island Hephaestus fell on when Zeus flung him from the threshold of heaven, where the Sintian men took him up (1.593); Philoctetes lies there abandoned with his snake-bite while his ships fight at Troy (2.722); and it is "the city of godlike Thoas" that Hera passes through on her way to find Sleep (14.230). It is also the poem's slave-market: Achilles ships Lycaon there and sells him, and the son of Jason pays the price (21.40–41) — a sale Lycaon and Achilles both throw back at each other in Book 21, and one Priam expects for his other sons in Book 24.
Refs: 1.593, 2.722, 8.230, 14.230, 14.281, 21.40, 21.58, 21.79, 24.753.
Books 1–2, 7–8, 14, 21, 24.
See also: Hephaestus, Philoctetes, Thoas, Lycaon, Euneus, Imbros.
Say: lee-ON-tyoos
One of the two Lapith captains, always paired with Polypoetes: they lead forty ships in the Catalogue and stand before the gate in Book 12 "like high-crowned oaks in the mountains that abide the wind and rain through all their days," refusing to be driven inside the wall. There he spears Hippomachus at the war-belt and then goes at the rest with the sword. In Book 23 he throws the lump of pig-iron second and loses to Polypoetes.
Epithets: "scion of Ares" (ὄζος Ἄρηος, 2.745).
Kin: son of Coronus, Caeneus' son.
Refs: 2.745, 12.130, 12.188, 23.837, 23.841. Books 2, 12, 23.
See also: Polypoetes, Coronus, Caeneus, Lapiths.
Say: LEZ-bos
One of Achilles' conquests before the poem opens: the seven women skilled in blameless work whom Agamemnon offers in the embassy are the ones Achilles himself chose "when he himself took well-built Lesbos" (9.129–130 = 9.271–272), and the woman sleeping beside him at the end of Book 9 is Diomede, Phorbas's daughter, brought from there. Achilles names it again in Book 24 as the seaward bound of Priam's old prosperity, "the seat of Macar."
Say: LEE-toh
Mother of Apollo and Artemis by Zeus, named in the poem's ninth line as the parent of the god who sends the plague. She takes the Trojan side: she heals Aeneas with Artemis in Apollo's shrine on Pergamos (5.447), and in the theomachy she is matched against Hermes — who declines to fight her, telling her to boast among the gods that she overcame him, and leaves her to gather up her daughter's scattered bow and arrows (21.497–504). Zeus names her in his catalogue of loves at 14.327, and it is for matching herself against Leto that Niobe's twelve children are killed (24.607). Achilles' horse Xanthus calls Apollo "the best of the gods, whom lovely-haired Leto bore" (19.413).
Epithets: "lovely-haired" (ἠΰκομος, 1.36); "fair-cheeked" (καλλιπάρῃος, 24.607).
Kin: by Zeus, mother of Apollo and Artemis.
Refs: 1.9, 1.36, 5.447, 14.327, 16.849, 19.413, 20.40, 21.497, 24.607.
Books 1, 5, 14, 16, 19–21, 24.
Say: LEE-ih-tus
One of the five Boeotian leaders in the Catalogue, and the one of them the poem keeps using. He kills Phylacus in Book 6, is among the captains Poseidon rouses in Book 13, and in Book 17 Hector wounds him on the wrist at close quarters and stops his fighting for good: "he shrank back, glancing round, for his heart no longer hoped to hold a spear steady in hand and fight the Trojans."
Kin: son of Alectryon (17.602).
Refs: 2.494, 6.35, 13.91, 17.601, 17.605. Books 2, 6, 13, 17.
Say: LOK-ree-unz
The lesser Ajax's forty ships, from Cynus, Opoeis and the towns around the Boagrius, "who live across from holy Euboea." Book 13 makes them the poem's only distinct light infantry: they carry no bronze helmets, no shields and no ash spears, only bows and slings of twisted wool, so they will not stand in the close fight — they follow behind the armored line and shoot unseen, and it is their arrows that break the Trojan formations and rout them (13.712–722).
Refs: 2.527, 2.535, 13.686, 13.712. Books 2, 13.
See also: Ajax son of Oïleus, Opoeis, Euboea.
Say: ly-KAY-on
Two men. The chief one is Priam's son by Laothoe, whose supplication in Book 21 is the poem's most sustained refusal. Achilles had taken him once by night in his father's orchard cutting fig-shoots for chariot-rails, shipped him to Lemnos and sold him; ransomed by Eëtion of Imbros, he had been home eleven days when Achilles meets him again in the river. He grasps the knees with one hand and the spear with the other and pleads guest-right and the grain of Demeter; Achilles answers that Patroclus died and was a better man, and that death and strong fate stand over himself too, then cuts through his collarbone and slings him into the river to the fish. His corslet is what Paris arms in for the duel (3.333). The second Lycaon is Pandarus's father, of Zeleia, whose eleven new-built chariots stand under cloths at home while Pandarus fights on foot (5.193–197); "Lycaon's shining son" throughout Books 4 and 5 means Pandarus, not Priam's son.
Kin: Priam's son is son of Priam and Laothoe, brother of Polydorus; the other is father of Pandarus.
Killed by: Achilles (21.114–119).
Refs: 2.826, 3.333, 4.89, 5.95, 5.193, 20.81, 21.35, 21.71, 21.127, 22.46,
23.746. Books 2–5, 20–23.
See also: Pandarus, Priam, Laothoe, Polydorus, Achilles, Eëtion, Lemnos.
Say: LISH-uh or LIS-ee-uh
The homeland of Sarpedon and Glaucus, the farthest of Troy's allies — "from far Lycia, from the eddying Xanthus" (2.877). Sarpedon names it as what he has left: his wife, his little son, and great wealth (5.480–481). It is also where Bellerophon was sent with the folded tablet, and where the king gave him his daughter and the best of the land (6.168–195); and Glaucus's account of the estate on the banks of Xanthus is the ground of Sarpedon's argument about why kings must fight in front (12.310–321). Sleep and Death carry Sarpedon's body back to "the rich country of wide Lycia" for burial (16.683).
Refs: 2.877, 5.105, 5.479, 6.168, 6.172, 6.225, 12.312, 12.319, 16.437, 16.673,
16.683. Books 2, 5–6, 12, 16–17.
See also: Lycians, Sarpedon, Glaucus, Bellerophon, Hippolochus.
Say: LISH-unz
Troy's strongest allies, led by Sarpedon and Glaucus, and the only contingent the poem treats as a rival to the Trojans themselves. Hector's rallying-cry names them in their own clause — "Trojans and Lycians and Dardanians who fight at close quarters" (8.173) — and it is they who first break through the Achaean wall in Book 12. Sarpedon shames them into the assault ("Lycians, why do you slacken your rushing courage so?", 12.409) and again as he dies over his own body; when he is killed they panic and abandon it, and Glaucus rounds on Hector for it in Book 17, threatening that no Lycian will fight for Troy again.
Refs: 2.876, 4.197, 5.633, 5.676, 8.173, 12.317, 12.409, 16.421, 16.659, 17.146.
Books 2, 4–8, 10–17.
Say: ly-koh-MEE-deez
An Achaean captain of the second rank: one of the seven leaders of the night watch in Book 9, left with the lesser Ajax to hold the line while Telamonian Ajax goes along the wall (12.366), and one of the seven men Achilles sends to fetch Agamemnon's gifts in Book 19. His one killing comes in Book 17: when Aeneas spears his companion Leiocritus, he casts in pity and hits Apisaon in the liver below the midriff.
Kin: son of Creon.
Refs: 9.84, 12.366, 17.345, 17.346, 19.240. Books 9, 12, 17, 19.
See also: Creon, Ajax son of Oïleus, Leiocritus, Apisaon.
Say: ly-KUR-gus
Two men, both from stories told inside the poem. Diomedes cites the first as the warning against fighting gods: Dryas' son, who chased the nurses of raving Dionysus down Nysa beating them with an ox-goad, until Dionysus dived under the sea and Thetis took him in terror; the gods were angered, Zeus struck him blind, and he did not live long, "hated by all the immortal gods" (6.130–140). The second is the Arcadian of Nestor's Book 7 reminiscence, who killed Areithous the Club-man by craft in a narrow lane where the iron club was useless, and in old age passed the stripped armor to his aide Ereuthalion.
Kin: the first is son of Dryas.
Kills: the Arcadian kills Areithous (7.142–145).
Refs: 6.130, 6.135, 6.139, 7.142, 7.144, 7.148. Books 6–7.
See also: Dryas, Dionysus, Diomedes, Areithous, Ereuthalion, Nestor.
Say: lur-NES-us
The town Achilles sacked, taking Briseis out of it "with great toil" and killing Mynes and Epistrophus, the sons of Euenus (2.690–693). Achilles wishes in Book 19 that Artemis had killed the girl with an arrow "on the day I chose her from the sack of Lyrnessus." Aeneas names it too, in a different register: it was to Lyrnessus he fled when Achilles came down on the cattle off Ida and chased him, and Achilles wrecked the town behind him while Zeus saved the man (20.90–92, 20.191).
Say: muh-KAY-on
One of the army's two physicians, son of Asclepius, who leads thirty ships from Tricca with his brother Podaleirius. He is fetched by Talthybius to draw the arrow from Menelaus's war-belt and sprinkle the soothing drugs Chiron once gave his father (4.193–219). His own wounding turns the poem: Paris hits him in the right shoulder, Nestor drives him out of the fighting, Achilles sees the pair from his ship's stern and sends Patroclus to ask who the wounded man is — "and that was the beginning of his evil" (11.504–605). Patroclus finds him drinking Hecamede's posset in Nestor's hut and does not stay; Eurypylus later notes that of the two healers one lies wounded and the other is still on the plain (11.833).
Kin: son of Asclepius; brother of Podaleirius.
Refs: 2.732, 4.193, 4.200, 4.213, 11.506, 11.598, 11.651, 11.833, 14.3.
Books 2, 4, 11, 14.
See also: Asclepius, Podaleirius, Nestor, Patroclus, Menelaus, Eurypylus, Tricca.
Say: mee-OH-nee-uh
"Lovely Maeonia," in Asia Minor beside Phrygia, named three times and always in a pair with it. Helen taunts Aphrodite by asking whether she means to carry her off next to some fine city of Phrygia or Maeonia (3.401); the simile for Menelaus's wound has "some woman of Maeonia or Caria" staining ivory with crimson for a horse's cheek-piece (4.141); and Hector says Troy's heirlooms have been sold off into Phrygia and Maeonia since Zeus turned his wrath on the city (18.292).
Say: mee-OH-nee-unz
A Trojan-side contingent from under Tmolus, led by Mesthles and Antiphus, the two sons of Talaemenes, "whom the Gygaean lake bore" (2.864–866). Dolon places them in the night dispositions among the allies quartered toward Thymbre, as "men who fight from chariots" (10.431).
Say: muh-SIS-tyoos
Three men. The first belongs to the Theban generation: Talaus' son, father of Euryalus, and the man who went to Thebes for the burial of fallen Oedipus and beat all the sons of Cadmus at the games there (23.678–680) — a father's exploit of the kind Agamemnon uses to shame the sons. The second is Echius' son, a rescuer rather than a fighter: twice, in identical lines, he and Alastor stoop under a wounded Ajax or Hypsenor and carry him groaning to the ships (8.333 = 13.422). A third Mecisteus is killed by Polydamas in the rout at the ships (15.339).
Kin: the first is son of Talaus and father of Euryalus; the second is son of Echius.
Killed by: the third by Polydamas (15.339).
Refs: 2.566, 6.27, 8.333, 13.422, 15.339, 23.678. Books 2, 6, 8, 13, 15, 23.
See also: Euryalus, Talaus, Echius, Alastor, Polydamas, Oedipus.
Say: MEE-don
The lesser Ajax's bastard half-brother, whom Rhene bore to Oïleus; he commands Philoctetes' abandoned contingent in the Catalogue and the Phthians in Book 13. His biography is given twice in the same four lines: he lived in Phylace, far from his own country, having killed a kinsman of his stepmother Eriopis (13.694–697 = 15.333–336). The second telling is his obituary — Aeneas strips the life from him and Iasus together at 15.332. A Trojan-side Medon is named among the allied captains Hector rouses at 17.216.
Kin: son of Oïleus and Rhene; half-brother of Ajax son of Oïleus.
Killed by: Aeneas (15.332).
Refs: 2.727, 13.693, 13.694, 15.332, 15.333, 17.216. Books 2, 13, 15, 17.
See also: Ajax son of Oïleus, Oïleus, Philoctetes, Aeneas, Phylace, Podarces.
Say: MEE-jeez
Leader of the forty ships from Dulichium and the Echinae, son of the horseman Phyleus who had moved there in anger at his own father. He kills Antenor's bastard son Pedaeus in Book 5, and in Book 13 is named among the leaders of the Epeians. His long scene is Book 15: he kills Croesmus, and while he strips him Dolops son of Lampus drives a spear into his shield — the corslet Phyleus had brought home from Ephyra as a guest-gift saves him — and he shears the plume clean off Dolops's helmet before Menelaus comes to his rescue. He is one of the seven who fetch Agamemnon's gifts in Book 19.
Epithets: "the equal of Ares" (ἀτάλαντος Ἄρηϊ, 2.627).
Also called: Phyleus' son.
Kin: son of Phyleus.
Refs: 2.627, 5.69, 13.692, 15.302, 15.520, 15.535, 19.239. Books 2, 5, 13, 15, 19.
See also: Phyleus, Dolops, Pedaeus, Croesmus, Menelaus, Dulichium.
Say: mel-uh-NIP-us
Four men bear the name. The one the poem develops is Hicetaon's son, a cousin of Hector's: he had been herding cattle in Percote until the Danaan ships came, and then lived in Priam's house and was honored like his own children. Hector rebukes him over Dolops's body and he follows; Menelaus sets Antilochus on him, and Antilochus hits him in the chest by the nipple and springs on him like a hound on a hit fawn, only to be driven off by Hector (15.546–585). The others are a Trojan Teucer kills at 8.276, one of Patroclus's victims in the roll-call at 16.695, and an Achaean among the men Achilles sends for Agamemnon's gifts (19.240).
Kin: the Trojan is son of Hicetaon.
Killed by: Hicetaon's son by Antilochus (15.576–578).
Refs: 8.276, 15.547, 15.553, 15.576, 15.582, 16.695, 19.240. Books 8, 15, 16, 19.
See also: Hicetaon, Antilochus, Hector, Dolops, Menelaus, Teucer.
Say: mel-ee-AY-jur
Phoenix's exemplum in the embassy, and the poem's model for Achilles' own case. Oeneus' son, dead before the Catalogue is spoken (2.642), he killed the boar Artemis sent against Calydon and then, in anger at his mother Althaea's curses, withdrew from the fighting and lay beside his wife Cleopatra while the Curetes stormed the walls. Elders, priests, his father, his sisters and his mother all begged him and he refused the more; only when the towers were under bombardment and the city burning did his wife's plea move him, and he went out — and got none of the gifts he had been offered. Phoenix's point is the moral: come out while the gifts are still on the table.
Kin: son of Oeneus and Althaea; husband of Cleopatra.
Refs: 2.642, 9.543, 9.550, 9.553, 9.565, 9.590. Books 2, 9.
See also: Phoenix, Oeneus, Althaea, Cleopatra, Calydon, Curetes, Artemis.
Say: men-uh-LAY-us
Agamemnon's brother and Helen's husband, the man the war is nominally for, and the one Achaean whose motive is personal. He volunteers unbidden for the muster (2.408), takes the duel with Paris in Book 3 and all but wins it — the spear through the shield, the sword shattering on the helmet-ridge, the chin-strap strangling Paris until Aphrodite breaks it and carries the man off — and is then shot by Pandarus in the broken truce, the arrow steered by Athena into the buckles of his war-belt (4.127–140). The poem's word for him is restraint verging on softness: Agamemnon overrules his mercy to the suppliant Adrestus and does the killing himself (6.51–65), the army fears for him when he offers to fight Hector (7.104–109). His full measure comes in Book 17, where he stands over Patroclus's body, kills Euphorbus for it, and, when at last he must leave it to the Ajaxes, goes off to find Antilochus so someone can carry the news to Achilles. In Book 23 he charges Antilochus with fouling him in the chariot-race and then, satisfied by an apology, gives the mare back.
Epithets: "dear to Ares" (ἀρηΐφιλος, 3.21); "tawny-haired" (ξανθός, 3.284); "good at the war-cry" (βοὴν ἀγαθός, 2.408).
Also called: Atreus' son — but "Atreus' son" in the singular means Agamemnon unless the scene is Menelaus's; see `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Atreus; brother of Agamemnon; husband of Helen.
Kills: Peisander (13.601–642), Euphorbus (17.45–60), Podes (17.578–581).
Refs: 1.159, 2.408, 3.21, 3.339, 4.128, 6.37, 7.94, 13.601, 17.1, 17.60,
23.566 …and throughout. Books 1–8, 10–11, 13, 15–17, 23.
See also: Agamemnon, Helen, Paris, Atreus, Antilochus, Euphorbus, Patroclus, Ajax.
Say: muh-NES-thyoos
The Athenian leader, of Erechtheus' city, with fifty ships: "no man on the face of the earth was his equal at marshaling horses and shield-bearing men — Nestor alone rivaled him, for he was older" (2.553–555). The praise is not borne out in action. His scene is Book 12, where Sarpedon's Lycians come at his stretch of wall and he peers along it for help, unable to make himself heard over the din, until Thootes fetches Telamonian Ajax and Teucer to his tower. He and Stichius carry Amphimachus's body back in Book 13; his trusted companion Arcesilaus is killed by Hector at 15.331.
Also called: Peteos' son.
Kin: son of Peteos.
Refs: 2.552, 4.327, 12.331, 12.373, 13.195, 13.690, 15.331. Books 2, 4, 12, 13, 15.
See also: Peteos, Athenians, Ajax, Teucer, Sarpedon, Stichius.
Say: muh-NEE-tee-us
Patroclus' father, Actor's son, of Opoeis: he brought his son as a small boy to Peleus' house after a killing over a game of dice, and Peleus raised the two children together (23.85–90). He is alive in Phthia through the poem — Achilles asks whether Patroclus has news that he or Peleus has died (16.14) — but he never appears, and in nearly all of the name's 38 occurrences it is the patronymic "Menoetius' son" or "Menoetius's stout son," meaning Patroclus. Nestor quotes the charge he gave at parting: you are the elder, so advise Achilles well, he will listen (11.785–789). Achilles' reproach to himself in Book 18 is that he promised to bring the man's far-famed son back to Opoeis with his share of the spoils.
Kin: son of Actor; father of Patroclus.
Refs: 1.307, 9.202, 11.605, 11.765, 11.785, 16.14, 18.12, 18.325, 21.28, 23.85,
24.16 …and throughout. Books 1, 9, 11–12, 16–19, 21, 23–24.
See also: Patroclus, Achilles, Peleus, Actor, Opoeis, Nestor.
Say: muh-RY-oh-neez
Idomeneus's aide and second in command of the Cretans, and one of the poem's most consistently competent fighters. Their exchange outside the huts in Book 13 — he has come back for a spear, having shattered his on Deiphobus's shield, and Idomeneus offers him twenty Trojan spears taken from the men he has killed — is the poem's fullest picture of two veterans talking shop. He wounds Deiphobus in the arm, shoots Harpalion through the buttock into the bladder as he retreats, kills the priest Laogonus in Book 16 and trades taunts with Aeneas over a missed cast. He is Odysseus's armorer for the night raid, lending the boar's-tusk helmet whose four-generation provenance the poem tracks (10.260–271). In Book 23 he drives the slowest horses and finishes fourth, then wins the archery: Teucer, who did not vow to Apollo, cuts only the cord; Meriones snatches the bow, vows the hecatomb, and shoots the dove through under the wing high under the clouds.
Epithets: "the equal of Enyalius, slayer of men" (ἀτάλαντος Ἐνυαλίῳ, 2.651).
Kin: son of Molus.
Refs: 2.651, 10.260, 13.249, 13.528, 13.650, 16.603, 17.717, 23.528, 23.870.
Books 2, 4–5, 7–10, 13–17, 19, 23.
See also: Idomeneus, Molus, Cretans, Deiphobus, Teucer, Odysseus, Harpalion.
Say: MOH-lus
Meriones' father, named only in the patronymic and in the pedigree of the boar's-tusk helmet: Amphidamas of Cythera gave it to Molus as a guest-gift, and Molus gave it to his son Meriones to wear — the third of four hands it passes through before it is set on Odysseus's head for the night raid.
Kin: father of Meriones.
Refs: 10.269, 10.270, 13.249. Books 10, 13.
See also: Meriones, Amphidamas, Odysseus, Idomeneus.
Say: MYOO-lee-us
Three men, all killed. The first is the Epeian of Nestor's Book 11 reminiscence, Augeias' son-in-law, husband of his eldest daughter Agamede "who knew as many drugs as the wide earth grows" — the first man Nestor ever killed, and he took his whole-hoofed horses. The second is one of Patroclus's victims in the roll-call at 16.696. The third is a Trojan Achilles spears through the ear in Book 20, the bronze point passing out through the other ear.
Kin: the Epeian is son-in-law of Augeias and husband of Agamede.
Killed by: the Epeian by Nestor (11.742); the second by Patroclus (16.696); the third by Achilles (20.472–473).
Daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, singers in answer to Apollo's lyre at the gods' feast in Book 1. Their function in the poem is to know: the poet invokes them before the Catalogue because "you are goddesses, you are present, you know all things, while we hear only the report and know nothing" (2.484–486), and the same line opens the three later roll-calls (11.218, 14.508, 16.112). At 2.761 the singular Muse is asked who was best of the men and horses. Their one action is punitive: they met Thamyris the Thracian at Dorium, who had boasted he would win a singing contest against them, and maimed him — took away his wondrous song and made him forget his harping.
Kin: daughters of Zeus.
Refs: 1.604, 2.484, 2.491, 2.594, 2.598, 2.761, 11.218, 14.508, 16.112.
Books 1, 2, 11, 14, 16.
Say: my-SEE-nee
Agamemnon's city and the seat of his fleet — "the great fleet that followed you from Mycenae" (9.44) — and, in the formula, "Mycenae rich in gold" (7.180 = 11.46). Hera names it third of the cities dearest to her, with Argos and Sparta, and offers all three to be sacked whenever they grow hateful to Zeus, if Troy may fall (4.52–53). Tydeus came there once as a guest with Polyneices, raising troops for Thebes (4.376–377). Periphetes, the best man in the city, is Hector's one kill in the rout of Book 15.
Refs: 2.569, 4.52, 4.376, 7.180, 9.44, 11.46, 15.638. Books 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 15.
Say: MUR-mih-donz
Achilles' own contingent, fifty ships from Phthia and Hellas; the Catalogue notes that the same men "were called Myrmidons, and Hellenes, and Achaeans" (2.684), which makes the last a regional name here and not the whole host. They sit out the war with their leader — Agamemnon's insult is "go home and be king over your Myrmidons" (1.180) — until Book 16, when Achilles arms them for Patroclus. Their two similes there are the poem's harshest: wolves that have torn a stag, their muzzles red, going down to lap black water; and roadside wasps that boys have been provoking, who come out all at once. They mourn Patroclus, drive their chariots three times around the body, and build Achilles' hut in the description that opens the last scene of Book 24.
Refs: 1.180, 2.684, 9.185, 16.155, 16.200, 16.266, 18.355, 19.278, 23.6, 24.449.
Books 1–2, 7, 9, 11, 16, 18–19, 21, 23–24.
Say: MIZH-unz
Trojan-side allies, led in the Catalogue by Chromis and Ennomus the bird-reader, "but his birds did not save him from black doom" (2.858–860). Dolon puts them in the night dispositions with the Lycians and Phrygians, and Zeus turns his eyes from Troy in Book 13 to look on "the close-fighting Mysians" and the Mare-milkers. Ajax wounds their leader Hyrtius son of Gyrtius at 14.512. Their last appearance is as gift-givers: the strong-hoofed mules Priam yokes for the journey to Achilles were once a Mysian present to him (24.278).
Refs: 2.858, 10.430, 13.5, 14.512, 24.278. Books 2, 10, 13, 14, 24.
Say: NAS-teez
Captain, with his brother Amphimachus, of "the Carians of barbarous speech" from Miletus and the Maeander — "Nastes and Amphimachus, the shining children of Nomion." The Catalogue then says one of the two went to war decked in gold like a girl, "the fool: it did not ward off wretched destruction from him," and was broken in the river under Achilles, who carried off the gold; the text does not say which brother it was.
Kin: son of Nomion; brother of Amphimachus.
Refs: 2.867, 2.870, 2.871. Book 2.
See also: Amphimachus, Nomion, Carians, Achilles.
Say: NEE-lee-us
Nestor's father and king of Pylos, dead before the action: in nearly every one of its occurrences the name is a patronymic, and "Neleus' son" means Nestor. He appears in his own right only inside Nestor's Book 11 reminiscence, glad at heart when his young son drives Eleian plunder into Pylos, and afterward hiding the boy's horses and forbidding him to arm, "for he said I did not yet know the works of war." Twelve sons were born to him, Nestor says, and Nestor alone was left — the might of Heracles had killed the rest.
Kin: father of Nestor and eleven other sons.
Refs: 2.20, 10.87, 11.683, 11.692, 11.717, 15.378, 23.303, 23.514.
Books 2, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 23.
See also: Nestor, Pylos, Heracles, Antilochus.
Say: NEER-ee-idz
Thetis's sisters, the sea-nymphs who gather around her in the depths when she wails for Achilles at the opening of Book 18. The poem names thirty-three of them in a four-line catalogue (18.39–49) — Glauce, Thaleia, Cymodoce and the rest — and closes it "and the other Nereids who were in the depths of the sea." They fill the silver-shining cave, beat their breasts, and follow Thetis ashore; Thetis addresses them as "sister Nereids" and leads the lament.
Kin: daughters of the old man of the sea; sisters of Thetis.
Say: NES-tor
The aged king of Pylos, third-generation ruler who has outlived two generations of mortal men, and the counselor whose plans set the poem's machinery moving. He tries and fails to compose the quarrel in Book 1; he proposes the wall and ditch (7.325–343); he frames the embassy to Achilles and picks its members (9.162–172); he devises the night raid; and it is his suggestion at 11.794–803 — send Patroclus out in Achilles' armor — that Patroclus carries back and that kills him. His authority is verbal, not martial: he is rescued out of the fighting in Book 8, and at the funeral games Achilles gives him a prize outright because he will not compete, "the hard weight of age is on you now."
Epithets: "the Gerenian horseman Nestor" (Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ, 2.336); "the Gerenian, warden of the Achaeans" (Γερήνιος οὖρος Ἀχαιῶν, 8.80); "the clear-voiced speaker" (λιγὺς ἀγορητής, 1.248).
Also called: Neleus' son.
Kin: son of Neleus; father of Antilochus and Thrasymedes.
Refs: 1.247, 2.336, 4.293, 7.325, 8.80, 9.162, 10.18, 11.501 …and throughout.
Books 1–2, 4–11, 13–19, 23.
See also: Neleus, Antilochus, Thrasymedes, Patroclus, Pylos, Agamemnon.
Personified, and named once in a story Sleep tells Hera to explain why he will not put Zeus to sleep a second time. Hunted through the house by a furious Zeus and about to be flung from the sky into the sea, Sleep ran to Night for refuge, and Zeus checked himself: "he stood in awe of doing what swift Night would hate." The poem gives her no other action; the line is its shortest statement that some things are older than Zeus.
Epithets: "Night, subduer of gods and men" (Νὺξ δμήτειρα θεῶν καὶ ἀνδρῶν, 14.259).
Say: NY-oh-bee
Achilles' exemplum in the last book: he tells Priam that even Niobe remembered food, though twelve children died in her halls — six daughters and six sons, killed by Artemis and Apollo because she had matched herself against Leto, who bore only two. The dead lay nine days unburied, the people having been turned to stone by Zeus, and the gods buried them on the tenth; and Niobe, worn out with weeping, ate. She is now stone herself on Sipylus, brooding on the griefs the gods gave her. The story is the argument that persuades Priam to eat.
Kin: mother of six sons and six daughters.
Say: NY-ryoos
Leader of three ships from Syme, named three times over in three consecutive lines of the Catalogue — the poem's most conspicuous piece of anaphora — as "the most beautiful man who came under Ilion / of all the Danaans, after the blameless son of Peleus." The compliment is immediately withdrawn: "But he was a slight man, and few people followed him." He never appears again.
Kin: son of Aglaïa and lord Charopus.
The stream that encircles the world and the god of it. As geography it is where the sun and stars go down and Dawn rises out (8.485, 19.1), where Zeus goes feasting with the Ethiopians (1.423), and the outermost rim of the Shield of Achilles (18.607); the Bear alone "has no share in the baths of Ocean." As a person he is the father from whom, Achilles says, all rivers and seas and springs flow, and who nonetheless fears Zeus's thunderbolt (21.195–199); with Tethys he is "the begetting of the gods," and Hera's pretext for leaving Olympus is that she goes to reconcile their long estrangement.
Also called: Oceanus — the spelling the translation uses of the named god in Book 14; "Ocean" elsewhere for the encircling stream.
Kin: consort of Tethys; father of Eurynome (18.399) and, as the poem has it, of all waters.
Refs: 1.423, 8.485, 14.201, 14.246, 14.302, 18.607, 19.1, 21.195.
Books 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 14, 16, 18–21, 23.
Say: OH-dee-us
Two men. The first leads the Halizones with Epistrophus "from far away, from Alybe, where silver has its birthplace," and is the first man killed in the general fighting of Book 5: Agamemnon spears him in the back between the shoulders as he turns to run, and drives the point through his chest. The second is an Achaean herald, sent with Eurybates to accompany the embassy to Achilles.
Killed by: Agamemnon (5.38–42).
Refs: 2.856, 5.39, 9.170. Books 2, 5, 9.
See also: Agamemnon, Epistrophus, Eurybates, Halizones.
Say: oh-DIS-ee-us or oh-DISS-yoos
The Achaeans' tactician, and the man the poem sends whenever a thing must be managed rather than won by force. He turns the army back from the ships in Book 2 and beats Thersites out of the assembly; he escorts Chryseis home; he speaks first for the embassy in Book 9 and Nestor charges him "above all" to win Achilles over; he goes out with Diomedes on the night raid and brings back Rhesus' horses; and in Book 19 he holds Achilles to the army's need to eat before fighting. Antenor's account of him at Troy long before the war (3.203–224) is the poem's fullest portrait of a speaker: a man who stands with his eyes on the ground like a fool until the words come out of him like snowflakes in winter.
Epithets: "resourceful" (πολύμητις, 1.311); "of many devices" (πολυμήχανος, 2.173); "the equal of Zeus in counsel" (Διὶ μῆτιν ἀτάλαντος, 2.169); "sacker of cities" (πτολίπορθος, 2.278); "much-enduring brilliant Odysseus" (πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, 8.97); "of the many tales" (πολύαινος, 9.673); "hardy" (τλήμων, 10.231); "patient-hearted" (ταλασίφρων, 11.466); "of the subtle wiles" (ποικιλομήτης, 11.482).
Also called: Laertes' son.
Kin: son of Laertes; father of Telemachus (2.260); of Ithaca.
Refs: 1.311, 2.169, 2.244, 3.200, 3.216, 9.169, 10.243, 11.466 …and
throughout. Books 1–11, 14, 16, 19, 23.
See also: Diomedes, Athena, Thersites, Laertes, Nestor, Achilles, Ithaca.
Say: EE-nyoos
King of Calydon in the generation before the war, and the root of two of the poem's houses: Tydeus' father and so Diomedes' grandfather, and the father of Meleager. It was his failure to give Artemis a harvest-offering from his orchard slope — "he forgot, or he did not think of it: a great blindness of heart" — that loosed the Calydonian boar and set the whole Meleager story going; and it is Oeneus who begs his son at the threshold, one of the suppliants Meleager refuses. Glaucus and Diomedes discover their inherited guest-friendship through him: Oeneus once entertained Bellerophon twenty days and gave him a crimson war-belt.
Kin: son of Portheus, brother of Agrius and Melas (14.115–118); father of Tydeus and Meleager; grandfather of Diomedes.
Refs: 2.641, 5.813, 6.216, 6.219, 9.534, 9.543, 9.581, 14.117.
Books 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14.
See also: Tydeus, Diomedes, Meleager, Bellerophon, Glaucus, Calydon, Portheus.
Say: ee-noh-MAY-us
Two men, one on each side. The first is an Achaean, named in the roll-call of those Hector and Ares strip of their arms in Book 5, between Trechus the Aetolian and Helenus son of Oenops. The second is a Trojan, one of the captains who storm the wall around Asius in Book 12; Idomeneus kills him in Book 13 with a spear mid-belly that bursts the corslet-plate and spills his bowels, and cannot strip the armor for the missiles flying.
Killed by: the Achaean by Hector or Ares (5.706); the Trojan by Idomeneus (13.506–510).
Say: oh-LIM-pus
The mountain where the gods live, and by extension the divine household itself — the place Thetis goes to petition, Hera and Athena start from, and Iris is sent down from. Its gates are kept by the Seasons, who roll the cloud aside (5.749); Zeus sits apart from the others on its topmost peak; and when he bows his head he shakes the whole of it (1.530). The poem's assemblies of the gods are held there, and it is measured against the world below in Zeus's boast that he could hang earth and sea from a horn of Olympus with all the gods pulling (8.25).
Epithets: "snow-capped" (ἀγάννιφος, 1.420); "shining" (αἰγλήεις, 1.532).
Also called: Olympian, of the gods who dwell there.
Refs: 1.18, 1.420, 1.499, 1.530, 5.750, 8.3, 8.25, 20.5 …and throughout.
Books 1–8, 10–16, 18–22, 24.
Say: oh-POH-is
A town in Locris, named in the Catalogue among the places the Locrians held, and otherwise the home of Menoetius and Patroclus. Patroclus was brought out of it as a small boy, exiled for killing Amphidamas' son in a quarrel over dice, and taken into Peleus' house; and Achilles admits at 18.324–327 that he promised Menoetius he would bring the son back to Opoeis with his share of the spoils.
Refs: 2.531, 18.326, 23.86. Books 2, 18, 23.
See also: Patroclus, Menoetius, Locrians, Amphidamas, Peleus.
Say: oh-RES-teez
Three men. Agamemnon's son, "my late-born boy, reared in high plenty," is named only as the measure of the honor promised Achilles in the embassy offer — a son-in-law would be honored his equal — and the phrase is repeated verbatim when Odysseus relays it. Of the other two, one is an Achaean stripped of his arms by Hector and Ares in Book 5, "Orestes, driver of horses"; the other a Trojan, in Asius' storming-party at the wall and killed by Leonteus at 12.193.
Kin: Agamemnon's Orestes is his only son, brother of Chrysothemis, Laodice and Iphianassa.
Killed by: the Trojan by Leonteus (12.193).
Say: oh-RY-un
The constellation. Hephaestus sets "the strength of Orion" on the Shield among the Pleiades, the Hyades and the Bear — the Bear "who turns in her own place, keeping watch on Orion, / and alone has no share in the baths of Ocean." His name returns in Book 22 for the star Achilles is compared to as Priam watches him cross the plain: "the star men call by name the Dog of Orion," brightest of all, and an evil sign that brings fever on wretched mortals.
Refs: 18.486, 18.488, 22.29. Books 18, 22.
See also: Achilles, Ocean, Hephaestus.
Say: oth-ry-OH-nyoos
A newcomer to Troy from Cabesus, "lately come, chasing the report of the war," who asked Priam for Cassandra without bride-gifts and promised in exchange to drive the Achaeans out of the land; Priam bowed his head to it, and Othryoneus fought trusting the promise. Idomeneus spears him in mid-stride through the belly and then jeers over the corpse, offering him instead the loveliest of Agamemnon's daughters — "you will find we are not hard men over bride-terms" — while dragging him off by the foot. Deiphobus names him among the lost Trojan leaders at 13.772.
Killed by: Idomeneus (13.370–383).
Say: oh-TRIN-tyoos
Father of Iphition, the first man Achilles kills on his return to the fighting. He is a "sacker of cities" whose estate lay by the Gygaean lake in the rich district of Hyde, under snowy Tmolus, and a naiad nymph bore him the son. He does not appear himself; Achilles names him twice standing over the split skull — "Lie there, son of Otrynteus — most terrifying of all men!"
Kin: father of Iphition, by a naiad nymph.
Refs: 20.383, 20.384, 20.389. Book 20.
See also: Iphition, Achilles, Hyde.
Say: oh-EYE-lyoos
Two men. The first is the father of the lesser Ajax, whose name is the standing way of distinguishing him from Telamon's son — "swift Ajax, Oïleus' son" — and also the father, by Rhene, of the bastard Medon, who lives in exile at Phylace for killing a kinsman of his stepmother Eriopis. He is called "sacker of cities" at 2.728 and never appears in the action. The second is a Trojan charioteer, "Oïleus, lasher of horses," who leaps down from his car to face Agamemnon and is killed at once (11.93).
Kin: father of Ajax son of Oïleus and, by Rhene, of Medon; husband of Eriopis.
Killed by: the charioteer by Agamemnon (11.93–95).
Refs: 2.527, 2.727, 2.728, 11.93, 13.694, 13.712, 14.442, 15.333, 23.754.
Books 2, 11–17, 23.
See also: Ajax son of Oïleus, Medon, Ajax, Locrians, Agamemnon.
Say: pee-OH-nee-unz
Trojan-side allies from Amydon on the Axius, "Axius, whose water spreads fairest over the earth," led at first by Pyraechmes and later by Asteropaeus. Patroclus kills Pyraechmes and panics them; and in Book 21 Achilles, having killed Asteropaeus, hunts them down the river — Thersilochus, Mydon, Astypylus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Aenius, Ophelestes — and would have killed more had the river not called out to him in anger.
Epithets: "the Paeonians of the curved bows" (2.848); "the chariot-fighting Paeonians" (ἱπποκορυσταί, 21.205).
Kin: led by Pyraechmes, then by Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon.
Refs: 2.848, 10.428, 16.287, 16.291, 21.205, 21.211. Books 2, 10, 16, 21.
See also: Pyraechmes, Asteropaeus, Axius, Pelegon, Amydon.
Say: pay-EE-on
The gods' physician, kept distinct from Apollo. He appears twice, in the same two lines both times: he "sprinkled pain-killing drugs upon the wound / and healed him: for he was not of mortal make" — first of Hades, shot at Pylos by Heracles, and then of Ares, when Zeus has finished telling him he is the most hateful of the gods and orders him healed.
Say: PAN-duh-rus
The Lycian archer from Zeleia "to whom Apollo himself gave the bow," and the man whose shot breaks the truce. Athena, in the likeness of Laodocus, persuades him to shoot Menelaus during the sworn oath; the arrow is deflected by Athena herself and only grazes, but the oath is broken and the war resumes. In Book 5 Aeneas finds him and they charge Diomedes together: his spear-cast fails and Diomedes' answering throw, steered by Athena, goes in beside the nose and cuts his tongue off at the root.
Also called: Lycaon's son — this Lycaon is his father, not Priam's son of the same name; see `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Lycaon.
Killed by: Diomedes (5.290–296).
Refs: 2.827, 4.88, 5.168, 5.171, 5.246, 5.795. Books 2, 4, 5.
See also: Diomedes, Aeneas, Athena, Menelaus, Lycaon, Zeleia.
Rout personified, and one of the attendants of Ares — "Panic, his dear son, strong and fearless, / who sends even the patient-hearted warrior running" (13.299). He is paired with Terror in the pair's first appearance driving the armies on (4.440), is figured with Terror around the Gorgon's head on Agamemnon's shield (11.37), and is ordered with Terror to yoke Ares' horses when Ares means to avenge Ascalaphus (15.119). The same English also renders Φύζα at 9.2, where the Achaeans are held by "unearthly Panic, the companion of icy Rout."
Kin: son of Ares.
Refs: 4.440, 9.2, 11.37, 13.299, 15.119. Books 4, 9, 11, 13, 15.
See also: Terror, Ares, Strife, Ascalaphus.
Say: PAN-thoh-us
A Trojan elder, one of the old men sitting with Priam on the wall in Book 3, and in the rest of the poem a patronymic: "Panthous' son" is Polydamas in most places, Euphorbus in Book 17, and Hyperenor at 17.24. Menelaus, having killed Euphorbus, notes that he has now killed three of the line and that Panthous and his wife Phrontis got the arms of none of them; the family is called "the pride of the sons of Panthous with their good ash spears."
Kin: husband of Phrontis; father of Polydamas, Euphorbus and Hyperenor.
Refs: 3.146, 14.450, 16.808, 17.9, 17.23, 17.40, 17.59, 18.250.
Books 3, 13–18.
See also: Polydamas, Euphorbus, Hyperenor, Menelaus, Priam, Phrontis.
Say: paf-luh-GOH-nee-unz
Trojan-side allies under Pylaemenes "of the shaggy heart," from the Eneti "where the breed of wild mules is born," holding Cytorus, Sesamus, Cromna, Aegialus and the heights of Erythini around the river Parthenius. In Book 13 they carry the body of Harpalion off the field toward Ilion, his father walking among them in tears with no blood-price for his son; Paris, who had been the dead man's guest-friend among them, shoots in anger for him.
Kin: led by Pylaemenes.
Refs: 2.851, 13.656, 13.661. Books 2, 13.
See also: Pylaemenes, Harpalion, Paris.
Priam's son, whose taking of Helen is the cause of the war and who is the least admired man in the poem. He challenges the Achaean champions in Book 3, loses his nerve when Menelaus comes forward, is shamed back by Hector, and is snatched out of the losing duel by Aphrodite and set down in his scented chamber. He refuses in assembly to give Helen back, offering only the goods (7.362–364). His weapon is the bow: he shoots Diomedes through the foot and laughs, cripples Machaon, kills Euchenor, and hits Nestor's horse — and it is Paris, with Apollo, whom the dying Hector names as Achilles' killer to come. The translation keeps both of his names as the Greek gives them, per the Book 3 policy.
Epithets: "godlike" (θεοειδής, 3.16); "brilliant" (δῖος, 7.355); recurrently "the husband of lovely-haired Helen" (3.329, 11.369). Hector's "Paris — evil Paris" renders Δύσπαρι (3.39).
Also called: Alexandros — one man, both names in use; Priam's son.
Kin: son of Priam and Hecuba; brother of Hector, Helenus, Deiphobus and the rest; husband of Helen.
Refs: 3.16, 3.39, 3.380, 6.321, 6.503, 7.362, 11.369, 22.359 …and throughout.
Books 3–8, 11–13, 15, 22, 24.
See also: Helen, Hector, Menelaus, Aphrodite, Priam, Achilles.
Say: puh-TROH-klus
Achilles' companion, and the hinge of the poem. He is silent through the first half — leading Briseis out of the hut at Achilles' order (1.345), receiving the embassy, sent to Nestor to ask after the wounded Machaon — and it is Nestor's plan that he take Achilles' armor and go out himself that he brings back in tears. Achilles grants it with a limit; Patroclus exceeds it, drives the Trojans from the ships, kills Sarpedon, and charges the wall four times. Apollo strikes him from behind, knocks off helmet and corslet, Euphorbus spears him between the shoulders, and Hector finishes him — his dying words the prophecy of Hector's own death. His body is fought over through Book 17, his ghost comes to Achilles for burial in Book 23, and his bones are to lie in one jar with Achilles'.
Epithets: "Zeus-sprung" (διογενής, 1.337).
Also called: Menoetius' son.
Kin: son of Menoetius of Opoeis, an exile in Peleus' house from boyhood.
Kills: Sarpedon (16.480–491), Pyraechmes, and many others.
Killed by: Hector, with Apollo and Euphorbus (16.783–822).
Refs: 1.337, 11.602, 16.2, 16.49, 16.480, 16.787, 16.822, 23.65 …and
throughout. Books 1, 8, 9, 11, 15–19, 21–24.
See also: Achilles, Menoetius, Hector, Sarpedon, Euphorbus, Nestor, Opoeis, Automedon.
Say: PED-uh-sus
Two towns and, in Book 16, a horse. The Trojan-side Pedasus is "steep Pedasus on the Satnioeis," the town of Altes lord of the Lelegians, Laothoe's father; Agamemnon kills Elatus there in Book 6, and Aeneas recalls Achilles sacking it with Lyrnessus. A second Pedasus, "Pedasus of the vines," is one of the seven citadels near sandy Pylos that Agamemnon offers Achilles. The horse Pedasus is Achilles' trace-horse, taken when he sacked Eëtion's city, "a horse who, mortal as he was, kept pace with immortal horses"; Sarpedon's cast kills him. A man of the name, twin of Aesepus, is killed by Euryalus at 6.21.
Refs: 6.21, 6.35, 9.152, 9.294, 16.152, 16.467, 20.92, 21.87.
Books 6, 9, 16, 20, 21.
See also: Altes, Laothoe, Satnioeis, Achilles, Xanthus (horse), Sarpedon.
Say: py-RITH-oh-us
The Lapith king of the back-story, first of the giant men of Nestor's Book 1 reminiscence — "strongest they grew of all men reared on earth" — who fought and destroyed the beast-men of the mountains. Zeus names him in Book 14 among his own sons by mortal women, born of Ixion's wife. He does not come to Troy: in the Catalogue and at the wall the name marks his son Polypoetes, born to him by Hippodameia on the day he drove the shaggy beast-men out of Pelion.
Kin: son of Zeus by Ixion's wife; father of Polypoetes by Hippodameia.
Refs: 1.263, 2.741, 2.742, 12.129, 12.182, 14.318. Books 1, 2, 12, 14.
See also: Polypoetes, Nestor, Lapiths, Zeus, Leonteus.
Say: PY-roh-os
Leader of the Thracians with Acamas in the Catalogue, son of Imbrasus, come from Aenus. In the closing exchange of Book 4 he kills Diores with a jagged stone that crushes both tendons and the bones of his shin, then runs up and spears him beside the navel; and as he springs back Thoas the Aetolian catches him in the chest above the nipple, wrenches the spear out, and finishes him with the sword. The Thracians save the body; the two dead men are left stretched beside each other. His son Rhigmus is killed by Achilles at 20.485, where the printed text spells the father "Peiros."
Kin: son of Imbrasus; father of Rhigmus.
Kills: Diores (4.517–526). Killed by: Thoas (4.527–531).
Say: py-SAN-der
Three men. The first is a son of Antimachus — the man who took Paris' gold and argued against giving Helen back — caught with his brother Hippolochus in a bolting chariot; the two beg Agamemnon for ransom, and he kills them both for their father's counsel, spearing Peisander in the chest. The second is a Trojan who comes at Menelaus in Book 13, breaks his spear on the shield, pulls a bronze axe from under it, and is struck at the base of the nose so that his eyeballs drop in the dust at his feet. The third is a Myrmidon captain, Maemalus' son, best of them all with the spear after Patroclus.
Kin: the first is Antimachus' son and Hippolochus' brother; the Myrmidon is Maemalus' son.
Killed by: Agamemnon (11.143–144); the Trojan by Menelaus (13.615–618).
Refs: 11.122, 11.143, 13.601, 13.606, 13.611, 13.614, 16.193.
Books 11, 13, 16.
See also: Antimachus, Hippolochus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Patroclus.
Say: puh-LAZ-jee-unz
Trojan-side allies, "the tribes of the Pelasgian spearmen" from deep-soiled Larisa, led in the Catalogue by Hippothous and Pylaeus, the two sons of Lethus son of Teutamus; Dolon places them among the allies camped toward the sea. In Book 17 Hippothous is killed dragging Patroclus' body by the foot. The name is also used adjectivally of things not this people: "Pelasgian Argos" is Achilles' Thessalian country (2.681), and Achilles prays to "Zeus — lord — Dodonaean — Pelasgian" (16.233).
Kin: led by Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus.
Refs: 2.681, 2.840, 2.843, 10.429, 16.233, 17.288. Books 2, 10, 16, 17.
See also: Hippothous, Lethus, Larisa, Dodona, Dolon.
Say: PEL-uh-gon
Father of Asteropaeus, and the link between the Paeonian contingent and the river Axius: the river begot him on Periboea, eldest daughter of Acessamenus. He does not appear; Asteropaeus gives the descent himself when Achilles asks who he is, in the exchange before the duel in the river — "he fathered Pelegon, famed with the spear; and of Pelegon / they say I was born."
Kin: son of the river Axius and Periboea; father of Asteropaeus.
Refs: 21.141, 21.152, 21.159. Book 21.
See also: Asteropaeus, Axius, Paeonians, Achilles, Periboea.
Say: PEE-lee-us
Achilles' father, king of the Myrmidons, and in the great majority of its 146 occurrences a patronymic: "Peleus' son" is Achilles, and the name's work in the poem is to keep saying whose son he is, beginning with the first line. Peleus himself stays in Phthia. He is present as a voice in other men's memories — Odysseus and Phoenix and Nestor all quote his parting charge, "always to be the best, and to hold his head above all others" (11.784) — and as an argument: he took Patroclus in as an exiled boy and raised him; his marriage to Thetis is the gift the gods gave and the wound they left; and Achilles' surrender of Hector's body is won when Priam makes him think of his own father, old and alone with one son doomed out of season.
Epithets: "the old horseman Peleus" (7.125).
Also called: Aeacus' son — the fixed rendering of the bare patronymic for Peleus, as "Aeacus' grandson" is Achilles; see `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Aeacus; husband of Thetis; father of Achilles; foster-father of Patroclus.
Refs: 1.1, 9.252, 9.438, 11.769, 11.783, 16.33, 18.84, 24.534 …and
throughout. Books 1, 2, 7–11, 13, 15–24.
See also: Achilles, Thetis, Aeacus, Patroclus, Phoenix, Phthia, Priam.
Say: PEE-lee-on
The Thessalian mountain, home country of the Magnetes and the place from which Peirithous drove the beast-men to the Aethices. Its use in the poem is chiefly adjectival: "the Pelian ash that Chiron gave his dear father / from the peak of Pelion, to be death for heroes" is Achilles' spear, the one weapon Patroclus cannot take because no other Achaean can swing it. Achilles takes it out of its case in Book 19 and carries it against Aeneas, Asteropaeus and Hector.
Refs: 2.744, 2.757, 16.143, 16.144, 19.390, 19.391, 20.277, 21.162, 22.133.
Books 2, 16, 19–22.
See also: Achilles, Chiron, Peleus, Peirithous, Peneius, Magnetes.
Say: puh-NEE-us
A Thessalian river of the Catalogue, named for the marvel at its confluence: the Titaressus pours its water into Peneius but does not mingle with his silver eddies, and "flows along on top of him like oil," being a branch broken off the water of Styx, the dread oath. The Magnetes under Prothoos dwell around Peneius and Pelion.
Refs: 2.752, 2.753, 2.757. Book 2.
See also: Titaressus, Styx, Pelion, Prothoos, Magnetes.
Say: puh-NEL-ee-os
One of the five Boeotian leaders of the Catalogue, and a steady presence in the fighting at the ships. His killing of Ilioneus in Book 14 is the poem's most gruesome vaunt: he spears him through the eye-socket and out the nape, hews the head off with the sword, and holds it up on the spear-point "like a poppy-head" to show the Trojans. He kills Lycon in Book 16 with a sword-stroke to the neck that leaves the head hanging by skin, and in Book 17 he is wounded in the shoulder by Polydamas' spear and leads the rout.
Kills: Ilioneus (14.493–500); Lycon (16.339–341).
Refs: 2.494, 13.92, 14.487, 14.489, 14.496, 16.335, 16.339, 17.597.
Books 2, 13, 14, 16, 17.
Say: pur-KOH-tee
A town on the Asian side of the Hellespont, on the Trojan side of the war. Merops of Percote, "who beyond all men knew the seer's art," foresaw the deaths of his sons Adrestus and Amphius and could not keep them from the war; the poem repeats his lines verbatim when Diomedes and Odysseus kill the pair at 11.329–332. Asius son of Hyrtacus left his ships there and came the rest of the way to Ilion on foot; Odysseus kills Pidytes of Percote in Book 6; and Melanippus herded cattle there until the Achaean ships came.
Refs: 2.831, 2.835, 6.30, 11.229, 11.329, 15.548. Books 2, 6, 11, 15.
See also: Merops, Adrestus, Amphius, Asius, Melanippus, Hellespont.
Say: PUR-guh-mos
Troy's citadel, the high ground inside the city, and Apollo's station. He looks down from it to shout the Trojans back into the fight at 4.508, sets the wounded Aeneas down "in holy Pergamos, where his own temple stood" to be healed by Leto and Artemis while a phantom of him fights on below, and sits on its height to send Ares after Diomedes. Paris comes down "from the height of Pergamos, blazing in his armor like the beaming sun" to rejoin Hector at 6.513.
Say: PER-ih-fas
Two men. The first is "gigantic Periphas, far the best of the Aetolians, Ochesius' shining son," killed by Ares in Book 5; Ares is stripping the body when he sees Diomedes coming and leaves it lying where it fell. The second is a Trojan herald, Epytus' son, who had grown grey in his heraldry at his old father's side, "his heart a well of kindly counsel"; Apollo takes his shape to stir Aeneas at 17.324.
Kin: the Aetolian is Ochesius' son; the herald is Epytus' son.
Killed by: the Aetolian by Ares (5.842–848).
Say: PEE-tee-os
Father of Menestheus, the Athenian leader, and himself Zeus-nurtured. He does not appear: in every occurrence the name is a patronymic marking his son — in the Catalogue, in Agamemnon's tour of the ranks where Menestheus is rebuked for hanging back, at the wall where "Menestheus, Peteos' son, shuddered to see them" and sent Thootes for help, and in the muster of the Athenians in Book 13.
Kin: father of Menestheus.
Refs: 2.552, 4.327, 4.338, 12.331, 12.355, 13.690. Books 2, 4, 12, 13.
See also: Menestheus, Athenians.
Say: FEE-nops
The name of more than one Trojan father, and each time the poem uses it to weigh a death. Xanthus and Thoon, "both late-born and beloved," are killed together by Diomedes, leaving their father "worn with hard age" no other son, so that kinsmen of the widowed house divide the estate; Phorcys, Phaenops' son, is killed by Telamonian Ajax over Hippothous' body. A third Phaenops is Asius' son of Abydos, Hector's dearest guest-friend, whose likeness Apollo borrows at 17.583 to shame Hector for flinching from Menelaus.
Kin: father of Xanthus and Thoon (5.152); father of Phorcys (17.312); the guest-friend is Asius' son.
Refs: 5.152, 17.312, 17.583. Books 5, 17.
See also: Xanthus (horse), Phorcys, Asius, Abydos, Apollo, Hector.
Say: FOH-shunz
A Catalogue contingent of forty ships from Cyparissus, Pytho, Crisa, Daulis, Panopeus and the towns along the Cephisus, led by Schedius and Epistrophus, sons of Iphitus; they arm on the left, next to the Boeotians. Both their named casualties are called captains of the Phocians: Schedius son of Perimedes, killed by Hector at the ships, and Schedius son of Iphitus, "far the best of the Phocians," killed by Hector's cast in Book 17.
Kin: led by Schedius and Epistrophus, Iphitus' sons.
Refs: 2.517, 15.516, 17.307. Books 2, 15, 17.
See also: Schedius, Epistrophus, Panopeus, Boeotians, Achaeans.
Say: FEE-niks
Achilles' old tutor, sent from Phthia by Peleus with the boy to teach him "to be a speaker of words, and a doer of deeds"; he had fled his own father Amyntor's house and been received by Peleus, who made him lord of the Dolopes at the edge of Phthia. Agamemnon names him first of the embassy, and his is its longest and central speech — the story of his own exile, the allegory of the Prayers limping after Blindness, and the tale of Meleager. Achilles refuses the honor but keeps him to sleep in the hut and sail home with him. Later he leads the fourth Myrmidon company, is among those who try to comfort Achilles in Book 19, and serves as umpire at the turn-post in the chariot race. Athena takes his likeness to rouse Menelaus over Patroclus' body (17.555).
Kin: son of Amyntor; foster-father of Achilles; called "his own father's follower," i.e. Peleus' (23.360). The "far-famed Phoenix" whose daughter Zeus loved (14.321) is a different figure, the Phoenician eponym.
Refs: 9.168, 9.432, 9.607, 9.621, 16.196, 17.555, 19.311, 23.360. Books 9,
14, 16, 17, 19, 23.
See also: Achilles, Peleus, Phthia, Meleager, Dolopes, Menelaus.
Say: FRIJ-ee-uh
A land inland from Troy, allied to it and tied to Priam's house. Priam recalls going there as an ally in his youth — "Phrygia of the vines," the hosts of Otreus and Mygdon camped along the Sangarius, on the day the Amazons came — and Hecuba's brother Asius, Dymas' son, lives there on the streams of Sangarius. Paris offers Helen no woman as lovely "in the cities of Phrygia or lovely Maeonia"; Hector says Troy's heirlooms have been sold off to Phrygia and Maeonia; and Achilles counts Phrygia inland among the bounds of Priam's old prosperity.
Refs: 3.184, 3.401, 16.719, 18.291, 24.545. Books 3, 16, 18, 24.
See also: Phrygians, Sangarius, Priam, Hecuba, Maeonia, Amazons.
Say: FTHY-uh or THY-uh
Achilles' homeland in Thessaly, Peleus' kingdom and the Myrmidons' country, called "deep-soiled Phthia, feeder of men" and "mother of flocks." It is the poem's standing image of the alternative to Troy: Achilles threatens in Book 1 to sail home to it, and in Book 9 sets out the choice plainly — three days' sail and a long life without fame, or death here with imperishable fame. Phoenix and Patroclus were both received there by Peleus, and both the embassy and the funeral looking-back turn on the day the two of them were sent out of Phthia to Agamemnon.
Refs: 1.155, 1.169, 2.683, 9.363, 9.439, 9.479, 11.766, 19.330. Books 1, 2,
9, 11, 16, 19.
See also: Achilles, Peleus, Myrmidons, Hellas, Phoenix, Patroclus, Phthians.
Say: FTHY-unz or THY-unz
Men of Phthia, named only in the Book 13 muster of the contingents holding Hector off the ships, where they stand beside the Boeotians with the Ionians, Locrians and Epeians. Their leaders there are not Achilles' Myrmidons but Medon — Oïleus' bastard son, exiled to Phylace for killing a kinsman of his stepmother Eriopis — and Podarces son of Iphiclus.
Kin: led at 13.693 by Medon and Podarces.
Say: FY-lyoos
Father of Meges, "the horseman Phyleus dear to Zeus," who had once quarreled with his own father and moved away to Dulichium. He does not come to Troy: the name is almost always a patronymic for Meges, in the Catalogue, in the night muster, in the Epeian ranks at 13.692, and through the fighting at the ships in Book 15, where the corslet Phyleus brought home from Ephyra by the river Selleïs — a guest-gift from Euphetes — turns Dolops' spear and keeps destruction from his son's flesh. A Phyleus is also named among the men Nestor beat with the spear at Amarynceus' funeral games (23.637).
Kin: father of Meges. The poem does not name Phyleus's own father, only that he quarreled with him and left for Dulichium.
Refs: 2.628, 5.72, 10.110, 13.692, 15.519, 15.530, 16.313, 19.239, 23.637.
Books 2, 5, 10, 13, 15, 16, 19, 23.
See also: Meges, Dulichium, Epeians, Dolops, Ephyra, Nestor.
Say: PLAY-kus
A wooded mountain in the Troad, under which stood Thebe, Eëtion's city. The name comes only in the formula for Andromache's origin — "Eëtion, who lived under wooded Placus, / in Thebe-under-Placus, lord over the Cilician men" — used at their meeting at the Scaean Gates, again when she names her mother "queen under wooded Placus," and a third time in her lament over Hector, where the two of them are born to one fate, "you in Troy, in the house of Priam, / and I in Thebe, under wooded Placus."
Refs: 6.396, 6.397, 6.425, 22.479. Books 6, 22.
See also: Thebe, Eëtion, Andromache, Cilicians.
A constellation, named once: among the stars Hephaestus works into the Shield of Achilles, with the Hyades, the strength of Orion, and the Bear.
Refs: 18.486. Book 18.
See also: Orion, Hephaestus, Achilles.
Say: PLOOR-on
An Aetolian city, named with Olenus and Pylene in the Catalogue of Thoas' contingent and twice paired with "steep Calydon" — in Poseidon's disguise as Thoas, who "in all Pleuron and steep Calydon ruled the Aetolians, honored like a god," and in Diomedes' genealogy, where Portheus' three sons Agrius, Melas and Oeneus lived there. Nestor names Ancaeus of Pleuron as the wrestler he beat at Amarynceus' funeral games.
Refs: 2.639, 13.217, 14.116, 23.635. Books 2, 13, 14, 23.
See also: Aetolians, Calydon, Thoas, Oeneus, Ancaeus, Nestor.
Say: poh-DAR-gus
Two horses of the name, and the poem keeps them apart. The first is one of Hector's four, called by name with Xanthus, Aethon and Lampus when he tells them to pay him back for the honey-hearted wheat Andromache set before them. The second is Menelaus' own trace-horse in the chariot race at Patroclus' funeral, yoked beside Aethe, Agamemnon's mare.
Refs: 8.185, 23.295. Books 8, 23.
See also: Hector, Menelaus, Aethe, Xanthus (horse), Andromache.
Say: poh-LY-teez
A son of Priam, and the Trojan lookout: he sat "on the very top of the tomb of old Aesyetes, watching for when the Achaeans should rush out from their ships," trusting the speed of his feet, and Iris takes his shape to bring Zeus's message to the assembly at Priam's doors. In battle he carries his wounded brother Deiphobus out of the fighting to the chariots and kills Echius at the ships. He is one of the nine sons Priam curses and drives to yoke the wagon in Book 24, where he is "Polites of the war-cry."
Kin: son of Priam; brother of Deiphobus.
Kills: Echius (15.339).
Say: pol-ih-DAY-mas or puh-LID-uh-mas
Panthous' son, Hector's companion, born in the same night with him: "one was far the better in words, the other with the spear." He is the poem's counter-voice on the Trojan side, and Hector takes his advice three times and refuses it twice, the refusals being the ones that matter. He reads the eagle-and-snake omen at the ditch and urges the Trojans not to press on to the ships, and Hector answers with "One bird-sign is best: to fight for your fatherland" and a threat to kill him. He urges retreat inside the walls the night Achilles reappears, and Hector's refusal — praised by the Trojans, "the fools: for Pallas Athena had taken their wits from them" — is what Hector remembers alone before the gates: "Polydamas will be the first to lay reproach on me." He fights as well as he counsels, killing Prothoenor and Otus and vaunting over the body.
Also called: Panthous' son.
Kin: son of Panthous; brother, in the family the poem names, of Euphorbus and Hyperenor.
Kills: Prothoenor (14.450); Mecisteus (15.339); Otus of Cyllene (15.518).
Refs: 12.60, 12.210, 12.231, 13.756, 14.450, 15.518, 18.249, 18.313, 22.100
…and throughout. Books 11–18, 22.
See also: Hector, Panthous, Euphorbus, Prothoenor, Ajax, Meges.
Say: pol-ih-DOR-us
Priam's youngest and dearest son, by Laothoe daughter of Altes, forbidden by his father to fight; "in his boy's folly, showing off the speed of his feet" he darts through the front-fighters and Achilles' javelin takes him in the back, so that he sinks clutching his bowels. It is the sight of his brother dying that brings Hector out of the crowd against Achilles. Lycaon names him as the brother already killed while pleading for his own life at 21.91, and Priam names the two of them together at 22.46 as the sons of Laothoe he cannot see among the Trojans. A different Polydorus is one of the men Nestor out-threw with the spear at Amarynceus' funeral games (23.637); the poem keeps them separate.
Kin: son of Priam and Laothoe; brother of Lycaon.
Killed by: Achilles (20.407–418).
Refs: 20.407, 20.419, 21.91, 22.46, 23.637. Books 20–23.
See also: Priam, Laothoe, Lycaon, Altes, Achilles, Hector, Nestor.
Say: pol-ih-EYE-dus
Two men. The first is a Trojan, son of Eurydamas "the old reader of dreams," killed with his brother Abas by Diomedes in Book 5 — and the poem's point is that "the old man read no dreams for them at their going." The second is a seer of Corinth, father of Euchenor, who told his son often that he would either waste to death of a sickness at home or fall under Trojan hands at the ships; Euchenor sailed knowing his fate, and Paris' arrow found him under the ear.
Kin: the Trojan is Eurydamas' son and Abas' brother; the Corinthian is Euchenor's father.
Killed by: the Trojan Polyidus by Diomedes (5.148–151).
Say: pol-ih-PEE-teez
A Lapith leader, son of Peirithous and Hippodameia, born on the day his father drove the shaggy beast-men out of Pelion; he brings forty ships from Argissa and Gyrtone with Leonteus, and the two are inseparable in the poem. They hold the gate against Asius "like high-crowned oaks in the mountains that abide the wind and rain through all their days," and Polypoetes kills Damasus through the bronze-cheeked helmet, then Pylon and Ormenus. In Book 23 he throws the lump of iron past the whole field — Epeius, Leonteus and Telamonian Ajax — and his companions carry the prize away.
Epithets: "steadfast in battle" (μενεπτόλεμος, 2.740).
Kin: son of Peirithous and Hippodameia; grandson of Zeus by Peirithous.
Kills: Astyalus (6.29); Damasus, Pylon, Ormenus (12.182–187).
Refs: 2.740, 6.29, 12.129, 12.182, 23.836, 23.844, 23.848. Books 2, 6, 12,
23.
See also: Leonteus, Peirithous, Lapiths, Asius, Epeius, Ajax.
Say: poh-SY-dun
Zeus's brother, lord of the sea and the Achaeans' most active divine partisan. He and Apollo built Laomedon's wall and were cheated of their wage, which he still holds against Troy in Book 21, when he offers Apollo the first blow and is refused. His great sequence is Books 13–15: he watches from the peak of Thracian Samos, comes down in three strides, and works behind Zeus's back — rallying the Argives as Calchas, leading them with a sword "like a lightning-flash," then stretching the strife taut against Hector — until Zeus sends Iris to order him off and he yields, protesting that the three brothers drew sky, sea and underworld by lot and he is Zeus's equal in honor. He resents the Achaean wall for outshining his own work and unbuilds it after the war; he saves Aeneas from Achilles because the race of Dardanus must not perish; and he alone with Hera and Athena holds to his hatred of Ilion to the end.
Epithets: "the earth-shaker" (ἐνοσίχθων / ἐννοσίγαιος, 7.445); "wide-ruling" (εὐρυσθενής, 7.455); "the holder of the earth" (γαιήοχος, 9.183); "blue-maned" (κυανοχαίτης, 13.563).
Kin: son of Cronos and Rhea; brother of Zeus and Hades.
Refs: 7.445, 12.17, 13.19, 13.43, 14.384, 15.158, 15.205, 20.291, 21.435,
24.26 …and throughout. Books 1, 2, 7, 8, 11–15, 20, 21, 23, 24.
See also: Zeus, Hades, Apollo, Laomedon, Aeneas, Samos, Achaeans.
Say: PRY-am
King of Troy, old and past fighting, whose name the poem uses as much for the city and the doom as for the man — "Priam's city," "Priam and the people of Priam of the good ash spear." He appears rarely in battle books and decisively at the frame: on the tower in Book 3, calling Helen to him and refusing to blame her, and driving out through the Scaean Gates to swear the oaths for the duel, then leaving because he cannot watch his son fight; in Book 22 on the wall, tearing his hair and begging Hector to come inside, arguing that Achilles too has a father. That argument he carries into the Achaean camp in Book 24, going alone by night with Hermes for guide, kissing "the terrible, man-slaughtering hands that had killed so many of his sons," and winning Hector's body back. He tells Achilles he had fifty sons when the Achaeans came, and not one is left him.
Epithets: "of the good ash spear" (ἐϋμμελίω, 4.47); "the equal of the gods in counsel" (θεόφιν μήστωρ ἀτάλαντος, 7.366).
Also called: Dardanus' descendant (Δαρδανίδης, 3.303).
Kin: son of Laomedon; husband of Hecuba, daughter of Dymas, and of many wives including Laothoe; father of Hector, Paris, Helenus, Deiphobus, Polydorus, Lycaon, Polites and the rest, and of Laodice and Cassandra.
Refs: 1.19, 2.37, 3.105, 3.303, 4.47, 6.242, 7.366, 22.25, 24.160, 24.477
…and throughout. Books 1–9, 11–24.
See also: Hector, Hecuba, Laomedon, Troy, Achilles, Hermes, Dardanus.
Say: PREE-tus
A king of the Argives in Glaucus' back-story, who drove Bellerophon out of the land. His wife Anteia was mad to lie with Bellerophon and, refused, lied to her husband that he had forced her; Proetus shrank from killing him — "his heart stood in awe of that" — but sent him to Lycia with the folded tablet of "many life-destroying marks" for the king there to read, meaning his death. The poem's one instance of writing.
Kin: husband of Anteia; son-in-law of the lord of Lycia.
Refs: 6.157, 6.160, 6.163, 6.164, 6.177. Book 6.
See also: Bellerophon, Anteia, Glaucus, Lycia.
Say: PROM-uh-kus
A Boeotian, Alegenor's son, killed by Acamas in Book 14 as he was hauling Archelochus' body away by the feet. Acamas vaunts over him — "Look how your Promachus sleeps, beaten down by my spear" — as blood-price for his brother, and the vaunt is what rouses Peneleos, whose killing of Ilioneus answers it in kind.
Kin: son of Alegenor.
Killed by: Acamas (14.476–477).
Refs: 14.477, 14.482, 14.503. Book 14.
See also: Acamas, Archelochus, Peneleos, Ilioneus, Boeotians.
Say: proh-tes-ih-LAY-us
Leader of the contingent from Phylace, and the first Achaean to die: "a Dardanian man had killed him as he leapt from his ship, far the first of the Achaeans." He is already dead when the Catalogue reaches him — "by then the black earth held him under" — leaving a wife with torn cheeks in Phylace and a half-built house, and his brother Podarces, the younger and lesser man, leads his forty ships. His ship becomes the poem's landmark for the crisis at the camp: Hector breaks through where the ships of Ajax and Protesilaus are drawn up, lays his hand on its stern at 15.705, and Patroclus' first cast in Book 16 is thrown into the press around it.
Kin: son of Iphiclus, Phylacus' line; brother of Podarces.
Refs: 2.698, 2.706, 2.708, 13.681, 15.705, 16.287. Books 2, 13, 15, 16.
Say: proh-thoh-EE-nor
One of the five Boeotian leaders of the Catalogue and, in Book 14, Polydamas' victim: the spear takes him in the right shoulder and he falls clutching the earth in his palm. Polydamas' vaunt over him — that the man will lean on the spear for a staff walking down into Hades — stirs Telamonian Ajax, who casts back, misses Polydamas, and kills Archelochus instead, then asks across the field whether that man is "a worthy exchange for Prothoenor dead."
Kin: son of Areïlycus.
Killed by: Polydamas (14.450–452).
Refs: 2.495, 14.450, 14.471. Books 2, 14.
See also: Polydamas, Ajax, Archelochus, Boeotians.
Say: py-LEM-uh-neez
Leader of the Paphlagonians from the Eneti, "of the shaggy heart," called "captain of the great-hearted Paphlagonian shieldmen." Menelaus spears him through the collarbone as he stands, while Antilochus kills his driver Mydon in the same exchange. His son Harpalion is killed by Meriones in Book 13, and the poem there calls him "the son of king Pylaemenes" — the father, killed in Book 5, is present again as a name.
Kin: father of Harpalion.
Killed by: Menelaus (5.576–579).
Refs: 2.851, 5.576, 13.643. Books 2, 5, 13.
See also: Paphlagonians, Menelaus, Antilochus, Harpalion, Mydon.
Say: PY-lee-unz
Nestor's people, whose land the Alpheius "flows wide through." They are named mostly inside Nestor's own reminiscences — the fight with the Arcadians by the Celadon, and the long Book 11 tale of the cattle-raid on Elis, the division of the spoil at Pylos, and the battle with the Epeians in which Zeus "handed great power to the Pylians." In the present action they are the contingent Antilochus leaves when he runs to Achilles with the news of Patroclus' death, and "great longing was built for the Pylians" until Menelaus sends them Thrasymedes.
Refs: 5.545, 7.134, 11.687, 11.737, 11.753, 17.704, 23.633. Books 5, 7, 11,
17, 23.
See also: Nestor, Pylos, Antilochus, Thrasymedes, Epeians, Alpheius.
Say: PY-los
Nestor's kingdom, "sandy Pylos," Neleus' before him; the Catalogue gives him ninety ships from Pylos, Arene and the towns along the Alpheius. Nestor was already king "among the third" generation there when he came to Troy, and the place belongs mostly to his memories: the cattle driven at night into Neleian Pylos, the debts divided among the leading men, the return from Buprasion. Agamem- non offers seven citadels "on the edge of sandy Pylos" among the gifts for Achilles. Dione names it as where Heracles shot Hades among the dead.
Refs: 1.252, 2.77, 2.591, 5.397, 9.153, 11.682, 11.712, 23.303. Books 1, 2,
4, 5, 9, 11, 23.
Say: REE-sus
Thracian king, son of Eïoneus, whose men are "new-come, outermost of all" — they stand outside the Catalogue. Dolon, questioned under the knife, gives him up: his horses are the finest and biggest Dolon has ever seen, "whiter than snow, and like the winds in running," and his armor is golden, fit for gods and not for mortal men. Diomedes kills him in his sleep, thirteenth of the Thracians, while Odysseus leads the horses out; Apollo wakes his kinsman Hippocoon, who finds the place empty and the men gasping. A river of Ida also bears the name (12.20).
Kin: son of Eïoneus; kinsman of Hippocoon.
Killed by: Diomedes (10.474–497).
Tlepolemus' island, sending nine ships of "the lordly Rhodians," who "dwelt through Rhodes in three divisions: Lindus, Ialysus, and chalk-white Cameirus." He came there as an exile and a wanderer after killing Licymnius, his father Heracles' aged uncle, and the settlers were loved by Zeus, who "poured wondrous wealth upon them."
Refs: 2.654, 2.655, 2.667. Book 2.
See also: Tlepolemus, Rhodians, Heracles, Licymnius.
Say: SAY-mos
Two islands of the name, and the poem distinguishes them. The Samos of Odysseus' Catalogue entry (2.634) lies among Ithaca, Zacynthus and the facing mainland. The other is "wooded Samos, Thracian Samos" — Samothrace — from whose topmost peak Poseidon watches the fighting, because from there "all Ida showed clear, and Priam's city showed clear, and the ships of the Achaeans"; Iris plunges into the sea between Samos and rugged Imbros, and Priam names Samos with Imbros and Lemnos as the islands Achilles sold his sons into.
Say: sar-PEE-don
King of the Lycians, son of Zeus by Laodameia, Bellerophon's daughter — the only child of Zeus fighting at Troy whom the poem lets die. He comes "from far Lycia, from the eddying Xanthus" with Glaucus, rebukes Hector for leaving the fighting to the allies, survives Tlepolemus' spear through the thigh in Book 5, and is the first man over the Achaean wall, tearing the breastwork away with his hands "and he had made a road for many." His speech to Glaucus before that assault — why kings are honored with the seat of honor and the fat land, and why, since death stands over them in thousands, they must go — is the poem's clearest statement of the warrior's bargain. Patroclus kills him with a spear through the midriff and he falls like a felled oak; Zeus, who has weighed snatching him out alive and been argued down by Hera, rains blood on the earth for him, then has Apollo wash the body and give it to Sleep and Death to carry to Lycia. The fight over his stripped corpse fills the rest of Book 16, and his armor is the prize Achilles sets for the duel in the funeral games.
Epithets: "of the bronze helmet" (χαλκοκορυστής, 6.199).
Kin: son of Zeus and Laodameia; grandson of Bellerophon; cousin and companion of Glaucus.
Kills: Tlepolemus (5.655–659); Alcmaon, Thestor's son (12.394). In the duel his own casts miss Patroclus twice; the second kills the trace-horse Pedasus (16.466).
Killed by: Patroclus (16.480–505).
Refs: 2.876, 5.633, 5.657, 6.199, 12.292, 12.397, 16.419, 16.480, 16.667,
23.800 …and throughout. Books 2, 5, 6, 12, 14–17, 23.
See also: Glaucus, Lycians, Zeus, Patroclus, Tlepolemus, Bellerophon, Hector.
Say: sat-nee-OH-is
A river of the Troad, always named for the men who lived on it: Elatus, killed by Agamemnon, "who lived by the banks of fair-flowing Satnioeis in steep Pedasus"; Satnius, son of Enops by a nymph who bore him "as he herded by the banks of Satnioeis," killed by Ajax son of Oïleus; and Pedasus, the town Altes holds "on the Satnioeis," home of Laothoe, mother of Lycaon and Polydorus.
Say: SEE-un
The Scaean Gates, Troy's main gate onto the plain, and with the oak beside them the fixed landmark of the poem's approaches to the city. The elders sit there watching Helen come up onto the tower; Priam drives out through them to swear the oaths; Hector meets Andromache there on his way out and it is where Theano's prayer asks Athena to bring Diomedes down; Achilles' chase brings Hector back to them, "in front of Ilion and the Scaean Gates," and the dying Hector names them as the place where Paris and Apollo will destroy Achilles.
Also called: the Scaean Gates.
Refs: 3.145, 3.149, 3.263, 6.237, 6.307, 6.393, 9.354, 11.170, 16.712,
18.453, 22.6, 22.360. Books 3, 6, 9, 11, 16, 18, 22.
See also: Troy, Hector, Andromache, Priam, Achilles.
Say: skuh-MAN-dur
Troy's chief river and the god who runs in it, "whom the gods call Xanthus, and men Scamander" — the poem states the double name outright at 20.74. It is the plain's standing feature: Ares set down on its high bank, the burial-ground of the Achaean dead, the ford Priam and Hermes cross, the twin springs where the Trojan women used to wash and past which Achilles chases Hector. In Book 21 the river becomes a combatant: choked with corpses, he asks Achilles to do his killing on the plain, then crests over him, calls his brother Simoïs to help drown him, and is beaten only when Hera sends Hephaestus' fire against the water. He is one of the eight Idaean rivers Apollo and Poseidon turn against the Achaean wall (12.21).
Also called: Xanthus — the gods' name for it (20.74). NB: "Xanthus" also names one of Achilles' immortal horses, a Trojan killed by Diomedes (5.152), and a separate river of Lycia (2.877, 6.172, 12.313).
Kin: "eddying Xanthus, whom immortal Zeus begot" (21.2).
Refs: 5.36, 5.78, 7.330, 11.499, 12.21, 20.74, 21.15, 21.223, 21.305, 22.148
…and throughout. Books 5–8, 11–12, 14, 20–22, 24.
See also: Simois, Achilles, Hephaestus, Hera, Xanthus (horse), Troy.
Say: SKEE-dee-us
Two Phocian leaders of the name, both killed by Hector. The first is Iphitus' son, Naubolus' grandson, who with his brother Epistrophus leads forty Phocian ships in the Catalogue; he is "far the best of the Phocians," king over many men in famed Panopeus, and Hector's cast — dodged by Ajax — takes him under the collarbone and comes out at the base of the shoulder. The second is Schedius son of Perimedes, "a captain of the Phocians," cut down by Hector at the ships in Book 15.
Kin: the Catalogue leader is son of Iphitus; the other is son of Perimedes.
Killed by: both by Hector (15.515; 17.306–311).
Refs: 2.517, 15.515, 17.306. Books 2, 15, 17.
See also: Phocians, Epistrophus, Panopeus, Hector, Ajax.
The Ὧραι, keepers of the gates of heaven, "to whom great heaven and Olympus are entrusted, to roll the thick cloud aside, or set it back." They appear only in the formula for Hera's chariot passing out and back: the gates groan open self-moved as she and Athena drive through (5.749 = 8.393), and when the ride is called off they unyoke the lovely-maned horses, tether them at the ambrosial mangers and lean the chariot against the shining wall.
Say: sel-EE-is
A river named only in contingent back-stories, always in the same phrase, "from the river Selleïs." Heracles brought Astyocheia, Tlepolemus' mother, out of Ephyra by it; Asius' tall fire-colored horses come from it, in a line the poem repeats verbatim when he storms the wall (2.839 = 12.97); and Phyleus brought home from it the corslet that saves Meges in Book 15.
Refs: 2.659, 2.839, 12.97, 15.531. Books 2, 12, 15.
See also: Ephyra, Tlepolemus, Asius, Arisbe, Meges.
Say: sim-oh-EE-see-os
A young Trojan killed by Telamonian Ajax in the first general engagement, born by the banks of the Simois while his mother was coming down from Ida with her parents to see the flocks, and named for the river. He never paid back to his parents the cost of his rearing; Ajax's spear takes him in the chest by the right nipple and he falls like a black poplar felled by a chariot-maker to bend a wheel-rim, left lying to season along the river bank.
Kin: son of Anthemion.
Killed by: Ajax (4.473–489).
Say: SIM-oh-is
The second of Troy's two rivers, running with the Scamander across the plain: the armies fight "midway between the streams of Simois and Xanthus," and Hera halts her horses where the two join, whereupon Simois makes ambrosia spring up for them to graze. It is one of the eight Idaean rivers Apollo turns against the Achaean wall — named there for the shields and helmets and "the race of half-god men" fallen in its dust — and in Book 21 Scamander calls to it as "dear brother" for help against Achilles. Spelled Simoïs at 20.53 and 21.307.
Refs: 4.475, 5.774, 5.777, 6.4, 12.22. Books 4–6, 12.
See also: Scamander, Simoeisios, Ida, Troy.
"Sleep, the brother of Death," personified, and Hera's accomplice in the Deception of Zeus. He refuses her at first — a previous commission of hers, laying Zeus's mind asleep so she could drive Heracles to Cos, nearly got him flung out of heaven, and only Night saved him — and yields only when she swears by the water of Styx to give him Pasithea, one of the younger Graces, whom he has longed for all his days. He perches in a fir on Ida in the likeness of the bird "the gods call chalkis, and men call kymindis," then runs to tell Poseidon that Zeus is out. In Book 16 he and Death are "the twin brothers" who carry Sarpedon's body home to Lycia.
Kin: brother of Death; son of Night in effect, who shelters him (14.259).
Refs: 14.231, 14.233, 14.242, 14.264, 14.270, 14.286, 14.354, 16.454, 16.672,
16.682. Books 14, 16.
See also: Death, Hera, Zeus, Pasithea, Night, Sarpedon, Poseidon.
Say: SOH-kus
A wealthy Trojan, brother of Charops, who comes to his brother's rescue when Odysseus is cutting through Hippasus' sons and drives a spear through Odysseus' shield and corslet, tearing the flesh from his ribs — Athena keeps the point from his vitals. Odysseus, knowing the wound is not mortal, tells him destruction has caught him, and spears him between the shoulders as he turns to run. The wound Socus deals is what brings the Trojans down on Odysseus alone in the crowd.
Kin: son of Hippasus; brother of Charops.
Killed by: Odysseus (11.446–449).
Refs: 11.427, 11.428, 11.440, 11.446, 11.450, 11.456. Book 11.
Menelaus' city in the Peloponnese, named in the Catalogue among the towns of his contingent and again by Hera, who names Argos, Sparta and wide-wayed Mycenae as the three cities dearest to her and offers all three for Troy's destruction (4.52–53). The poem more often calls the country Lacedaemon — "hollow Lacedaemon full of ravines" heads the same catalogue entry — and it is from Lacedaemon that Paris carried Helen off, and there that she left the daughter and the household she keeps naming in Book 3.
Also called: Lacedaemon, the district in which the Catalogue places it (2.581).
Refs: 2.581, 2.582, 3.239, 3.244, 3.388, 3.443, 4.52. Books 2–4.
Say: spur-KY-us
The river of Phthia, "the sky-fed river," to whom Peleus vowed that Achilles would cut his hair and sacrifice fifty rams at its sources if he came home. He does not come home: standing apart from the pyre, Achilles cuts the tawny lock he had been growing for the river and puts it in Patroclus' hands instead, telling Spercheius plainly that his father's vow was made for nothing. The river also fathered Menesthius, a Myrmidon company-leader, on Peleus' daughter Polydora.
Kin: father of Menesthius by Polydora.
Refs: 16.174, 16.176, 23.142, 23.144. Books 16, 23.
See also: Achilles, Peleus, Patroclus, Menesthius, Polydora, Phthia.
Say: STHEN-uh-lus
Diomedes' charioteer and companion, one of the Epigoni whose fathers fell at Thebes. He pulls Pandarus' arrow from Diomedes' shoulder in Book 5, spots Aeneas and Pandarus coming and urges retreat, and drives off the horses of Tros; Athena shoves him bodily off the chariot to take the reins herself. He answers Agamemnon's shaming of the fathers by claiming the sons took seven-gated Thebes where the fathers failed — the speech Diomedes silently declines to endorse. In Book 9 Diomedes vows that he and Sthenelus alone will fight on to the end of Ilion. A second Sthenelus, son of Perseus and father of Eurystheus, belongs to the Heracles back-story of Book 19 and is a different man.
Also called: Capaneus' son.
Kin: son of Capaneus.
Refs: 2.564, 4.367, 5.108, 5.111, 5.241, 5.835, 8.114, 9.48, 19.116, 19.123,
23.510. Books 2, 4–5, 8–9, 19, 23.
See also: Diomedes, Capaneus, Thebes, Athena, Eurystheus, Perseus.
Say: STIK-ee-us
An Achaean captain, named three times and killed by Hector in the rout of Book 15. The poem describes him inconsistently: at 13.195 and 13.691 he is one of the Athenian captains under Menestheus, helping carry the dead back among the host, but at 15.330, in the couplet on his death, he is "a leader of the bronze-shirted Boeotians." The text does not reconcile the two.
Killed by: Hector (15.329–330).
Refs: 13.195, 13.691, 15.329. Books 13, 15.
See also: Menestheus, Athenians, Boeotians, Hector, Arcesilaus.
Discord personified and capitalized, one of the battle-abstractions who take the field with Ares. She stands with Terror and Panic in the muster of Book 4, works beside "Ares bane of mortals" over the corpses, and is blazoned on Athena's aegis with Valor and blood-chilling Pursuit. Zeus sends her down to the ships at the opening of Book 11 to raise the war-cry; "Strife of the many groans" then rejoices alone among the gods to see the armies close. Hephaestus sets her on the shield with Tumult and deadly Fate, and at the theomachy "strong Strife, driver of armies" rises against Athena's shout.
Epithets: the fixed capitalization of the personified Δεῖμος / Φόβος / Ἔρις group is set at 4.440; the poem also calls her "insatiably raging" (4.440) and "of the many groans" (11.73).
Refs: 4.440, 5.518, 5.740, 11.3, 11.73, 18.535, 20.48. Books 4–5, 11, 18, 20.
Helios, invoked in the oath-scenes as the god "who see all things and hear all things": one of the two lambs of the truce is for Earth and Sun, and he is called to witness both Agamemnon's oath over the sworn oaths in Book 3 and his oath about Briseis in Book 19, with Earth and the Erinyes. He also marks the poem's time — "when the Sun bestrode the middle of heaven" Zeus lifts his scales — and is once made to act: Hera sends "the unwearied Sun, much against his will, into the streams of Ocean" to end the day Achilles rearms, fulfilling the sunset clause of Zeus's plan. Called "Hyperion the Sun" at 8.480 and 19.398, and named Helios once (14.344).
Refs: 3.104, 3.277, 8.68, 8.480, 18.239, 18.241, 19.197, 19.259. Books 3, 8,
18, 19.
Say: tal-THIB-ee-us
Agamemnon's herald, "the godlike herald," and the man sent to do what his king does not do himself. With Eurybates he goes unwillingly to Achilles' hut to take Briseis in Book 1; he fetches the lamb for the truce-sacrifice in Book 3, and calls Machaon to the wounded Menelaus in Book 4; with Idaeus of Troy he parts Ajax and Hector when night falls on their duel. In Book 19 he holds the boar for Agamemnon's oath and throws the carcass into the sea. The poem closes his arc at 23.897, where Agamemnon's prize is handed to Talthybius to carry — the mirror of 1.320.
Refs: 1.320, 3.118, 4.192, 4.193, 7.276, 19.196, 19.250, 19.267, 23.897.
Books 1, 3–4, 7, 19, 23.
Say: TAR-tuh-rus
The pit below Hades — "where the deepest pit yawns under the earth, / where the gates are iron and the threshold bronze, / as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth." It is Zeus's standing threat at the opening of Book 8 against any god who helps either side, and the measure of how far he is strongest. Iapetus and Cronos sit at the world's limit with "deep Tartarus all around them," and Hera swears her oath to Sleep by the gods beneath it, "who are called the Titans."
Say: TEL-uh-mon
Father of Ajax the greater and, by another woman, of Teucer; a king of Salamis in the older generation who does not come to Troy. In nearly all of its occurrences the name is a patronymic — "Telamonian Ajax," "Ajax, Zeus-sprung son of Telamon, marshal of the people" — and the referent is Ajax, per `canon.md`. He appears in his own right only at 8.283, where Agamemnon urges Teucer to keep shooting and be a light "to your father Telamon, who reared you when you were little / and cared for you in his own house, bastard though you were."
Also called: the source of the adjective Telamonian.
Kin: father of Ajax and of Teucer, who are brothers "by one father" (12.371).
Refs: 2.528, 2.768, 6.5, 7.234, 8.281, 8.283, 9.644, 12.371, 13.170, 17.284
…and throughout. Books 2, 4–9, 11–18, 23.
See also: Ajax, Teucer, Salamis, Ajax son of Oïleus.
One of the battle-abstractions personified and capitalized with Panic and Strife (4.440). He and Panic attend Athena as she arms, "glaring terribly, and around her Terror and Panic," and Ares orders the pair to yoke his horses when he means to break Zeus's ban and avenge Ascalaphus. He never acts alone.
Say: TEE-this
"Mother Tethys," Ocean's consort, named twice in the Deception of Zeus and only there, in the lie Hera tells first to Aphrodite and then verbatim to Zeus: that she is going to the ends of the earth to see "Oceanus, the begetting of the gods, and mother Tethys," who reared her in their halls when Rhea gave her up as Zeus put Cronos down, and to settle their long quarrel. The pair are the poem's nearest thing to a cosmogony.
Kin: consort of Ocean; foster-mother of Hera.
Say: TYOO-sur
Telamon's bastard son and Ajax's half-brother, "his brother by one father," and the best archer in the Achaean host — Idomeneus calls him "best of the Achaeans / in bowmanship, and good too in the standing fight." His method is fixed in Book 8: he shoots from under Ajax's shield and slips back behind it "like a child to his mother," and the poem gives him a roll-call of eight victims before Hector breaks his collarbone with a stone and snaps his bowstring. In Book 15 he has Hector lined up when Zeus himself breaks the fresh-twisted string, and Teucer, shuddering, gives the bow up for spear and shield. He hits Glaucus on the wall (12.387) and loses the archery contest at the funeral games by forgetting to vow to Apollo.
Kin: son of Telamon; half-brother of Ajax.
Refs: 6.31, 8.266, 8.273, 8.322, 12.371, 12.387, 13.313, 15.458, 15.462,
23.862. Books 6, 8, 12–16, 23.
Say: thee-AN-oh
Antenor's wife, made priestess of Athena by the Trojans, and the woman who performs the poem's one Trojan supplication of a goddess: she opens the temple doors on the city's height, takes the robe Hecuba has brought and lays it on Athena's knees, and vows twelve unbroken yearling heifers if the goddess will break Diomedes' spear and drop him before the Scaean Gates — "So she spoke, vowing. But Pallas Athena turned her head away." She had also reared Antenor's bastard son Pedaeus with her own children, to please her husband.
Epithets: "fair-cheeked" (καλλιπάρῃος, 6.298).
Kin: daughter of Cisseus (6.299; called Cisses at 11.223); wife of Antenor; foster-mother of Pedaeus; aunt of Iphidamas.
Refs: 5.70, 6.298, 6.302, 11.224. Books 5–6, 11.
See also: Antenor, Athena, Hecuba, Pedaeus, Iphidamas, Diomedes.
Say: THEE-bee
Eëtion's city under wooded Placus, "Thebe of the high gates," seat of the Cilician men, sacked by Achilles before the poem opens. It is where Chryseis was taken — the sack that begins the plague-chain — and where Achilles killed Eëtion without stripping him, burning him in his armor and heaping a mound that the mountain nymphs planted round with elms. Andromache was born there and names it in both her laments. Not the Boeotian Thebes: see Thebes.
Refs: 1.366, 2.691, 6.397, 6.416, 22.479. Books 1–2, 6, 22.
See also: Eëtion, Andromache, Achilles, Chryseis, Placus, Lyrnessus, Thebes.
Say: theebz
"Seven-gated Thebes," the Boeotian city of the war before this one. Tydeus went there as an envoy for Polyneices, beat the Cadmeans at their own games and killed the fifty men they set to ambush him; the Seven perished before the walls, and the heaped earth covers Tydeus there still. Agamemnon uses the fathers' Theban exploits to shame the sons (4.370–400), and Sthenelus retorts that the sons took the city where the fathers failed. Euryalus once beat all comers at the games for fallen Oedipus there. A different Thebes — Egyptian Thebes, "where the houses hold the greatest treasures" — is Achilles' measure of a ransom he will not take (9.381–382).
Refs: 4.378, 4.406, 5.804, 6.223, 9.381, 9.382, 10.286, 14.114, 19.99, 23.679.
Books 4–6, 9–10, 14, 19, 23.
See also: Tydeus, Diomedes, Sthenelus, Polyneices, Cadmeans, Euryalus, Thebe.
Say: thur-SY-teez
The one common soldier in the poem who speaks in assembly. He is described at length and unkindly — bandy-legged, lame in one foot, hunched, his head coming to a point with sparse stubble on it, "the ugliest man who came under Ilion" — and he attacks Agamemnon for his greed in terms not far from Achilles' own in Book 1. Odysseus strikes him across the back and shoulders with the scepter until a bloody welt rises and he sits down weeping, and the army, vexed as it is, laughs at him sweetly. He is never mentioned again. Odysseus' abuse still calls him a "clear-voiced speaker."
Say: THES-tor
Three men. The first is Calchas' father, named in the line that introduces the seer "far the best of bird-readers" (1.69), and never otherwise present. The second is the father of Alcmaon, whom Sarpedon spears at the wall (12.394). The third is a son of Enops, caught by Patroclus' second rush in his aristeia: he sits hunched in his chariot with the reins fallen from his hands, struck out of his wits, and Patroclus spears him through the right jaw and hauls him over the chariot-rail like a fisherman landing a sacred fish.
Kin: the first is father of Calchas; the second father of Alcmaon; the third son of Enops.
Killed by: the third by Patroclus (16.401–410).
Say: THEE-tis or THET-is
A sea-nymph, daughter of the old man of the sea, married against her will to a mortal, and the mother of Achilles — the figure through whom the plot of the poem is made. She takes her son's grievance to Zeus, clasps his knees on the peak of Olympus, and holds on until he bows his head: the promise to give the Trojans power until the Achaeans honor Achilles is the mechanism of everything that follows, and she can extract it because she once saved Zeus from being bound by summoning Briareus. She leads the Nereids' lament for a son not yet dead, tells him plainly that his own doom stands ready straight after Hector's, and goes to Hephaestus — who owes her his nine years' refuge after his fall — for the new armor. In Book 24 Zeus sends her to her son with the order to give Hector back, and she delivers it sitting beside him, stroking him with her hand.
Epithets: "silver-footed" (ἀργυρόπεζα, 1.538).
Also called: Achilles' "lady mother" (18.35, 24.126).
Kin: daughter of Nereus, "the old man of the sea," never named; sister of the Nereids; wife of Peleus, "Aeacus' son"; mother of Achilles. She sheltered Dionysus from Lycurgus (6.136) and, with Eurynome, saved the fallen Hephaestus (18.398).
Refs: 1.413, 1.495, 1.512, 1.537, 6.136, 18.51, 18.127, 18.369, 24.74, 24.120
…and throughout. Books 1, 4, 6, 8–9, 13, 15–16, 18–20, 23–24.
See also: Achilles, Peleus, Zeus, Hephaestus, Nereids, Briareus, Hera, Eurynome.
Say: THOH-as
Leader of the Aetolians, Andraemon's son, who inherited the whole rule of Aetolia because Oeneus' sons were dead and fair-haired Meleager with them. He kills Peiroos over the body of Diores in Book 4 and cannot strip him for the Thracian topknots around him; he volunteers for the duel with Hector; and at 15.281–299 he gives the poem's most level piece of tactical advice, telling the best men to stand and blunt Hector while the multitude falls back on the ships — "far the best of the Aetolians — skilled with the javelin, / brave in the standing fight," and few could beat him in debate. Two other men bear the name: Thoas king of Lemnos, to whom the Phoenicians gave the silver mixing-bowl that becomes a prize at Patroclus' games (14.230, 23.745), and a Trojan whom Menelaus kills at 16.311. See `canon.md`.
Kin: son of Andraemon.
Refs: 2.638, 2.643, 4.527, 4.529, 7.168, 13.92, 13.222, 14.230, 15.281, 16.311,
19.239, 23.745. Books 2, 4, 7, 13–16, 19, 23.
See also: Aetolians, Peiroos, Diores, Meleager, Oeneus, Euneus, Hypsipyle.
Say: THOH-on
More than one Trojan of the name, all of them killed. The first is a son of Phaenops, cut down with his brother Xanthus by Diomedes — the two were late-born and beloved, and their father, worn with age, had no other son, so that kinsmen of the widowed house divided the estate (5.152–158). The second falls to Odysseus in Book 11. A Thoon is also named among Asius' captains storming the wall (12.140); and in Book 13 Antilochus catches one as he turns and severs the vein that runs the length of the back to the neck.
Killed by: Diomedes (5.152–155); Odysseus (11.422); Antilochus (13.545–548).
Refs: 5.152, 11.422, 12.140, 13.545. Books 5, 11–13.
See also: Phaenops, Xanthus (horse), Diomedes, Odysseus, Antilochus, Asius.
Say: thrayss
The land north of the Hellespont, "Thrace of the deep soil, mother of flocks," where Iphidamas was reared in Cisses' house. Boreas and Zephyrus blow out of it across the Aegean; wine is brought daily from it to the Achaean camp; Poseidon watches the war from Samothrace over the heads of the Thracians. Rhesus' late-come contingent and Rhigmus come from there, and the cup Priam takes to Achilles among his ransom was a Thracian gift.
Refs: 9.5, 9.72, 11.222, 13.301, 20.485, 24.234. Books 9, 11, 13, 20, 24.
See also: Thracians, Rhesus, Iphidamas, Rhigmus, Hellespont, Samos.
Say: THRAY-shunz
Trojan-side allies from beyond the Hellespont, led in the Catalogue by Acamas and the hero Peiroos, and marked by their hair: "the Thracians with their hair in topknots, long spears in their hands," who stand over Peiroos' body and thrust Thoas back. Ares wears Acamas' likeness to rally the Trojans, and Telamonian Ajax kills "the man who was best among the Thracians." Their second, larger appearance is Rhesus' company, new-come and camped outermost of all, whose watch Dolon betrays and whom Diomedes kills sleeping — twelve men and their king — while Odysseus drags the bodies clear for the horses.
Refs: 2.844, 4.519, 4.533, 4.537, 5.462, 6.7, 10.434, 10.470, 10.559, 13.4,
14.228. Books 2, 4–6, 10, 13–14, 23.
See also: Rhesus, Dolon, Diomedes, Acamas, Peiroos, Thrace, Thoas.
Say: thras-ih-MEE-deez
Nestor's son and Antilochus' brother, "steadfast in battle" and "horse-taming." He commands the night sentries in Book 9, lends Diomedes a sword and shield for the night raid, and his shield is the one his father takes up in Book 14 — the son having his father's. In Book 16 he kills Maris, who is standing over his brother's body in fury; in Book 17 he and Antilochus are the last two who have not heard that Patroclus is dead, and when Antilochus runs with the news it is Thrasymedes whom Nestor sends to replace him.
Epithets: "steadfast in battle" (μενεπτόλεμος, 10.255).
Kin: son of Nestor; brother of Antilochus.
Refs: 9.81, 10.255, 14.10, 16.321, 17.378, 17.705. Books 9–10, 14, 16–17.
See also: Nestor, Antilochus, Maris, Patroclus, Diomedes.
Say: tluh-POL-uh-mus or tuh-LEP-oh-lee-mus
Heracles' son by Astyocheia, leader of the nine Rhodian ships. The Catalogue gives him an exile's biography: grown to manhood he killed his father's aging uncle Licymnius on the instant, and fled over the sea from Heracles' sons and grandsons to settle Rhodes in three tribes, where Zeus poured wondrous wealth upon them. Fate drives him against Sarpedon — the son and the grandson of Zeus — and he opens with a taunt about Heracles' six ships and the sack of Ilion; Sarpedon's spear goes through his neck, and murky night covers his eyes, while his own cast only grazes Sarpedon's thigh-bone. A second Tlepolemus, Damastor's son, is one of the Trojans Patroclus kills in heaps at 16.416.
Kin: son of Heracles and Astyocheia.
Killed by: Sarpedon (5.655–659).
Refs: 2.653, 2.657, 2.661, 5.628, 5.632, 5.648, 5.655, 5.660, 5.669, 16.416.
Books 2, 5, 16.
See also: Heracles, Sarpedon, Rhodes, Licymnius, Astyocheia, Selleïs.
The defenders of Troy and, loosely, their allies with them — the poem's second great collective, and after Zeus its commonest name. They are the army the Achaeans face and the people whose city is doomed: the poem sets against the Achaeans' anonymous mass a Trojan side that is a city with women and children in it, and its formulas of address gather in the allies — "Trojans and Lycians and Dardanians who fight at close quarters." Their assemblies, their truce, their oath-breaking under Pandarus, their one night camped in the open on the plain, and their lamentations over Hector are as fully narrated as anything on the Achaean side.
Epithets: "horse-taming" (ἱππόδαμοι, 2.230); the individual form of the same word is "breaker of horses."
Refs: 1.152, 2.123, 3.2, 4.509, 8.173, 12.440, 18.243, 22.1 …and throughout.
Books 1–24.
See also: Troy, Hector, Priam, Dardanians, Lycians, Achaeans.
Say: tros
Two men. The first is the eponym of the Trojans, in the fourth generation of the house of Dardanus: "Erichthonius fathered Tros, lord of the Trojans; / and from Tros in turn three blameless sons were born: / Ilus, and Assaracus, and godlike Ganymede." Zeus gave him the immortal horses in payment for Ganymede, and it is that stock — "the horses of Tros" — that Anchises stole a breed from, that Diomedes takes from Aeneas, and that he drives in the chariot race. The second Tros is Alastor's son, killed at 20.463: he comes to clasp Achilles' knees hoping to be spared as a man of his own age, and Achilles, "all raw fury," stabs him in the liver — the first of the poem's three refused supplications.
Kin: the ancestor is son of Erichthonius, father of Ilus, Assaracus and Ganymede, and great-grandfather of Priam; the victim is Alastor's son.
Killed by: the victim, by Achilles (20.463–472).
Refs: 5.222, 5.265, 8.106, 20.230, 20.231, 20.463, 20.468, 23.291, 23.377.
Books 5, 8, 20, 23.
See also: Dardanus, Erichthonius, Ilus, Assaracus, Ganymede, Aeneas, Achilles, Lycaon, Hector.
The city, and the poem's fixed point: everything happens on the plain before it or inside its walls. The translation keeps both surface names the Greek uses — Ilion, "holy Ilion," "the well-built citadel of Ilion," and Troy, "well-walled," "wide-wayed," "deep-soiled" — and both are headwords. The city is never taken in the poem, but its fall is stated as certain from Book 4 on ("the day will come when holy Ilion shall perish, / and Priam, and the people of Priam of the good ash spear," 4.164–165 = 6.448–449), and Zeus names it the dearest of mortal cities to him even as he concedes it. It is Poseidon and Apollo's own work, built for Laomedon, and its wall is what Hector must come outside of to die.
Also called: Ilion — the same city, both spellings throughout; its citadel is Pergamos.
Refs: 1.71, 1.129, 2.113, 2.141, 4.46, 4.164, 6.315, 7.20, 21.544, 22.411
…and throughout. Books 1–24.
See also: Troy, Trojans, Priam, Hector, Pergamos, Scaean, Laomedon.
Say: TY-dee-us
Diomedes' father, one of the Seven against Thebes, dead before the poem opens and covered by the heaped earth at Thebes. The name is overwhelmingly a patronymic: "Tydeus' son" is Diomedes, and in most of its 109 occurrences the father is not the referent. Where he is, he is the standing measure the sons are held against — Agamemnon shames Diomedes with the story of the envoy who beat the Cadmeans at their games and killed the fifty men they ambushed him with, and concludes that "the son he fathered is worse than he in battle — better in the assembly"; Athena tells Diomedes he is "no son of Tydeus" if fear holds him, recalling that his father was a small man in build but a fighter. Diomedes says he does not remember him.
Kin: son of Oeneus' line, of Portheus through Oeneus; married a daughter of Adrastus and settled at Argos; father of Diomedes.
Refs: 2.406, 4.370, 4.372, 4.384, 4.399, 5.800, 5.813, 6.222, 14.114 …and
throughout. Books 2, 4–11, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23.
See also: Diomedes, Thebes, Oeneus, Adrastus, Polyneices, Agamemnon, Athena.
Say: ZAN-thus
One of Achilles' two immortal horses, yoked with Balius; the harpy Podarge conceived the pair by the West Wind as she grazed in a meadow beside the stream of Ocean. In Book 19, when Achilles reproaches them for leaving Patroclus dead, white-armed Hera gives Xanthus voice: he drops his head until his mane spills to the ground and answers that they will bring Achilles back safe this time, but that his day of destruction is near, and that the blame is a great god's and strong Fate's — "it is fated to be broken by force — by a god, and by a man." The Erinyes then stop his voice. The token Xanthus is otherwise counted under the river Scamander; see `canon.md`'s homonym register.
Also called: named always with Balius as a pair.
Kin: offspring of Podarge and the West Wind; yoked with Balius, and with the mortal Pedasus in the side-traces.
Refs: 16.149, 19.400. Books 16, 19.
See also: Podarge, Achilles, Automedon, Pedasus, Scamander, Erinyes, Zephyrus.
Say: zuh-LY-uh
Pandarus' town, "under the lowest foot of Ida," whose men drink the dark water of the Aesepus. The Catalogue calls them Trojans; the town itself appears twice more, in the vow Athena puts in Pandarus' mouth and then in his own performance of it — a hecatomb of firstborn lambs to Apollo the Lycian-born "when he came home to the town of holy Zeleia." He does not come home.
Say: ZEF-ih-rus
The west wind, named in Book 23 only, where Iris finds all the winds feasting indoors at "the house of gusting Zephyrus" and delivers Achilles' prayer: he and Boreas rise with an unearthly roar, drive the clouds before them, and fall on the pyre so that Patroclus burns all night. Elsewhere in the poem the same wind is called "the West Wind" without the name — as the sire of Xanthus and Balius by the harpy Podarge (16.150), and in Xanthus' own boast that the two of them could run with its breath (19.415).
Kin: father of Xanthus and Balius by Podarge (named there as "the West Wind").
Refs: 23.195, 23.200, 23.208. Book 23.
See also: Boreas, Iris, Achilles, Patroclus, Xanthus (horse), Podarge.
Say: ZOOS
The presiding god of the poem and the agent of its plot. Its fifth line announces that through all the deaths "the will of Zeus moved toward fulfillment," and the mechanism is set in Book 1: Thetis clasps his knees, he bows his head — the pledge that cannot be taken back — and promises to give the Trojans power until the Achaeans honor Achilles. He enforces it by banning the gods from the field on pain of Tartarus, by his golden scales, and by a long plan-speech at 15.56–77 that lays out Books 16 through 22 in advance. He is not omnipotent in it so much as bound by it: he cannot save Sarpedon, his own dearest son, without unmaking the order the other gods live by, and instead rains drops of blood on the earth; he weighs Hector's fate and lets it sink; Hera deceives him into sleep and he wakes furious but does not undo it. In Book 24 he ends the poem by sending Thetis to Achilles and Iris to Priam, ransom for a body.
Epithets: "aegis-bearing" (αἰγίοχος, 1.202); "Zeus the cloud-gatherer" (νεφεληγερέτα, 1.511); "Zeus the counselor / of the counsels" (μητίετα, 1.175); "who thunders on high" (ὑψιβρεμέτης, 1.354); "who delights in thunder" (τερπικέραυνος, 1.419); "lord of lightning" (ἀστεροπητής, 1.580); "wide-seeing" (εὐρύοπα, 1.498); "high-throned" (ὑψίζυγος, 4.166); "father of men and gods" (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, 1.544); "the dispenser of war" (ταμίης πολέμοιο, 4.84); "the loud-thunderer, Hera's lord" (ἐρίγδουπος πόσις Ἥρης, 7.411); "Zeus of All Voices" (Πανομφαῖος, 8.250); "Zeus of Guest-right" (Ζεὺς ξείνιος, 13.625).
Also called: "son of Cronos" (Κρονίδης / Κρονίων, 1.398) — the patronymic that resolves to Zeus throughout; "Cronos" alone is the Titan father.
Kin: son of Cronos and Rhea; brother of Poseidon, Hades and Hera, who is also his wife; the three brothers divide sky, sea and underworld by lot (15.187–193). Father of Athena, of Apollo and Artemis by Leto, of Ares and Hebe by Hera, of Aphrodite by Dione, of Hermes, of Heracles by Alcmene, and of Sarpedon.
Refs: 1.5, 1.503, 1.528, 8.5, 15.187, 16.431, 22.209, 24.103 …and throughout.
Books 1–24.
See also: Hera, Thetis, Achilles, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Sarpedon, Hector, Cronos, Tartarus, Fate.
The index covers every figure of consequence: the several hundred men named once and killed in the same breath are catalogued for a later edition. Pronunciations give the traditional anglicized reading; stress falls on the capitalized syllable.