THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

THE HOMERIC DIALECT. 639
youths unwed and old men of many and evil days, tender
maidens with grief yet fresh at heart, and many there were
wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their
bloody mail about them. The list of those who uf all this
unnumbered throng are mentioned by name is not a long one.
A brief analysis of these names will not be without value.
They fall into four classes : his own friends and contemporaries,
the heroines of old times, the heroes, and the great sinners of
an elder age.
First came the soul of Elpenor, his hapless comrade.
Then
saw he next his mother Anticleia. Anon came the soul of
Theban Teiresias, to converse with whom had he journeyed to
that drear land. Then came all that had been the wives and
daughters of mighty men.
These are fifteen in number' :
Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus
and wife of (Jretheus, who bore to Poseidon Pelias and Neleus :
Antiope, daughter of Asopus, who bai-e to Zeus Amphion and
;
Zethus, the Hist wIkj founded Thi'bes
;
Alcmene Megara,
daughter of Creon and wife of Heracles
;
Epicaste, mother of
Oedipodes Ohloris, daughter of Amphion, son of lasus, who
;
once "ruled mightily in Miuyan Orchomeiius " ; Pero, daughter
of Chloris and Xeleus :
Lcda, wife of Tyndareus I])himedeia,
:
wife (if Aloeus, who said that she bare Otus and Ephialtes to
Poseidon;
wife of Amphiai-aus.
Phaedra, Procris, Aiiadiie, Maeia, Clymene: Eri])hyU',
It has been j)(jinte(l
out that if we omit rr. o4l .5,"
characters are taken from legends of the Miiiyaiis and Thebans,
all the
seeming thus to point to a Boc'otian origin of the ])assage-."'
Others regard
thi' whole of the Xekyia as IJoeotian in oi-igin,
and the J'Joeac of IK^iod has 1)eei) cited to show the fondness
(f the Ijoeoiians for smdi catalogues of women. i>iit this list
cannot be I'enarded as stiictly contiiied to even 'i'hessaly
and
l>oe()tia
unless we strike out Phaedra, Piocris, and .\riadne, and
even then Leda herselt remains, t'oi' whose expulsion from the
roll of fair women there is no shadow of pi'etext.
The result
then of this cxaiuinat ion is to show that the list is
composed of
-
Monv, '/-/ (hi. \i. L'-J.").
640 THE HOMERIC DIALECT.
women from Thessal}', Boeotia, Peloponnesus, and Crete, all
great centres of the Mycenean culture and the Pelasgiau race,
but not one is from Asia or the islands bordering thereon.
Then saw he the souls of his comrades who had fought with
him at :
Troy Agamemnon, and with him the " ghosts of those
who had died with him in the house of Aegisthus"; Achilles,
Patroclus, Antilochus, and the Telamonian Ajax.
But besides his own contemporaries he saw heroes of an
elder age : Min^s, " wielding a golden sceptre, giving sentence
from his throne to the dead, while they sat and stood around
the prince, asking his dooms." Next he saw " the Mighty
Orion driving the wild beasts together over the a.sphodel
meadow, the very beasts that he himself had slain on the lonely
hills with a strong mace all of brouze in his hands, that is ever
unbroken"; Heracles also, and Teiresias, as already mentioned.
Minos anil Heracles were not Asiatic : thev belong to the
great Pelasgiau dynasties. Indeed Heracles in Hades wears
the equipment of a chieftain of the pre-Achean days he carries
:
not the long spear of the Achean warrior, but, like the king
buried in one of the shaft-graves of Mycenae, the bow is his
weapon, for even his phantom "ever holds hi.s bow uncased
with shaft upon the string, like one in act to shoot." " About
his breast was an awful belt, a baldric of gold, whereon wondrous
things were wrought, bears and wild boars, and lions with
flashing eyes." In the ornament of this baldric we plainly
recognize the gold work of the Mycenean age. Nor is Orion
Asiatic, for he, the beloved of Eos, was slain in Ortygia by
Artemis. Teiresias is both Boeotian and pre-Achean.
As the hunter j)ursues in the ghostly world the venery that
he loved in life, and as Heracles still ever bends his bow, so
Minos is
represented giving judgments from his throne, as
perhaps in his lite he had dealt forth dooms from the great
throne lately brought to light by Mr A. J. Evans, in the hall of
the palace at Cnossus.
There are now (^nly left the arch-sinners, Tityus, Tantalus,
and Sisyphus.
Tityus and Siyyphus are closely connected with centi'al
CJreece and are therefore not Asiatic.