Trojan Battle Order
| Trojan War |
|---|
 |
The Trojan Battle Order or Trojan Catalogue is an epic catalogue in the second book of the Iliad[1] listing the allied contingents that fought for Troy in the Trojan War. The catalogue is noted for its deficit of detail compared to the immediately preceding Catalogue of Ships, which lists the Greek contingents, and for the fact that only a few of the many Trojans mentioned in the Iliad appear there.
Historicity question
Structurally the Trojan Battle Order is evidently inserted to balance the preceding Catalogue of Ships. It is, however, much shorter. Denys Page summarizes the prevailing explanation that "the Catalogues are substantially Mycenaean compositions rather expanded than altered by the Ionians" (Page 1963, pp. 153–154). Noting that the Greek catalogue occupies 265 lines but the Trojan catalogue only 61, Page wonders why the Ionian authors know so little about their native land and concludes they are not describing it but are reforming poetry inherited in oral form from Mycenaean times (Page 1963, pp. 137–139).
Some examples of Mycenaean knowledge are (Page 1963, pp. 141–143):
- Alybe in the catalog is the birthplace of silver, yet Hecataeus, the Ionian geographer, does not know where it is.
- The catalog mentions Mount Phthires near Latmus.
There is also some internal evidence that the Trojan catalogue was not part of the Iliad but was a distinct composition pre-dating the Trojan War and incorporated later into the Iliad (Page 1963, p. 140):
- Of the 26 Trojans in the catalog, only 5 appear among the 216 in the Iliad.
- The major Trojan leaders: Priam, Paris, Helenus and a few others do not appear in the catalog at all.
- At Il. 2.858 the Mysians are commanded by Chromis and Ennomus; at 14.511 ff. by Gyrtios.
- At 2.858 the Mysians live in Asia Minor; at 13.5, Thrace.
- At. 2.827 Apollo gives Pandaros his bow; at 4.105 ff it is made by a craftsman.
Page cites several more subtle instances of the disconnectedness of the Trojan catalog from the Iliad; neither is it connected to the catalog of Greek forces. Another like it appears in the Cypria (Burgess 2004, p. 138).
The catalogue in detail
The catalogue lists 16 contingents from 12 ethnonyms under 26 leaders (Luce 1975). They lived in 33 places identified by toponyms.
| Line | Ethnic Identity | Leaders | Settlements |
|---|---|---|---|
| II.815 | Trojans | Hector | None stated (Troy) |
| II.819 | Dardanians | Aeneas, Archelochus, Acamas | None stated. |
| II.824 | Trojans of Mt. Ida | Pandarus | Zeleia |
| II.828 | No name given | Adrestus, Amphius
|
Apaesus, Pityeia, Mount Tereia
|
| II.835 | No name given | Asius | Arisbe
|
| II.840 | Pelasgians, who were spearmen | Hippothous, Pylaeus | Larissa |
| II.844 | Hellespont
|
Acamas, Peiroüs | None stated. |
| II.846 | Ciconians , who were spearmen
|
Euphemus | None stated. |
| II.848 | Paeonians, archers, "from far away" | Pyraechmes (Asteropaios is also recognized as a leader in book XXI) | Amydon, river Axius |
| II.851 | Paphlagonians
|
Pylaemenes of the Eneti | |
| II.856 | Halizones "from far away" | Epistrophus
|
Alybe |
| II.858 | Mysians | Chromis, Ennomus | None stated. |
| II.862 | Phrygians | Ascanius
|
"Far-off" Ascania
|
| II.864 | Maeonians
|
Mesthles, Antiphus | Under Mt. Tmolus |
| II.867 | Carians | Nastes, Amphimachus
|
Maeander, crest of Mycale
|
| II.875 | Lycians "from far away" | Glaucus
|
River Xanthus |
Analyses
The list includes the Trojans themselves, led by
The classical Greek historian Demetrius of Scepsis, native of Scepsis in the hills above Troy, wrote a vast study of the "Trojan Battle Order" under that title (Greek Trōikos diakosmos). The work is lost; brief extracts from it are quoted by Athenaeus and Pausanias, while Strabo cites it frequently in his own discussion of the geography of northwestern Anatolia.[5]
See also
Notes
- ^ Lines 816-877.
- ^ The Anglicised spellings of the names in the table are generally as in (Rieu 1950). The order of contingents is that of the catalogue.
- ^ Β803-806. Kirk considers this "quite fantastic" (Kirk 1985, p. 245) though it seems a normal feature of fighting forces brought together from several nationalities.
- Luwian, though the poet has no name for it. Alternatively, Carian may earn this epithet as the most familiar foreign ("barbarian") language to a Greek of the eastern Aegean when the Iliad was composed (Dalby 2006, p. 132).
- Geographybook 13.
References
- Burgess, Jonathan (2004), The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-6652-9
- Dalby, Andrew (2006), Rediscovering Homer, New York, London: Norton, ISBN 0-393-05788-7
- ISBN 0-521-28171-7
- Luce, J. V. (1975), Homer and the Homeric Age, New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-012722-8
- Page, Denys (1963), History and the Homeric Iliad, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press
- Rieu, E. V., tr. (1950), Homer: The Iliad, Harmondsworth, Baltimore: Penguin
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Watkins, Calvert, "The language of the Trojans" in Troy and the Trojan War: a symposium held at Bryn Mawr College, October 1984 ed. M. J. Mellink (Bryn Mawr, 1986).