Achaeans

“ And first the Trojans drave back the bright-eyed Achaeans, who left the corpse and shrank back before them; howbeit not a man did the Trojans high of heart slay with their spears, albeit they were fain, but they set them to hale the corpse. Yet for but scant space were the Achaeans to hold back therefrom, for full speedily did Aias rally them—Aias that in comeliness and in deeds of war was above all the other Danaans next to the peerless son of Peleus. ”

“ The Achaeans were long the most eminent of the Grecian tribes. Possessed of nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus, except, by a singular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, they boasted the warlike fame of the opulent Menelaus and the haughty Agamemnon, the king of men. The dominant tribe of the heroic age, the Achaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of the Pelasgic and Hellenic sway—their character indeed Hellenic, but their descent apparently Pelasgic. ”

“ It is now admitted by the majority of scholars that the Aegean civilisation cannot have originated with the Achaeans; but there is still great difference of opinion as to the nature of its relations with this people. Some hold that the prehistoric civilisation of Crete was non-Achaean—and indeed non-Greek—until its fall, and yet believe that Mycenae and the other cities of the mainland were always Achaean. ”

“ Ye Trojans and Lycians and Dardanians that fight in close combat, stand ye fast. No long space shall the Achaeans hold me back, for all they have arrayed themselves in fashion like a wall; nay, methinks, they will give ground before my spear, if verily the highest of gods hath urged me on, the loud-thundering lord of Hera. ”

“ But when they came to the wide camp of the Achaeans, they drew the black ship up on the shore, high upon the sands, and set in line the long props beneath, and themselves scattered among the tents and ships. But he in his wrath sat beside his swift-faring ships, the Zeus-sprung son of Peleus, swift-footed Achilles. Never did he go forth to the place of gathering, where men win glory, nor ever to war, but wasted away his own heart, as he tarried where he was ”

“ The ancients regarded them [the Achæans] as a branch of the Æolians, with whom they afterwards reunited into one national body, i.e., not as an originally distinct nationality or independent branch of the Greek people. Accordingly, we hear neither of an Achæan language nor of Achæan art. A manifest and decided influence of the maritime Greeks, wherever the Achæans appear, is common to the latter with the Æolians. Achæans are everywhere settled on the coast, and are always regarded as particularly near relations of the Ionians. ”

“ The Achaeans verily deemed that they should never escape from out the peril, but should perish, while for the Trojans, the heart in each man's breast hoped that they should fire the ships and slay the Achaean warriors. ”

“ See also art. ROME, History, ii. ``The Republic,'' sect. B (b) . (M. O. B. C.)
ACHAEANS ('Achaioi, Lat. Achivi) , one of the four chief divisions of the ancient greek peoples, descended, according to legend, from Achaeus, son of Xuthus, son of Hellen. This Hesiodic genealogy connects the Achaeans closely with the Ionians, but historically they approach nearer to the Aeolians. Some even hold that Aeolus is only a form of Achaeus. In the Homeric poems (1000 B.C.) the Achaeans are the master race in Greece ”

“ On the other hand they may have belonged to an earlier wave of Greek invasion. Or again they may have been a non-Greek (perhaps Thraco-Phrygian) people whose relations with the Achaeans were rather in the nature of influence, however deeply this may have penetrated. That the Achaeans also were an essentially military people is shown by the tone of Homeric poetry throughout and by the story of the Iliad as a whole, as well as by many incidental passages in the Odyssey. We have good reason too for believing that their occupation was in the nature of a military rather than a tribal settlement. ”

“ Take your horses out of their chariots and give them their feeds of corn; then make speed to bring sheep and cattle from the city; bring wine also and corn for your horses and gather much wood, that from dark till dawn we may burn watchfires whose flare may reach to heaven. For the Achaeans may try to fly beyond the sea by night, and they must not embark scatheless and unmolested; many a man among them must take a dart with him to nurse at home, hit with spear or arrow as he is leaping on board his ship, that others may fear to bring war and weeping upon the Trojans. ”

“ His remarks are, we think, much more appropriate to the post-Homeric period when society was in a state of disintegration. Yet in regard to the Achaeans, we must point out that their sentiments or ideals of vengeance may not always have coincided with their acts. The arbitrariness of military control, the presence of subjects outside the caste, the necessity felt by the Achaeans of supporting their own side in every dispute, make the period of their domination an epoch to which the words of Pausanias are not entirely inapplicable. ”

“ Son of Atreus and ye other princes of the hosts of Achaea, lo, full many long-haired Achaeans are dead, whose dark blood keen Ares hath now spilt about fair-flowing Scamander, and their souls have gone down to the house of Hades; therefore were it well that thou make the battle of the Achaeans to cease at daybreak, and we will gather to hale hither on carts the corpses with oxen and mules; and we will burn them a little way from the ships that each man may bear their bones home to their children, whenso we return again to our native land. ”

“ But the Achæans we may term, without hesitation, a Pelasgian people, in so far, that is, as we use this name merely as the opposite of the term 'Hellenes,' which prevailed at a later time, although it is true that the Hellenes themselves were nothing more than a particular branch of the Pelasgian stock. ... [The name of the] Achæans, after it had dropped its earlier and more universal application, was preserved as the special name of a population dwelling in the north of the Peloponnese and the south of Thessaly."
Georg Friedrich Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, Introduction. ”

“ The ephors and the assembly concluded that there was no alternative but to assist the Achaeans in their campaign against the Acarnanians. Accordingly they sent out Agesilaus with two divisions and the proper complement of allies. The Achaeans none the less marched out in full force themselves. No sooner had Agesilaus crossed the gulf than there was a general flight of the population from the country districts into the towns, whilst the flocks and herds were driven into remote districts that they might not be captured by the troops. ”

“ The arts which were employed against Macedonia were also employed against the Achæans. The small should be stricken like the great, so that in the end both might be completely and easily taken. The Romans must have seen with pleasure the perverse measures to which Philopœmen and the Achæans resorted in order to force the Peloponnesus to the unity of the League.g
The Romans, thus invited to act as umpires in Greece, found means to break the strength of the commonwealth of Achaia, by seducing its confederate states—a conduct which, in the eyes of pure morality, must appear enormously treacherous ”

“ Coulanges [44] holds that the local gods of primitive peoples often carry the same name even when they are really different in form and ritual. But here we think that we can detect the influence of Homer and the Achaeans. The Homeric god is stereotyped in form and character as in name. The form and character was created, we believe, by the military Achaean caste, while the name was in most if not all cases a Pelasgian product. It was all the more possible for the [102] Achaeans to give character and personality to the gods, if there had been local variations in the Pelasgian types. ”

“ Then spake unto him great Hector of the flashing helm: "Aias, seeing God gave thee stature and might, aye, and wisdom, and with thy spear thou art pre-eminent above all the Achaeans, let us now cease from battle and strife for this day; hereafter shall we fight again until God judge between us, and give victory to one side or the other. Howbeit night is now upon us, and it is well to yield obedience to night's behest, that thou mayest make glad all the Achaeans beside their ships, and most of all the kinsfolk and comrades that are thine ”

“ For it is impossible for the Achaeans, beaten as they are, to damage your territory: but I imagine that they will be only too thankful to heaven if they can but protect their own, when they find themselves surrounded by war with Eleans and Messenians as allied to us, and with ourselves at the same time. And Philip, I am persuaded, will soon desist from his attack, when involved in a war by land with Aetolians, and by sea with Rome and King Attalus. The future may be easily conjectured from the past. ”

“ But I would there were some comrade to bear word with all speed to the son of Peleus, for methinks he hath not even heard the woeful tale, that his dear comrade is slain. Howbeit, nowhere can I see such a one among the Achaeans, for in darkness are they all enwrapped, themselves and their horses withal. Father Zeus, deliver thou from the darkness the sons of the Achaeans, and make clear sky, and grant us to see with our eyes. In the light do thou e'en slay us, seeing such is thy good pleasure. ”

“ But the Cyclic poets do not often appear to know Achaean traditions, of the Trojan affair outside of our Homer. We have shown that Palamedes was not originally an Achaean of the Achaeans, but a culture hero. The legend of Telephus, with its sympathetic magic, is wholly un-Achaean; so is [Pg 221] Iphigeneia; so are the sons of Theseus; so is the Attic Nemesis. ”

“ When the Achaeans were driven from their land by the Dorians, they did not retire from Peloponnesus, but they cast out the Ionians and occupied the land called of old Aegialus, but now called Achaea from these Achaeans. The Arcadians, on the other hand, have from the beginning to to the present time continued in possession of their own country. 5.1.2 The rest of Peloponnesus belongs to immigrants. The modern Corinthians are the latest inhabitants of Peloponnesus, and from my time to the time when they received their land from the Roman Emperor is two hundred and seventeen years. ”

“ Filled are thy huts with bronze, and women full many are in thy huts, chosen spoils that we Achaeans give thee first of all, whensoe'er we take a citadel. Or dost thou still want gold also, which some man of the horse-taming Trojans shall bring thee out of Ilios as a ransom for his son, whom I haply have bound and led away or some other of the Achaeans? Or is it some young girl for thee to know in love, whom thou wilt keep apart for thyself? Nay, it beseemeth not one that is their captain to bring to ill the sons of the Achaeans. ”

“ When the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed the Achæans had formed a great number of small independent communities, some inhabiting islands, and others living in valleys surrounded by chains of mountains. The only tribe whose methods of government are depicted in some detail was one of the least of the Greek peoples, and had its home in Ithaca, a rocky island of the Ionian sea about seventeen miles long and three or four miles broad. The larger tribes were the Mycenæans, the Spartans, and the Achæans of Phthiotis. ”

“ There had also been a movement among the Achaeans themselves, and the cities were eager for revolt; the common people expecting a division of the land, and a release from their debts, and the chief men being in many places ill-disposed to Aratus, and some of them angry and indignant with him, for having brought the Macedonians into Peloponnesus. ”

“ The Achaeans, he said, if they opposed their passage, could not complain if the Aetolians met force by force, but if they kept quiet they would not stand in the way of the project. Against the Messenians they would have no difficulty in finding a grievance, for they had long been inflicting wrong on the Aetolians by promising to ally themselves with the Achaeans and Macedonians. ”

“ Strabo seems to give a different story respecting the Achæans in Peloponnêsus: he says that they were the original population of the peninsula, that they came in from Phthia with Pelops, and inhabited Laconia, which was from them called Argos Achaicum, and that on the conquest of the Dôrians, they moved into Achaia properly so called, expelling the Iônians therefrom (Strabo, viii p. 365) . This narrative is, I presume, borrowed from Ephorus. ”

“ Occasionally, in obedience to pressure put upon him by the Achaeans, he would assault some city, but did not capture a single one. And now, as the season of autumn rapidly approached, he prepared to leave the country; 13whereupon the Achaeans, who looked upon his exploits as abortive, seeing that not a single city, willingly or unwillingly, had as yet been detached from their opponents, begged him, as the smallest service he could render them, at any rate to stay long enough in the country to prevent the Acarnanians from sowing their corn. ”

“ Upon this, the Aeginetans and the Hermionians immediately joined the Achaeans, and the greatest part of Arcadia entered their confederacy; and the Macedonians being occupied with various wars upon their own confines and with their neighbors, the Achaean power, the Aetolians also being in alliance with them, rose to great height. ”

“ Amyclæ, however, is not the only Achæan city which was not reduced by the Dorians till a late period. Ægys, on the frontiers of Arcadia, is said to have been taken from the Achæans by Archelaus and Charilaus a short time before Lycurgus; Pharis, together with Geronthræ, by Teleclus;361 and Helos in the plains, near the mouth of the Eurotas, by Alcamenes, the son of Teleclus.362 So long as these places belonged to the Achæans, the Spartans were shut out from the sea, and surrounded on all sides by the possessions of a different race. ”