The ships of the Achaeans are beached along the shores of a large U-shaped bay that opens into the Hellespont. See Map 1 and Map 2 at HPC 157 and 158 respectively. Such a bay no longer exists, because of long-term silting from the river Scamander, which emptied into the bay. In the second millennium BCE and even later, however, the bay was very much of a reality, as the maps show, and the visualization in the Homeric Iliad approximates such a topographical reality. This is not to say, however, that we should imagine the ships of the Achaeans as floating at anchor in the waters of such a bay: rather, the Iliad pictures the ships are beached along the shores of the bay, with their sterns facing inland and their prows facing out toward the waters. On this positioning, see also the comment on I.14.027–036. Exploring further the Iliadic visualization, we can see that the beached ship of Odysseus is located at the bottom of the U-shaped bay, at the south in the middle of the bayline, while the beached ships of Achilles and Ajax are located respectively at the upper left and the upper right tips of the U, at the northwest and northeast. To be highlighted here is a detail about the ship of Odysseus: the king Agamemnon is shown standing on the deck of this beached ship, which is said to be located en messatōi ‘in the middlemost space’, I.08.223, and from here this over-king projects his voice of royal authority, shouting mightily to all the Achaeans stationed at their own ships, I.08.227. Correspondingly, all the Achaeans stationed at all the beached ships can hear the king’s voice—from the ship of Achilles at one extreme of the U-shaped bay all the way to the ship of Ajax at the other extreme, I.08.224–226 (HPC 160–161). Agamemnon’s own beached ship, together with the ships of Diomedes and Nestor, is located near the ship of Odysseus, and it is in this ‘middlemost space’ of the U-shaped bayline that the central station of the Achaeans is visualized by the narrative, I.08.223. In the later comments at I.11.005–016, I.11.806–808, and I.14.027–036, there will be more to say about the locations of all these beached ships. To be highlighted already now, however, is the general reference to the klisiai or ‘shelters’ here at I.08.220, which are the abodes of the heroes. Then at I.08.224 the same word klisiai refers specifically to the abodes of Achilles and Ajax, mentioned at I.08.224–225. The description here shows that the klisiai ‘shelters’ of these two heroes are pointedly aligned with their beached ships. As for the ships beached at the middle of the bayline in the south, they mark a political and sacral centerpoint for the Achaeans. The evidence for the preceding formulation will be presented in the comment on I.11.806–808.