Iliad 20.230–241

As we learned previously from I.20.215–219, the foundational proto-Trojan king named Erikhthonios was fathered by an even earlier proto-Trojan king named Dardanos. The narrative of the genealogical succession now continues at I.20.231–241: Erikhthonios fathers Trōs, whose name means ‘Trojan’; so, from here on, the succession of kings is no longer proto-Trojan but Trojan; then Trōs fathers Ilos and Assarakos; then Ilos—whose name presupposes the alternative name of Troy, Ilion—fathers Laomedon who fathers Priam, but Assarakos fathers Kapys who fathers Anchises; finally, Priam fathers Hector but Anchises fathers Aeneas. There is a match here in the chronological sequencing for the king Erikhthonios of Troy and for the king Erikhthonios of Athens. The Athenian king Erikhthonios was a differentiated mythological by-form of another Athenian king, Erekhtheus. Such a differentiation can probably be dated as far back as the late seventh century BCE, when the Athenians gained control of Sigeion, a city that now became their very own new Troy. See Point 2 in the anchor comment at I.20.209 about Aeneas the Ionian, part 1. What resulted from this differentiation was a set of two different kings located in two different zones of time within the genealogical sequence of Athenian kings. The earlier location of Erikhthonios in this Athenian genealogy matches chronologically the location of Erikhthonios in the Trojan genealogy that culminates in Aeneas. According to the Parian Marble (FGH 239 section 23), Troy was conquered in 1209/8 BCE, and that event would have happened roughly three centuries after an event that coincides with the era of the Athenian king Erikhthonios: according to the Parian Marble (FGH 239 section 10), the Athenians claimed that Erikhthonios was the inventor of the four-horse chariot for the occasion of the first chariot race held at the first Panathenaic festival in 1505/4 BCE. So, the differentiation of the Athenian Erekhtheus into an earlier Erikhthonios and a later Erekhtheus made it possible to connect more easily the Athenian Erikhthonios with the Trojan Erikhthonios, ancestor of Aeneas. This way, the prestige of the Trojan genealogy, culminating in the dynastic figure of the epic hero Aeneas, could be appropriated into the Athenian genealogy of kings. A signal of such an Athenian appropriation in the Iliad is a pointed reference at I.05.271 to four chariot-horses owned by Anchises, father of Aeneas, to be complemented by two chariot-horses owned by Aeneas himself. I.05.272. The narrative introduces these two sets of chariot-horses by revealing at I.05.263–270 that Anchises secretly bred six horses from the original set of chariot-horses given by Zeus to Trōs in compensation for the abduction of the king’s son, Ganymede; of these six, he kept four for himself and gave two to Aeneas, I.05.271–272. As we have already learned from the Parian Marble (FGH 239 section 10), the Athenians claimed that Erikhthonios was the inventor of the four-horse chariot for the occasion of the first chariot race held at the first Panathenaic festival in 1505/4 BCE. So, the Iliadic reference to the four-horse chariot team of Anchises is an implicit Athenian signature. To be contrasted are the two-horse chariot teams used by almost all warriors—including Aeneas himself, I.05.270–272—for fighting battles in the Trojan War. An exception is the four-horse chariot team used by Hector, I.08.185. He too, like Aeneas, is a descendant of Dardanos, I.20.240. So here again we see the makings of an implicit Athenian signature.