In Homeric poetry, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, there is a pattern of avoidance in making overt references to the twelve confederated states known as the Ionian Dodecapolis. In Herodotus 1.142.3, the locations of these states are listed as follows: Miletus, Myous, Priene, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Klazomenai, Phocaea, the island-states of Samos and of Chios, and, lastly, Erythrai. (See under Ionian Dodecapolis in the inventory of Words and Ideas.) Even in the two exceptional cases where Homeric poetry refers to any of these locations, what gets highlighted is merely the place, not the status of that place as a city-state or, when it comes to Chios and Samos, as an island-state. In one of these two exceptional cases, the mention of Chios at Ο.03.170 and at O.03.172 refers not to the famous island-state that Chios eventually became but simply to the island. In the other case, which we have here at I.02.868, the mention of Miletus refers not to the spectacularly famous polis or ‘city-state’ that Miletus eventually became but simply to the city—and this city is supposedly not even Greek as of yet. It is as if the Ionians had not yet settled Miletus: instead, Miletus at the time of the Trojan War is supposedly inhabited only by Carians, who do not even speak Greek: at I.02.867, these Carians who inhabit Miletus are described as barbaro-phōnoi ‘speakers of a barbarous language’.