4 The Catalogue of the Ships in the Iliad
The Catalogue of the Ships (Il. 2. 494-760) lists the contingents of the Achaean army mustered for the expedition against Troy. It identifies the leaders and their followers, and the districts and places from which they come, and gives the numbers of the ships in each contingent.
The districts and places are discussed in this chapter in the order of the territorial divisions in the Catalogue. The names are written here in transliterated form, followed by selected references to relevant modern works, usually excavation and/or survey reports and commentaries. References to ancient sources (e.g. Strabo and Pausanias) are normally included in the discussions below. Short summaries are given at the end of each division; more general questions are considered in the Commentary at the end of the Chapter.
REFERENCES
References to articles in periodicals are usually abbreviated, without titles and names of authors.
Special Abbreviations:
CSHI = Hope Simpson, R., and J.F. Lazenby. 1970. The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer’s Iliad (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
GAC = Hope Simpson, R., and O.T.P.K. Dickinson. 1979. A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilization in the Bronze Age, Vol I: The Mainland and Islands, SIMA 52 (Göteborg: Åström).
MG = Hope Simpson, R. 1981. Mycenaean Greece (Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press).
MFHDC = Hope Simpson, R., and D.K. Hagel. 2006. Mycenaean Fortifications, Highways, Dams and Canals, SIMA 53 (Sävedalen: Åström).
For material published before 1978, most references were given in GAC and MG, and are not all repeated here. In several cases also there is no need for major additions to the comments and references in CSHI.
This discussion of the Catalogue is not intended as a replacement of CSHI, and should be read in conjunction with CSHI. In cases where important new evidence must be considered, the commentary is more detailed. For some well known sites, such as Mycenae, Tiryns and Athens, only brief further notes and bibliography are given. It has not, however, been possible for the author to guarantee full coverage of all the relevant more recent discoveries and commentaries. A comprehensive treatment of the literary and philological questions involved is given by E. Visser, Homers Katalog der Schiffe (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1997). His very useful bibliography includes a list of all the ancient sources. Visser discusses all the districts and places in the Catalogue, but does not provide a systematic commentary on the archaeological and topographical evidence.
THE ANCIENT SOURCES
Much of the evidence for the locations of the Homeric names is derived from the commentaries of Strabo and Pausanias. Their journeys were subject to the many difficulties of travel in the Greece of their times. Built roads were few even in the Roman period. It is often obvious that Strabo and Pausanias did not actually visit the place they discuss. On many occasions they rely only on local information (and local speculation