Kin-Groups in the Homeric Epics

Walter Donlan

Classical World, Volume 101, Number 1, Fall 2007, pp. 29-39 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.2007.0103

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/224773

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 29
Kin-Groups in the Homeric Epics*
Abstract: Nineteenth-century theories about the progression of primitive
societies (including the Greeks) from a social organization made up of
small kinship units (clans) and tribes to the political organization of the
city-state were fundamentally disproved by the demonstration, in the 1970s,
that the historical subdivisions of the polis were not derived from clans,
phratries, and tribes, as anthropologists defined them, but were new groups
that served new purposes. Walter Donlans paper reexamines the reasons
why evidence of supra-familial groups is negligible in the Homeric epics,
although at the poets time they must have existed, and what use the epic
poet makes of concepts such as genos/gene and phrtr.
When I was assigned this topic, as part of a conference on the
transition from Bronze Age civilization to the Age of Homer, I con-
fess that I was seized by anxiety, and with good reason. Even for
anthropologists doing fieldwork, there is no more intractable subject
than the kinship and descent rules of the peoples they are observing,
and they all agree that the deeper one delves the more confusing it
becomes. But for us, looking to describe kin-groups in pre-polis Greece,
the challenges can seem insurmountable. In the first place, Homer
is our sole native informant, and he tells us precious little about
social groups beyond the basic kinship unit, the oikos. To compound
our confusion, we have tenaciously held onto a set of presumptions
about the genos, the phratria, and the phul passed down to us by
nineteenth-century scholarship, which has colored the way we think
about kinship and descent in the earlier ages.
In nineteenth-century Europe and America, theorists were seek-
ing universal principles of evolution that would explain how human
societies were formed, and how they ascended (or ceased to ascend)
up the evolutionary ladder, from a posited primordial stage to the
final stage of civilization and the state. In that classically trained
age, philologists and historians, as well as practitioners of the new
disciplines of anthropology and sociology, took it for granted that
the ancient Greeks were the first of the Aryan peoples to make the
advance to civilization.
The keys to understanding social evolution were descent rules and
descent groups. Evidence was mounting up. Comparative linguistics had
revealed that Greek, Latin, and the other Indo-European languages shared
an inherited vocabulary for family and kindred. Imperial colonialism

* EditorS Note: This is the minimally revised version of a paper Walter

Donlan gave at the Third A. G. Leventis Conference (From wanax to basileus) at
the University of Edinburgh in January 2003. It was not published in the conference
proceedings (S. Deger-Jalkotzy and I. S. Lemos, eds., Ancient Greece: From the My-
cenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer [Edinburgh 2006]), where only a brief abstract
appears in its place (111). Donlan had sent the paper to Kurt Raaflaub before the
conference. It is one of his last substantial pieces of work, and with the agreement of
his widow, Gail Davis, Raaflaub has edited it and offers it here as a small memorial
to a scholar, colleague, and friend, who has contributed immeasurably to our under-
standing of Homers epics and the society they depict, to our scholarly pursuits, and
to our lives. Raaflaub can be contacted at kurt_raaflaub@brown.edu.

29
30 W alter D onlan
had introduced Europeans to bands of hunter/foragers who had no
formal institutions above the family. By examining a societys kinship
terminologies and kinship systems, one could determine its stage of
evolution or reconstruct its former stages. From the perspective of
the late nineteenth century, societies such as the Bushmen in Africa
were live specimens of the primal phase of social evolution, which
the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan named savagery. 1
Above savagery, according to Morgan, lay barbarism, an
umbrella term characterizing almost all non-state societies, both past
and present. In their struggle toward civilization, the fruit, the final
reward of mankinds experience, through the barbarous progress
to sedentism and the domestication of plants and animals, nuclear
families expand into wider kin-groups, and rudimentary tribal gov-
ernments come into being. Europe stood at the head of the class, of
course. As Morgan put it in his Ancient Society, The Grecian and
Latin tribes of the Homeric and Romulian periods afford the high-
est exemplification of the Upper Status of barbarism . . . and their
experience stands directly connected with the final achievement of
civilization. 2
Morgan greatly admired George Grotes monumental History of
Greece (18461856); he quotes at length Grotes demonstration that
when the Athenians emerged from their prehistorical period they
were organized into four tribes, each of which was subdivided into
three phratries, which in turn were divided into thirty clans (gentes),
each comprising thirty families. 3 Morgan observed the same nested
structure of clan, phratry, and tribe among the Iroquois of northern
New York State, whom he placed at the lowest stage of barbarism.
The work of Grote and Morgan seemed to have made it an empirical
fact that the pre-state Greeks shared with the Iroquois a primitive
gentile organization based on descent and kinship. Anthropologists
quickly gave up this nave evolutionism; even classicists were finding
it increasingly difficult to reconcile the putative primal kin-groups
with their historical counterparts. Nevertheless, the essential core of
the evolutionary paradigm held firm throughout the greater part of
the twentieth century.
In 1976, however, Denis Roussel and Felix Bourriot, building on
earlier skeptical views, dismantled the nineteenth-century construct,
claiming that there never had been such a system among the Greeks. 4
The historical gen, phratriai, and phulai did not evolve from clans,

1
L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress
from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (New York 1878).
2
Morgan (above, n.1) 22.
3
Morgan (above, n.1) 193.
4
D. Roussel, Tribu et cit: Etudes sur les groupes sociaux dans les cits
grecques aux poques archaque et classique (Paris 1976); F. Bourriot, Recherches
sur la nature du genos. Etude dhistoire sociale athniennepriodes archaque et
classique (Paris 1976).
 K in -G roups in the H omeric E pics 31
phratries, and tribes as anthropologists defined them. Roussel and
Bourriot argued that whatever these words had signified earlier, when
they emerged in the city-states, they designated new social groups
that organized segments of the demos for new purposes. Wherever
genos, phrtr, or phulon were used as kinship terms in Homer and
Hesiod, their sense was broad or classificatory; these words cannot
have referred to corporate kin-groups. Bourriot and Rousssel squashed
the notion that genosthe basis of the gentilic systemever denotes
anything like a clan, a large family of families linked by kinship,
whether actual or fictive, or that it can ever refer to a permanent
corporation with its own land, internal organization, and religious
cult. 5 With the elimination of the genos/clan, the entire tribal pol-
ity collapses, since phratries and tribes are nothing more than wider
aggregations of clans.
Yet the nineteenth-century paradigm is so deeply entrenched,
despite the arguments of Roussel and others, that many scholars still
take the Homeric phulon to be a primitive form of the historical
phul, and the Iliadic phrtr to be a smaller segment of it. This
assumption rests on the interpretation of two Iliadic passages. The
crucial passage is Iliad 2.362363, where Nestor advises Agamem-
non to arrange the men by phula, by phrtrai, so that phrtr may
bear aid to phrtr and phula to phula. The second is Iliad 2.668,
where the distributive kataphuladon has been adduced as a direct
reference to the three Doric phulai, whose actual existence at the
time of composition is undoubted.
What exactly phulon means is open to question in both passages.
Historical phul is almost always used as the formal term for a sub-
division of a political entity. Phulon, on the other hand, is a word
of broad meaning. It most often appears with a genitive plural where
it means class or family, like ethnos or like genos in the Theogony.
Everywhere in Homer and Hesiod we find the phulon/phula of gods,
men, women, bees, dreams, singers, and so on.
Phrtr poses its own problems. Unlike genos, phulon, and ethnos,
it is never generic, but designates only a specific group. Phratr, from
which phrtr is formed, derives from the Indo-European *bhrther.
Whether *bhrther was originally a classificatory kinship term, and
phratr preserved that sense in Greek, or whether *bhrther always
denoted the consanguineal brother, and Greek phratr later became
a classificatory term, is immaterial here. In either case, the Greek
phrateres would seem to have been an ancient institution, going back
possibly to the Middle Bronze Age.
Largely on the basis of Iliad 2.362363, early twentieth-century
scholars concluded that the original brotherhood served a political/
military function which it retained down to the city-state era. So, for
example, Gustave Glotz identified phrateres in Homer with the etai
and hetairoi, the etai being the phratry members who call themselves

5
Roussel (above, n.4) 28.
32 W alter D onlan
hetairoi when on military campaigns. 6 Following Glotz, De Sanctis
stressed that the primitive hetaireiai were local, primarily associations
of neighbors, allied for the purpose of mutual aid, which eventually
morphed into the polis phratriai. 7
Sifting through these ideas, Roussel concurred with De Sanctis
that the Homeric phrtr was a mutual-aid association of neighbor-
ing families. He rejected Glotzs identification of the phrtrai with
the aristocratic hetairoi groups, but agreed that they probably served
as the pool for military recruitment. 8 Roussels and his predecessors
conceptions of the pre-state phratry have won wide acceptance, since
they accommodate the overlapping social ties among kin, neighbors,
and fellow warriors, without dismissing the political bonds between
leaders and followers.
In my own earlier conjectures about the pre-state phratry, I pro-
posed that the phrtrai of Iliad 2.362363 referred to the separate
hetairoi groups recruited by the paramount basileis of the individual
contingents; and that the phula were subsets of a phrtr, small bands
of followers bound together as much by neighborhood as by kinship. 9
Such a scheme of larger groupings encompassing smaller subdivisions
seemed to me to accord well with the catalogue of contingents, where
the place names far outnumber the names of leaders. But I, too, may
have fallen into the nested groups trap.
Of course, given what there is to work with, any attempt to pin
down the Homeric phrtr and phulon remains speculative at best.
Phulon might equal phul. If so, then we need to explain why the
two major groups of the polis are all but absent in the Homeric
texts. Phratriai and phulai were well established before the Archaic
period. Associations of phrateres must have existed in one form or
another before the Mycenaean period. The Attic-Ionian phulai go
back at least to the eleventh century; the Dorian at least to the ninth.
Certainly Homers and Hesiods contemporaries belonged to phratriai
and phulai. The answer to the question may simply be that until the
seventh century, or later, these groups played a peripheral role in the
social and political dynamics of Greek communities.
We should think of Dark Age society as a web of amiable rela-
tions formed by neighbors and kin. It is probable that most families
within a village were allied by kinship, if not consanguineal, then
at least affinalhowever distantand they would have had kin in
the other villages of the district or cantonthe territory that defined
a phratry, perhaps?and all were allied as neighbors. The ties of
neighborhood, though different from kinship ties, are no less binding.
Indeed it is easy to imagine a conflict of loyalties. A villager might

6
G. Glotz, La solidarit de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grce (Paris
1904).
7
G. De Sanctis, Atthis. Storia della repubblica ateniese dalle origini alla et di
Pericle, 2nd ed. (Turin 1912).
8
Roussel (above, n.4) 113, 12021.
9
W. Donlan, The Social Groups of Dark Age Greece, CP 80 (1985) 293308.
 K in -G roups in the H omeric E pics 33
feel more beholden to a close neighbor than to a kinsman in a vil-
lage some miles away. Yet, despite points of fracture, the networks
of relationships that formed and reformed among kin and non-kin
were strongly integrative.
Julian Pitt-Rivers observes that in many small-scale societies
individuals commonly form pseudo-kin relationships or artificial
ties of kinship based upon mutual agreement rather than birth. 10
Non-kin amity loves to masquerade as kinship, he remarks. This
tendency of friendship to mimic kinship seems to be built into the
Greek language. Philos is used of kin and non-kin alike, allies and
dependants, as well as boon companions. Ets, a kin-term of uncer-
tain meaning, and hetairos are both formed on P.I.E. *swe, ones
own, or belonging. A close hetairos, it is said, is equal in value
to a brother (kasigntos). 11 But the best example of a pseudo-kin
relationship is xeni, an institution that is overtly political alliance
yet partakes of the philia of kinship and comradeship.
Kinship thinking permeated everything, to quote M. I. Finley. 12
But mentions of specific kin outside of the oikos are infrequent in
Homer and are almost nonexistent in Hesiod. So it is to the oikos that
we must go now, the nucleus of Greek social organization. As Marvin
Harris notes, There are two universally held cognitive principles that
influence the organization of domestic life everywhere. 13 These two
are affinity and descent. Although the nuclear family, of course, is
based on an affinal alliance, descent among the Greeks is reckoned
patrilineally. Where patrilocality is observed as wellas it is in Ho-
meric societyego still feels a kinship bond with maternal relatives
and has certain duties, rights, and obligations connected with them,
but the child will have far greater contact with the patrilineal kin. In
Homer it is only the oikoi of the leading families that are described.
Among this group exogamythough not a strict ruleis generally
observed; the families with whom marriage alliances are formed not
only are outside the lineage, they usually live in a different dmos as
well. As a consequence, ties to maternal kin can sometimes be weak.
As Roussel notes, it would scarcely occur to Telemachus to call on
his mothers relatives for aid in his distress. 14 Telemachuss situation
would probably be unusual, however, in a village like Hesiods Ascra.
Especially marry a woman, he says, who lives near you, looking all
around, lest your marriage be a laughing stock to your neighbors
(Op. 699701). Offspring of such marriages will likely have fairly
frequent contact with the kin on both sides.

10
J. Pitt-Rivers, Fate of Shechem, or The Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthro-
pology of the Mediterranean (Ann Arbor 1977).
11
Od. 8.584586; see also Hes. Op. 183184, 707.
12
M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, 2nd ed. (London 1977) 83; see also
76, 105.
13
M. Harris, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology,
2nd ed. (New York 1975).
14
Od. 15.16ff.; Roussel (above, n.4) 33 n.31.
34 W alter D onlan
In the epics, the normal domestic group is the patrilocal joint
family, consisting ideally of the patriarch and his wife, their unmar-
ried sons and daughters, and their married sons with their wives and
childrenthree generations living together in a single residential
complex. Such are the households of Alcinous in the Odyssey, and
Andromaches natal family in the Iliad. There is a strictly observed
custom that brothers reside in the oikos as long as the father is still
alive. Rich and powerful chiefs, like Nestor, may also recruit their
daughters husbands into the oikos. This is a triple boon: they get to
keep their married daughters, they gain the fighting power of resident
sons-in-law, and, as a bonus, the future offspring, who will belong to
the oikos. Priams household, bloated by polygyny, is an exaggerated
version of this domestic arrangement.
Sally Humphreys sees the neolocal nuclear family as the norm
already in Homer, and suggests that the large extended family is a
relic from an earlier period. 15 What Humphreys fails to acknowledge
is that no basileus would ever opt for a single-family household. On
the contrary, it is a great misfortune for a lineage to want for sons.
I would say that the Homeric joint family was the normal form of
household during the Dark Age, at least among the leader class, and
that it remained the essential resource for political ambition down
to the eighth century, when changes in the social conditions caused
large families to segment.
The marriage and residence customs observed in Homeric society
are clearly designed to increase the households manpower and pro-
ductivity by keeping the sons together and, when possible, bringing
in gambroi, sons-in-law. Hector boasts (Il. 5.472474) that he could
protect Troy by himself, along with his gambroi and kasigntoi,
without the aid of the Trojan people (laoi) and the allies (epikou-
roi). Telemachus, at the opposite end, confides that he is helpless
against the suitors because he has no brothers and paternal cousins
(kasigntoi), in whose fighting a man puts his trust, even if a great
quarrel (neikos) arises (Od. 16.97120, at 9798). 16
Another means of enlarging the residential kinship unit is to sire
offspring by slave women, even though having concubines is a source
of tension between spouses: witness the messy family situation that
made Phoenix leave home. 17 While nothoi are always identified as
such, they are nonetheless full members of the patrilineage. Thus,
Teucer, the bastard son of Telamon, is called by his patronymic,
Telamnios, just like his half-brother Aias (Il. 8.281). And nothai
from elite families enter into marriage alliances with elite families
just as their legitimate sisters. For example, Medicaste, a noth of
Priam, is married off to Imbrius, a rich young warrior from nearby
Pedaion (Il. 13.160176).

15
S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London 1978) 200.
16
See also Od. 11.174176, 494503; Il. 24.534542.
17
Il. 9.444461; see further Od. 1.428433; also Il. 5.6971; Od. 4.1014.
 K in -G roups in the H omeric E pics 35
The kernel kin-group of the oikos may be fleshed out in a number
of ways. Dmes, who are property, supply the labor; suppliants, many
of whom have killed a kinsman, therapontes, young men from good
families, and trusted friends (pistoi hetairoi) all make excellent war-
riors. For adventures, other hetairoi, recruited ad hoc from among the
laos, make up the bulk of what is already a fairly formidable fighting
group. The oikos, in short, with all its componentsconsanguineal,
affinal, and non-kinis the closest thing we have to a corporate body
in Dark Age society. We have come a long way from the notion of
a society made up of nested corporate groups.
Outside the residential family, joint or otherwise, what level of
support could one count on from kin? In classical Athens and other
poleis legal obligations in such matters as vengeance and burial fell
upon the anchisteia, the bilateral kindred, comprising the descendants
of grandfathers on both sides to the degree of second cousin. The
bilateral kindred is not a descent group, nor can it act as a body. It
is ego-centered; that is, only ego and egos siblings will have exactly
the same set of relatives. Thus the kindred is structurally shapelessa
category rather than a group. As Robin Fox says, it comes in
and out of existence as its focal egos are born and die. 18
There is a strong supposition among Indo-Europeanists that the
bilateral kindred was usual among P.I.E. cultures and so presum-
ably had always functioned like the later anchisteia. But I think we
should dismiss the notion that the kindred had anything like a jural
status before the city-state. In the Dark Age it would have been an
optional network of relatives from which ego might seek assistance
or to which he might render assistance.
That is certainly the impression we get from Athenas warning
to Telemachus that he should hurry home from Lacedaemon to make
sure that his mother is still there: since now her father and broth-
ers are pushing her to marry Eurymachus, for he is outdoing all the
other suitors in gifts and has increased the bride price (eedna) (Od.
15.1618). As Icarius and his sons see it, Odysseus, the son-in-law, is
dead, and the suitors are in control. Icarius has never had any obli-
gation to preserve the lineage of Odysseus, and now that the marital
bond is dissolved he owes nothing to Telemachus either. Nor does
Telemachus expect anything. What he laments, as we noted earlier,
is that he has no kasigntoi, brothers or fathers brothers sons.
But when the marital bond is intact, near in-laws can make close
allies. Alcinous, seeing Odysseus weep at Demodocus song about
the Trojan War, asks him if he has lost a pos (i.e., an affine), spe-
cifically, a gambros (daughters or sisters husband) or a pentheros
(wifes father), who are especially bound by family ties (kdistoi)
after ones blood (haima) and lineage (genos) (Od. 8.581583). Yet
even here, though the ties of kin by marriage are highly valued, they

18
R. Fox, Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective (Baltimore
1967).
36 W alter D onlan
are secondary to haima and genos. I take haima to mean ones close
consanguineal kin in both the maternal and paternal lines, whereas
genos I believe is the patrilineage, a category that would comprehend
only those relations linked to one through the fatherin Dark Age
Greece a handful of living kin at best.
So, we have come full circle, back to the genos. Bourriot and
Roussel showed decisively that genos never designated a corporate
descent group. In their zeal to demonstrate that genos was not a cor-
porate clan, however, they essentially stripped the word of any cultural
significance. In the decades since, there has been a tendencyand I
count myself among the guiltyto give genos only cursory attention
in discussions of Homeric social organization.
Yet, genos in Homer is very rarely the vague category term that
phulon and ethnos frequently are: phrases like genos of mules or
genos of giants, which are ubiquitous in the Theogony, are found
only four times out of thirty-six occurrences in the Iliad and Odys-
sey. Rather, about half of the incidences of Homeric genos are in
social contexts, where it is best construed as descent or line of
descent, specifically patrilineal descent or the patriline. How can we
be so sure that genos excludes female links? In other words, why can
descent not be bilateral? One need only look at the passages where a
hero recites his genos/gene; it is always a list of begats, which are
exclusively father to sons, to their sons. For example, when asked to
give his lineage (gene), Glaucus traces his ancestry in a long line
back to Aeolus, through Sisyphus, Glaucus, Bellerophon, and finally
his father Hippolochus. Although females figure in the narration of
his genealogy, none serves as a link (Il. 6.145206).
In those places where I take genos/gene to designate a lineage
or the narrower patriline I do not have in mind what anthropologists
refer to as a unilineal descent group, that is, a fair-sized flesh-and-
blood body of kin who interact recurrently. The Homeric genos or
gene, unlike the kin members of the oikos, is essentially a group
of dead men. The live members are necessarily few. Even when the
grouping is a patrilineage, because descent is seldom traced back
further than the great-grandfather, the bottom of the cone is never
very broad. Nor does it actually do anything in the epics. We should
regard genos/gene less as a social group than as a cultural category.
It might best be described as descent construct; it gives a special
significance to a limited subset of the broad network of kin relation-
ships as ego sees them.
Roger Keesing makes the distinction between kinship and de-
scent clear. 19 Those societies that observe rules of descent, he says,
apparently conceptualize the network of kinship and the system of
descent as parallel but separate systems. So, a father and son may
interact either as father and son (i.e., based on kinship) or as fellow

19
R. M. Keesing, Kin Groups and Social Structure (New York 1975) 22.
 K in -G roups in the H omeric E pics 37
descendants of the same patrilineal ancestors (i.e., as members of the
same genos). The social occasion defines the appropriate social rela-
tionship. Thus in Od. 24.318ff., when Odysseus, overcome by filial
emotion, reveals himself to Laertes, and Laertes accepts the smata,
falling into his sons arms, the behavior of the two men is based on
the kinship bond; they interact as father and son.
Later in the same book (506), however, ties of lineage, not kin-
ship, inform the interactions of father and son. Odysseus appeals not
to filiation, but descent, when he admonishes Telemachus not to shame
the genos of his fathers (24.506509). Telemachus responds in like
manner, promising that you will see me . . . in no way disgracing
your genos (teon genos, 24.511512). At this moment, as they face
the suitors kin, all three, grandfather, son, and grandson, have in mind
the genos, the survival of the male line, not the oikos. Laertes exults:
My son and my sons son are contending about aret, whereupon
Athena pointedly addresses him as Arkeisiad, son of Arceisius, the
founder of the patrilineage (24.515). The genos may not be corporeal,
but its members feel bound to defend it nonetheless; they take special
pride in it and try hard to live up to it.
Within the society, not all gen, however, are regarded as the
same. The suitors themselves acknowledge this fact of life, when
Theoclymenus admits to Telemachus, There is no other genos more
kingly (basileuteron) than yours (plural) in the dmos of Ithaca
(15.531534); and later, as they contemplate killing Telemachus,
Amphinomus says to the others, It is a terrible thing to kill one of
royal descent (basilon genos, 16.400401).
Membership in an illustrious genos carries with it not only a
heavy obligation to preserve its good name, but also considerable
advantage at birth. Aside from the material benefits of residence and
inheritance rights, noble ancestry confers the automatic status that
comes with the family name. By virtue of being born and surviving
to adulthood one possesses a certain measure of status (tim), even
without any validating achievements. The unearned prestige bestowed
by descent is a valuable counter in the game of rivalries among elite
families. But the tim bestowed by genos is the owners to lose.
In Homer this contest is played out again and again in ritual
boasting. Diomedes plays the game well in the impromptu boul of
Iliad 14.110132. In a maneuver to lead the Achaeans in counsel he
uses his genos to offset the disadvantage of his youth. Conceding that
he is the youngest, he counters, But, I claim to be from a noble
(agathos) father by lineage, Tydeus, whom the heaped earth covers in
Thebes (113114) After tracing his ancestry through four generations
of heroes, he concludes by asserting that his genos proves him no
coward and gives him the right to speak with authority. His speech
(muthos) carries weight; they obey (epithonto, 113).
Very frequently ritual boasting is a prelude to a duel. As a defen-
sive strategy, the genos boast can be very effective in a verbal match.
Noble ancestry alone, however, is not enough to secure victorya
38 W alter D onlan
good performer must know how to present his lineage to the best
effect, how to order it, adorn it, and fabricate its outer edges.
Two of these boasting scenes illustrate the game: Achilles versus
Asteropaeus and Achilles versus Aeneas. In the first (21.139204), the
verbal duel begins with Achilles challenge to Asteropaeus to offer up
his genealogy (150151). Asteropaeus, clearly no match for Achilles
in ancestry, does the best he can: his grandfather is the river Axius
and his father a famous warrior (152160). Achilles capping boast
doesnt come until the duel is over. Addressing the corpse, he vaunts,
It is hard to vie with the sons of the mighty son of Cronus. . . .
You say you are the descendant (genos) of a wide-flowing river, but
I claim to be of the lineage (gene) of great Zeus (Il. 21.184191).
Having recited his genos, from Zeus to Aeacus to Peleus, Achilles
claims that his superior patriline made his victory inevitable: Just
as Zeus is mightier than sea-flowing rivers, so mightier too is the
offspring of Zeus than the offspring of a river (Il. 21.190191). In
his comment on lines 186199, Nicholas Richardson calls the speech
a superb piece of rhetoric. 20 That is true, but it is also a joke after
the fact. For at no time does Achilles need to prop up his martial
skill with a rhetorical appeal to noble ancestry, especially now, when
his achievement has just spoken for itself.
Perhaps the most prolix genos boast in epic is uttered by Aeneas
to Achilles (Il. 20.199258). Aeneas employs it as a counteroffen-
sive tactic in response to Achilles attempt to intimidate him with
the taunt that he had once made him run away. Aeneas begins the
contest (200) with, We know each others lineage, we know each
others parents (203). First a match of parents: Peleus and Thetis
versus Anchises and Aphrodite. Score one for Aeneas. Comparing
parents (tokes) is quite unusual in this sort of boast, but Aeneas
really has something to brag about here. Next comes the patrilineage
(gene). It is the most impressive list of begats in the Iliad; Aeneas
counts off six generations between Zeus and himself, the first three
of which are the founders of the Dardanian and Trojan peoples. He
has cast into Achilles face that Achilles boasting pointsdescent
from Zeus and an immortal for a motherare puny compared to
his. Yet, although the rhetorical contest is over, the speech is not.
Oddly, the victor goes on to undermine his own victory. Condemning
boast-and-insult contests as the worst kind of empty rhetoric, he
compares them to the bickering of angry housewives trading insults
in the village street (242256). Aeneas and everyone else understand
that a victory won by noble descent and clever speech is utterly vain
unless it is validated by achievement. Hungry for a real victory,
Aeneas challenges Achilles: With words you will not turn me away,
eager as I am for action, until we have fought face-to-face with the
bronze (256257).

20
N. Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 6: Books 2124 (Cambridge
1993).
 K in -G roups in the H omeric E pics 39
Is genos boasting, then, just a tactic, one of many that a warrior
might use in an empty game of words? Is genos itself no more than
an abstract idea of little relevance to this society? Indeed we have
stressed that genos was not so much a group as a cultural concept.
We have pointed out that where genos apparently denotes a kin-group,
most of its members are dead, and the handful of the living have no
formal function. And now we seem to have shown that any tim that
noble ancestry might confer was essentially meaningless in a society
that valued accomplishment over all else; a hero might impress others
with his genealogical recitation, but it counted for nothing unless he
knew how to fling a spear.
In a sense this is true: noble ancestry could be validated only
by noble deeds. But pride in ones lineage would likely be a strong
motivator; the obligation to live up to the genos could be the very
thing to spur an individual to achieve what he knew was expected of
him. In the passages above, genos boasting and genealogical recita-
tion make Asteropaeus and Aeneas impatient to get on with the real
duel. And, as we have seen, Odysseus final words to Telemachus
before they face the suitors are, You will learn not to disgrace the
lineage of your fathers (Od. 24.507508). Perhaps the purpose of
reciting genealogies before a duel was not so much to win points as
to rally ones own strength and courage. Genos looks backwards to
ancestors, it does not look to the side at collateral kin or forward to
future offspring. But perhaps it does look forward in a way. When
a warrior faces his rival, death is on his mind. He understands that
after he dies, his patriline, not his oikos, will be the vehicle for his
kleos. His desire is to ensure his place as one of the links in the
long line of ancestors who are remembered in song.

Classical World 101.1 (2007) Walter donlan