Genealogical thinking, Hesiod's Catalogue, and the creation of the Hellenes

Abstract

Genealogy was important in early Greece. One thinks readily of aristocratic lineages proudly recited by Homeric heroes, and the family lore carefully recorded by epinician poets; but passing remarks are even more revealing. In the seventh book of the Iliad Nestor tells of an embassy he once led north to Phthia, where he hoped to enlist the aid of Peleus' mighty son in the coming campaign. Welcoming his Argive guests, Peleus asks eagerly about their ‘ancestry and descent’, and hears the answers with much pleasure: In Peleus' part of the country southerners were not often seen. He seeks by his questions to relate the unknown to the known; he is hoping that somewhere in the pedigree a familiar name will turn up to give him a point of reference. Genealogy gives him his bearings. For those within the system a genealogy is a map. They can read its signs. To the names are attached stories, thousands of them; collectively they gave the listeners their sense of history and their place in the world. Hence Peleus' great pleasure in hearing the answers. Centuries later, the Greeks were no different; the sophist Hippias says that the crowds at Olympia like to hear nothing better than his recitations of genealogies.