Talk:Achaeans (Homer)

Misc.

Dear Hmmmmm: I agree. If you know what is good for Wikipedia you do not jostle with Achaeans. Thucydides 1.3.1 says that Homer knew no general term for the Greek people but called them by their various tribes, Danaans, Argives, Achaians, and so forth. There ought to be a separate article for Danaans, not rice pudding them in with some other tribe. And since the texts of Homer survive, we know that in this case Thucydides was correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ismark (talk • contribs) 22:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. "The Achaeans were the people of ancient Greece." the people is too narrow when you have Mycenaeans and Dorians, both of whom were Greek-speakers, jostling the Achaeans on either chronological side. --MichaelTinkler.

Everything I have seen equates the Mycenaeans and Achaeans as one and the same people. We sure the Achaeans were late invaders? Btw, Greek civilization had already fallen apart by the time the Dorians showed up.

Well, something happened to the Mycenaeans, and some people still believe in invaders. I don't particularly, myself. --MichaelTinkler.

Right, but those people who believe in invaders believe in Dorian invaders, not Achaean invaders. The usual date for the Achaean migration is around 1600-1500 BC, before the Mycenaean city centres formed. I really think the page is wrong to draw the distinction it does, and will change it with your approval.

This is wikipedia! Just change it. I agree, anyway. --MichaelTinkler

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Using the otherwise unknown form "Achae" over "Achaeans" is just plain silly. Reverting. -- llywrch 05:35 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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why not read all the wiki about Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians, and Achaeans instead of arguing? Ancient greece was divided into 3 groups; Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians. Achaeans were an earlier group that split into Ionians, Aeolians. The Ionians bought peace with the dorians (dorians being so into Sparta) by selling them all their land, and the aeolians just packed up and disappeared from history when the dorians showed up.

it all reminds me vaguely of Freud: Id, Ego, Superego - what else can history teach?66.150.46.254 (talk) 12:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

18th century Achaeans

"Achaeans" is not the name given to any archaeologically identifyable culture. The recent info added about "18th century Achaeans" belongs either under "Mycenaean Civilization" or under "Proto-Greeks" (the latter are estimated to have reached Greece between 2500 and 2000 BC). Before the discovery of the "Ahhiyawa" texts, Achaeans was the collective name for the Greeks in Homer. If we identify them with the Ahhiyawa, they become a historical people, the mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century. This article should exclusively deal with (a) the homeric Achaeans and (b) the Ahhiyawa references. We have no way to determine whether the Achaeans already were a separate tribe among the immigrating proto-greeks. There are a series of good articles at Aegean Civilization. We just need to link to these, and History of Mycenaean Greece, no need to summarize that information here. dab 10:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Etymological links for term Danaans?

Is there any source which might link the term Danaans to the Irish Tuatha De Danann or the Danua tribe of Sea Peoples? The names are strikingly similar and the mythology of the Danua/Sea People would certainly fit the Dorian invasion period. User:FeanorStar7

It may also be worth researching if the Dananns can be linked to the Biblical Danites, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Dryley —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.253.71.68 (talk • contribs).

Taking into account the myth of "Danaides" (Daughters of Danaus),which is connected with flowing water,the name Danaus is propably linked with the PIE root *danu=river. Denyen or Danuna who are identified as inhabitants of Adana of Anatolia were one group of the sea-peoples.Mycenean Pylos was destroyed by sea peoples.It's also possible that the Danites were Aegean.The probleme is with the chronology.(see Greeks-namesAxosman (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Ahhiyawa

Is it correct to state that Ahhiyawa is a place in Asia Minor? This seems to be saying outright that the Ahhiyawa are not the Achaeans, which strikes me as POV. Clearly they have connections to Asia Minor, but I didn't think it was clear where Ahhiyawa was supposed to be. Anybody know? john k 21:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

This is still disputed, but I think most people place Ahhiyawa on the mainland now. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Ahhiyawa and Ogygia

I believe that Ahhiyawans and Achaeans were the same people.

But perhaps, the word Ahhiyawa is derived from the word "Ogygia" (or preciously, Ôgygia or Ωγυγια), the original name of Attica and Boeotia.

Plus, it is possible that the "Aegean sea" may derived from "Ogygia".

The people of Ogygia are Ogyges (i.e. Ogy-ges) and the suffix "-ges" was usual in ante-Greek and proto-Greek tribes.

The root "Ogy-" there is in both words Achae-ans and Ahhi-ya-wa.

So, perhaps Hittites, originally, knew the Achaeans/Ogygians of Athens of Attica and later, the Achaeans of Argos of Peloponnesos.

--IonnKorr 19:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Homeric "Achaea" and other problems

I don't think Homer ever refers to a geographic entity called "Achaea". He certainly doesn't make Argos its capital, nor is Agamemnon's kingdom (which doesn't include Argos) equated with Achaea. The article seems to confuse Homeric political geography with historical Greek political geography; not really a good idea.

This bit of the article seems questionable: "Danaans is the name attributed to the tribe first dominating the Peloponnese and the area near Argos. Achaeans is the name of the tribe that, reinforced by the Aeolians, first dominated Greek territories, centering itself around its capital in Mycenae." Where does this information come from? --Akhilleus (talk) 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Serious revision needed

This article requires a complete revamp. Firstly, it talks about the words 'Danaans' and 'Argives' in addition to the word 'Achaeans' within the article. This is not suitable considering the title of the article. Their seems to be two options either incorporate this material within a larger article perhaps called something along the line of 'Homeric names for the Greeks' or they should be split off into single articles.

Most of this article is also highly suspect with regards to facts. It presents the Iliad as depicting some sort of unified army of Achaeans, lead by Agamemnon, coming from a unified political entity know n as Achaea. This is a mistake. The Iliad clearly depicts some sort of loose confederation of chieftains all from a single ethnic background. Each chieftain, whilst acknowledging Agamemnon's superiority, is clearly independent. Agamemnon is only a first among equals if you will.

It also calls Argos the original capital of the Achaeans. This is incorrect. The Achaeans never had a capital and was never in any way a unified political force. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.32.207 (talk • contribs).

I largely agree with this comment, except that I don't really have a problem with mentioning that Danaans and Argives are other collective names for the Achaeans in Homer. It's probably a good idea to mention that Achaea was a region of the Peloponnese in historical times, and that its residents were called Achaeans. (This region did not include Argos, however.) --Akhilleus (talk) 01:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

In addition it would be useful I think to mention the Achaean League which existed during the Hellenistic period. In fact I wonder if the author(s) of this article have conflated the Hellenistic Achaean League (and indeed the Aetolian League) with the Homeric Achaeans. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.94.41 (talk • contribs).

The Achaean League has its own article, so we just need to link to that. You might be right about the conflation, which would be a very strange error to make. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Egyptian sources

Can someone please provide a reference to substantiate the "Egyptian sources" section? So far, I had to remove an entire paragraph that seemed to contain a mish-mash of facts and unsubstantive interpretations. Deucalionite (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather a stale debate

"scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans, and is still hotly debated." If this "origin" (a creaky formula itself) is "still hotly debated", how is it that all the references date to the 1920s? The "hot" debate might be dealt with summarily as a sideline on historiography of the Achaeans.--Wetman (talk) 10:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Deleted text

I have deleted the text

Homer never used the word "Greeks"

from the introduction. Homer uses the word Hellenes now translated as Greeks for the followers of Achilles and those in the area around Thessaly. --5telios (talk) 16:05, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

More precisely, Homer said that Achilles ruled over both Achaeans and Hellenes: Those again who held Pelasgian Argos, Alos, Alope, and Trachis; and those of Phthia and Hellas the land of fair women, who were called Myrmidons, Hellenes, and Achaeans. This is dubious and the Iliad is not history, but the statement can be read as if the Hellenes were one tribe or ethnic group that were possibly not Achaean, the very opposite of the term having a panhellenic meaning. Hellas here seems to refer to a land ruled by Achilles along with Phthia, not to all of Greece. The article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Greeks covers this topic better and should be perhaps linked here. There is a claim that Homer uses the term panhellenic in the Iliad, but checking the link, it refers to a line saying that Ajax the Lesser excelled all other Hellenes and Achaeans in the use of the spear (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekTexts&getid=1&query=Hom.%20Il.%202.530). The word panhellenic is not to be found in Homer! Skamnelis (talk) 10:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Homer's usage of the words Ἀχαιοί, Ἀργεῖοι, Δαναοί and ελληνες is only loosely connecteted to geographical or political reality, either Mykenian or 8th century B.C., but mainly dictated by the inflexible rules of the hexameter (—◡◡ˌ—◡◡ˌ—◡◡ˌ—◡◡ˌ—◡◡ˌ—◠). 62.214.2.46 (talk) 07:34, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Recent movement

I think that this movement made by MinisterForBadTimes is rather arbitrary and confusing. The excuse "In order to make 'Achaeans' a disambiguation page, since this article is far from the only meaning" really makes no sense. This movement has caused major problems in articles where the tribe of the Achaeans are (or should be) mentioned. The disambiguation page doesn't really help. A single article about the Achaeans, with references to them as a major Greek tribe that formed the Mycenaean civilization and a name that later came to be used collectively for all the Greeks in the Iliad was just fine, I cannot see the reason of splitting it in two articles, Achaeans (Homer) and Achaeans (tribe) (note that the latter doesn't exist but redirects to the irrelevant article of Achaea (ancient region)). In this way we could split Ionians in three articles, one for the tribe, one for the Ionians of mainland Greece and another for those of Asia Minor, but we talk about the same people of the Ionic language and culture, and their process. Here we talk about a people (the Achaeans) who dominated Mycenaean Greece, thus giving their name to all the Greeks in the era of the Trojan War, something like the small tribes of Graecoi and Hellenes who lent their names to the whole nation, so what's it all about? - Sthenel (talk) 02:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it might not be immediately apparent what I intended (my move summary wasn't particular well written, for sure). I am also uncertain that moving the article about homeric Achaeans to this location was necessary. BUT, I definitely think that splitting the article up was the right move. The article that was at "Achaeans" was almost entirely about the Homeric use of the word, with some rather confusing references to the historic Achaeans and the Achaean league. I felt it was simpler just to split the article up; that way, people can always be linked to the relevant page, and not have to read the whole article just to work out which set of Achaeans were being referred to. The equation Mycenaean Achaeans = Ancient Achaeans = Modern Achaeans might be true, but I have not seen any evidence to prove it.

Personally, I think that splitting "Ionians" up wouldn't be a terrible idea, but the case is less pressing. All Ionians were still Ionians. But not all Achaeans (Homer) were Achaeans (tribe) or members of the Achaean League (most of whom were not even Achaeans (tribe)); don't get me started on inhabitants of Achaea (Roman province), or even modern day Achaea. Note that "Ionians", "Aeolians" and "Dorians" have no modern meaning: Achaean does, so the more reason to disambiguate it.

Secondly, I corrected the vast majority of links, so that they direct to exactly the right article (so, in articles referring to the Achaean League, "Achaeans" now links to Achaean League, and not here). The only ones I haven't corrected yet are those linking to Achaean, which is a redirect page anyway. But I will. I think "has caused major problems" is rather a large exaggeration. In my opinion, it is better to have to go through a disambiguation page than to end at the wrong article entirely.

Thirdly, I'm not sure why you say that Achaea (ancient region) is irrelevant to Achaeans (tribe)? Where did they live then? At any rate, the reason that it currently redirects is that I have yet written the Achaeans (tribe) page yet; I am not yet able to do everything at once. The idea is that Achaeans (tribe) should match the articles Ionians, Dorians and Aeolians.

Ultimately, I just don't see the need to describe all meanings of "Achaean" in the same article. To me, that is confusing. It's not like Wikipedia is going to run out of pages, so I don't really see there's a problem - as long as I finish tidying the links up.  M.F.B.T.  ^{Yes, Minister?} 12:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The fact that an article (in this case the general article of Achaeans) is incomplete, it doesn't cover all the issues and primarily deals with one of the multiple issues, isn't enough to split this article. Moreover, the reference to the homeric Achaeans is done with a parallel reference to the historic Achaeans. Achaea (ancient region) is irrelevant to Achaeans (tribe); 1. the first article in its current form doesn't refer to any classical region of Achaea, obviously you have done there exactly the opposite of what you've done in the article of Achaeans, you have united different articles in one with a large part of it referring to (again) homeric and historical Achaeans and with a brilliant absence of any information about classic Achaea (what kind of info could someone add in that section?); 2. furthermore, what does this article about ancient Achaea (which deals with the Achaean League and Roman Achaea, but even if we had a section about classic Achaea) have to do with the tribe of Achaeans who formed the Mycenaean civilization some 1000 years ago? It's like we redirect the article Dorians to the article of Doris (Greece). You said that there is no need to describe all meanings of "Achaean" in the same article. What do you mean? Having an article about the historic tribe that emerged in an early stage, with a section talking about the use of their name in the Iliad doesn't seem confusing. By the way, nobody asked to include Roman, medieval or modern Achaeans in such an article (I wonder who could write anything about them), so where did you see the equation you mentioned above? - Sthenel (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Taking your last point first: no-one did include roman, medieval, modern Achaeans in the Achaeans article; that was the problem. There were formerly lots of links made to Achaeans which were should have directed to e.g. Achaean League; instead, those links ended up at an article about Homeric Achaeans. This is how I first became aware of the problem. So either the article needed to start with a proper explanation of who all these Achaeans were or it needed a disambiguation and split. I decided (rightly or wrongly) to try the latter option. You are, or course, entitled to think I am wrong.

Taking your second point: As I already said, I haven't finished writing everything. The Achaea (ancient region) will eventually primarily deal with Classical Achaea. So far I have written a section about where the name comes from, and what other uses it has. There will be an Achaeans (tribe) article, about the historic tribe of the Achaeans, who lived in Achaea. In that article, it will be discussed whether those Achaeans were the descendents of the people who founded the Mycenaean culture.

The problem as I see it is this: the only tribal group who definitely called themselves the Achaeans were the Classical Achaeans. There is a (reasonable) assumption that there was a Mycenaean era tribe called the Achaeans, but where is the proof? That is what Homer calls them, but Homer was probably writing much later. There is also the reference to the Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts, but that is far from proven to refer to the Achaeans. Unless there is firm evidence that there was an tribal group in the Mycenaean era that called themselves Achaeans, then the article Achaeans (tribe) (or whatever title it eventually ends at) should be refer firstly to the historic Achaeans. We can discuss whether they were the same people as the Mycenaean greeks, or the Homeric Achaeans, but all we can definitely say is that they historically lived in Achaea.

Similarly, for the article here to claim that Achaeans was the name of an ancient tribe who eventually gave their name to all Greeks would be original research; all we can say is that Homer uses it as an collective term for Greeks - the Iliad is not a historical document.

I should add that if there is firm evidence that there were Mycenaean era Greeks who called themselves Achaeans, then I am clearly wrong, and should be ignored. As far as I am aware, there isn't, but...  M.F.B.T.  ^{Yes, Minister?} 16:00ish, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have started the article on the Achaeans (tribe), since it seemed to worry you so much that it re-directed to the ancient region. I've also moved the discussion of the names of the Achaeans to this article from the ancient region - I agree that it makes more sense in the context of the tribe. Obviously it isn't a great article yet, but it's no worse than Aeolians, Dorians etc.  M.F.B.T.  ^{Yes, Minister?} 16:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

1. If some links wrongly lead to Achaeans while they should direct to Achaean League, we just change the links instead of splitting the article in minor issues. 2. The Achaean tribe of Mycenaean Greece was not a people of any specific Achaean region. Don't confuse the tribe with the people who lived in Achaea much later, who were probably the Achaeans of the whole Peloponnese who were driven in Achaea after the Dorian invasion. 3. The problem here is that homeric Achaeans and the tribe of Achaeans can coexist in one article; Achaeans was a tribe and the way that classical sources mention them (including the homeric Achaeans) can be a section in this article (see Dorians). I have to repeat that Achaeans (Homer) is very close to what I've already described, a synthesis of the two main issues, I don't see any specifications on the homeric Achaeans, the only change was the name of the article which seems inappropriate to its content, so the move is completely useless according to me. Besides, an article about the homeric Achaeans cannot stand on its own (can you write a whole article talking all the time about how Homer call Achaeans all the Greeks?), neither there is so much information about the tribe of Achaeans to have another article. Splitting an article means that there is so much information about each one of its sections that they can exist as separate articles. - Sthenel (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Look, let's agree to disagree. Ultimately, if you want to re-write this article so that:

• a) it disambiguates all the meaning of Achaeans,
• b) describes the historic Achaeans first
• c) discusses the possibility that there was a Mycenaean tribe also called Achaeans, who may or may not have been the same as the historic Achaeans

and then move it back to Achaeans, then I won't try to stop you. My only concern here is that people (myself included) understand the different meanings of Achaeans, and why there are those differences. I'm not pursuing any random agenda here - I just found the whole issue confusing, and the former Achaeans page wasn't helpful. But if so, don't forget to change all the links I changed back to Achaeans.  M.F.B.T.  ^{Yes, Minister?} 21:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me offer a suggestion/compromise: make the current Achaeans not a disambiguation page, technically; these are strictly limited as to what you can say on them. (Trust me, it isn't fun to put in a lot of effort to make such a page reader-friendly, and then have all your work "edited" away by someone blindly following the rules for disambiguation pages even if the changes make the page less useful.) You should instead make it an introductory article on the usage of the term, because all the meanings are in fact related; it isn't as if (as is the case with true disambiguation) you're talking about a Greek people, an Amazonian butterfly, and a town in Illinois. An introductory article could give more of an overview of the history of the various usages of the term (who uses it when). Each section could consist of a succinct paragraph, and under the subhead you could direct the reader to the main article.

Seriously, if you call it a disambiguation page, one day the disambiguation police are likely to come along and delete a lot of the highly useful text you've already provided and tell you that all the page can have is one unpiped link per line, and that the introduction can say only Achaeans may refer to … . Your current "disambiguation" page is a good and clear effort to let the average reader understand that all these different meanings exist; developing it into an introduction to the term may also resolve the issues in the dispute here, as there would be one central article and a series of specialized articles. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

MFBT the point here isn't who is gonna be the winner of this dispute. We have to reach a compromise. I totally agree with Cynowolfe, there should be an article "Achaeans" instead of the disambiguation page, and what I'm trying to make clear is that we talk about meanings that are related and can coexist in the same article under the name Achaeans in chronological line, the Greek tribe of Mycenaean Greece that has later given its name to the whole nation in an epic poem, and finally were driven out from their homelands and moved to Achaea (don't get confused by this simplified presentation of the facts, I know that the point is more complicated, but I just gave a general plan of the article). On the other hand, it will not prevent you from keeping this article about the homeric Achaeans separated if you find enough information. But I'll say one more time that even now this article doesn't talk about the homeric Achaeans. Actually, it has mixed stuff about the tribe, the Achaeans in Homer and the classical Achaeans. It's obvious that only all these together can complete the puzzle "Achaeans" and they are inevitably related. - Sthenel (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

incomplete

A search on Ekwesh leads to this article, but the article doesn't give any basis for that redirection. Add it. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 20:07, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

~ I apologize, I did a page search with ekwesh spelled wrong, that's why I didn't find it. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 20:35, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

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Circular link in "In Hittite Documents"

Ahhiyawa just links back to the same section of the same article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viciouspiggy (talk • contribs) 17:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Greeks

I think that the name Achaeans refer to Mycenean Greeks and not general to Greeks. So maybe somebody has to add the term Mycenean before Greeks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.71.125 (talk) 09:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

"Mycenean Greeks" means Greeks during the Mycenean time period, which is the time period of Homer, so there is no need to further qualify "Greeks" with "Mycenean". Paul August ☎ 15:09, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Not exactly. Mycenean culture was the most powerful of the area and it was the main culture at Greece that era. At this area existed big walled cities and large armies. But the Greeks inhabited a larger area. Mycenean Greeks inhabited only the south parts of nowdays Greece. Greeks inhabited the whole of nowadays Greece, some parts of Albania, North Macedonia and parts of Asia Minor (even Trojans were possibly Greeks). For example the oracle of Zeus in Dodona, the most ancient oracle in Greece, is located in Epirus (the Epirotes had no relationship with the Homeric Achaeans). This is actualy the reason why Homer describes the Myceneans as Achaeans, if he wanted to mention all the Greeks he would simply refered to them as Hellenes, a name that was used at the time of Homer.

Can you please provide supporting sources for the assertions above? Paul August ☎ 17:50, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Paul, "Mycenaean" is just a relatively recent designation to describe a certain Bronze Age civilization (language included) of Greece following the discoveries made at the site of Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century (although he was not the first to work at the site). "Mycenaean Greeks" certainly is not a collective term for all of the Bronze Age Greeks when it comes to the fields of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. For example, Dorians were not part of that material culture and even linguistically, Doric doesn't stem from Mycenaean Greek (nor do Aeolic and Attic/Ionic by the way). Mycenaean Greek can be described as an early form of Arcadocypriot or Achaean (proper). Unfortunately many people who are unfamiliar with Greek dialectogenesis make the mistake of equating Mycenaeans with all of the Bronze Age Greeks just because their language was the first attested form of Greek (through the Linear B script). Worse, along the same lines, some make the mistake of equating Mycenaean Greek with proto-Greek, even though the former is a branch of the latter, and even less conservative than Doric for example. Personally i don't find it necessary for the "Mycenaean" to be added prior of the term "Greeks", since this article doesn't pertain to the actual Mycenaeans/Achaeans (proper) from a scientific perspective. It only pertains to a Homeric designation which is indeed used as a collective ethnonym for all of the relevant Greeks in his poem. Though that doesn't mean other Greeks didn't exist. We actually do have Homer mentioning the Dorians a single time in his Odyssey, and the passage even happens to differentiate them from Achaeans. Specifically, "There is a fair and fruitful island in mid-ocean called Crete; it is thickly peopled and there are ninety cities on it. The people speak many different languages which overlap one another, for there are Achaeans, brave Eteocretans, Cydonians, Dorians of three-fold race, and godly Pelasgians.". Though it must be noted that this is likely an anachronism of Homer; regardless it stands as a clear differentiation of two major Greek ethne by the author, and could thus justify the addition of "Mycenaean" prior of the term "Greeks"; but again i believe it is trivial. Furthermore, the "Dorians of three-fold race" reference which in the original Greek is given as "Δωριέες τε τριχάϊκες", probably relates to the three Dorian tribes mentioned by Tyrtaeus (some decades after Homer). Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:01, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

@Demetrios1993: Thanks for the clarification. My expertise here (such as it is) covers Homer and the Iliad, and does not extend much farther. So again thanks. Paul August ☎ 12:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC)