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The North Greek Affiliations of Certain Groups of Trojan Names
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
In the Quarterly Review for July, 1916, Professor J. B. Bury writes as follows:—
‘The Trojans were doubtless early immigrants from the Balkan peninsula. How comes it that their rulers have Greek names? The name of Priam himself is not indeed obviously Greek, but in its Aeolic form Perramos it may well be so; and Priam's father was Laomedon. Hector is Greek as Nestor, and was in later time the name of a prince of Chios. Paris has the second name of Alexandros; and the natural assumption is that “Paris” was a Phrygian name given him by his Phrygian mother, Hecuba. The names of the other children of Priam who come into the story—Cassandra, Helenus, Deiphobus, etc.—are Greek. We have to choose between two inferences. Either the bards deliberately substituted Greek for foreign names, or the rulers of the Troad were Greek. The second alternative, startling as it may appear, seems to us to accord with other evidence and to afford the most satisfactory explanation of the data of the Iliad.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1919
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