Since there subsisted so great an affinity among the Leleges and Cilicians with the Trojans, the reason is asked, why these people are not included in Homer’s Catalogue. Perhaps it is that, on account of the loss of their leaders and the devastation of the cities, the few Cilicians that were left placed themselves under the command of Hector. For Eetion and his sons are said to have been killed before the Catalogue is mentioned;
“The hero Achilles,”
says Andromache,
“killed my father, and destroyed Thebe, with its lofty gates, the city of the Cilicians.”—
“I had seven brothers in the palace; all of them went in one day to Hades, for they were all slain by the swift-footed divine Achilles.”1512
Those also under the command of Mynes had lost their leaders, and their city;
“He slew Mynes, and Epistrophus,
And destroyed the city of the divine Mynes.”1513
He describes the Leleges as present at the battles;
“on the sea-coast are Carians, and Pæonians with curved bows, Leleges, and Caucones.”1514
And in another place,
“he killed Satnius with a spear—the son of Enops, whom a beautiful nymph Neis bore to Enops, when he was tending herds near the banks of Satnioeis,”1515
for they had not been so completely annihilated as to prevent their forming a body of people of themselves, since their king still survived,
“Altes, king of the war-loving Leleges,”1516
nor was the city entirely razed, for he adds,
“who commanded the lofty city Pedasus.”1517
He has passed them over in the Catalogue, not considering the body of people large enough to have a place in it; or he comprised them among the people under the command of Hector, as being allied to one another. For Lycaon, the brother of Hector, says,
“my mother Laothoë, daughter of the old Altes, brought me into the world to live but a short time; of Altes, king of the war-loving Leleges.”1518
Such is the reasoning, from probability, which this subject admits.