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The Catalogue of Ships

Iliad 2.484–760Iliad

Two hundred and seventy lines listing twenty-nine contingents, their commanders, their ship counts and their towns. It is the single densest piece of geography in Greek literature and the backbone of this atlas.

In the poem

The Catalogue interrupts the second book of the Iliad to enumerate the Achaean force gathered at Aulis: Boeotians first, then contingent after contingent, each with named towns. A shorter Trojan catalogue follows. Nothing else in either poem tries to be a survey.

Its value here is that it can be tested. Places in the list can be looked for on the ground, and many have been found — some of them occupied in the Late Bronze Age and deserted long before the poem was written down.

Why it matters for the atlas

Every accepted identification in this atlas is a Catalogue entry, and the Catalogue is why the atlas can distinguish the located from the argued at all. It scores 8/12: superb on text, strong on consensus, held back by the fact that a list of names is not itself an excavation.

Competing theories

  • A Late Bronze Age memory

    Proposed by: Richard Hope Simpson & John F. Lazenby (1970); Joachim Latacz (2004) · Modern

    Plausible

    The strongest version of the case: a significant proportion of the Catalogue's places were occupied in the Late Bronze Age and some were abandoned before the archaic period, which is hard to explain if the list was composed from an eighth-century map.

    • ScholarshipRichard Hope Simpson and John F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970)
    • ArchaeologyCorrelation of Catalogue place names with excavated Late Bronze Age settlement, tested repeatedly by survey archaeology since the 1960s
    • ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004)

  • An archaic list, projected backwards

    Proposed by: The ancient commentary tradition, reported by Strabo · Antiquity

    Plausible

    The sceptical reading: the Catalogue reflects the political geography of the poet's own time, with archaising touches, and its Bronze Age hits are the places that were simply always important. Ancient commentators were already arguing about entries that did not match the Greece they knew.

    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 8-10 — the ancient commentary tradition on the Catalogue
    • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)

What is disputed

Whether the Catalogue preserves a Bronze Age document, an archaic reconstruction, or a tradition that accreted for centuries. The archaeology supports partial antiquity; it does not settle authorship or date.

Questions

Is the Catalogue of Ships historically reliable?
In parts. Some of its towns were occupied in the Late Bronze Age and abandoned before the archaic period, which suggests genuinely old material; other entries fit the poet's own era better. It is best read as a stratified list rather than as a single document from one date.
Why does it matter for locating Homeric places?
Because it names places in relation to one another and to their commanders, so a proposed identification can be tested against a whole regional pattern rather than against a single line.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Iliad (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1924)
  • ScholarshipRichard Hope Simpson and John F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970)
  • ScholarshipJoachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (2004)
  • ArchaeologyCorrelation of Catalogue place names with excavated Late Bronze Age settlement, tested repeatedly by survey archaeology since the 1960s
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 8-10 — the ancient commentary tradition on the Catalogue