imagine that the name of this hero should have been Πρωτεσίλαος, which means "the first of the army or the people," for, unless we believe in predestination, we must think that he received this name from the glorious feat in which he perished.
With respect to this name, Professor Sayce remarks to me:—
- With Πρωτεσί-λαος, we must compare ναυσί-κλυτος, Ναυσι-κάα, &c., -λαος being "people."
- Πρώτεσι- ought to be a dative plural like ναῦσι, but from a nominative singular πρώτος (like γλυκύς).
- Πρώτεσι- may stand for πρώτεσσι, which may be formed from πρωτεύς, "the chief;" but "People among the first," has no sense.
- Perhaps Πρωτεσί-λαος has been formed after the analogy of ἑλκεσί-πεπλος, not grammatically but analogically. As ἑλκεσί-πεπλος means "trailing the robe," so πρωτεσί-λαος may, ungrammatically, have been supposed to mean "first among the people."
Besides the tumulus of Protesilaus, there certainly existed at the time of the Trojan war the oft-mentioned tumulus of Besika Tepeh, and that called Hagios Demetrios Tepeh, which is a natural rock of a conical shape, exactly resembling the so-called heroic tumuli, and probably considered at all times to be one of them.[1]
Professor Sayce observes to me: "It is very remarkable that, whereas the pottery found in the first two prehistoric cities of Hissarlik does not occur elsewhere in the Troad, it should nevertheless be met with on the European side of the Hellespont on the site of the tumulus of Protesilaus. We may infer from this fact that the first settlers in Troy came from Europe rather than from Asia. Now this inference is curiously borne out by a fragment of the
- ↑ See Ilios, p. 650.
