The Iliad 13.1–15

Now Zeus, when he had brought the Trojans and Hector to the ships, left the combatants there to have toil and woe unceasingly, but himself turned away his bright eyes, and looked afar, upon the land of the Thracian horsemen, and of the Mysians that fight in close combat, and of the lordly Hippemolgi that drink the milk of mares, and of the Abii, the most righteous of men. To Troy he no longer in any wise turned his bright eyes, for he deemed not in his heart that any of the immortals would draw nigh to aid either Trojans or Danaans. But the lord, the Shaker of Earth, kept no blind watch, for he sat marvelling at the war and the battle, high on the topmost peak of wooded Samothrace, for from thence all Ida was plain to see; and plain to see were the city of Priam, and the ships of the Achaeans. There he sat, being come forth from the sea, and he had pity on the Achaeans that they were overcome by the Trojans, and against Zeus was he mightily wroth. Forthwith then he went down from the rugged mount, striding forth with swift footsteps, and the high mountains trembled and the woodland beneath the immortal feet of Poseidon as he went.

Ζεὺς δʼ ἐπεὶ οὖν Τρῶάς τε καὶ Ἕκτορα νηυσὶ πέλασσε, τοὺς μὲν ἔα παρὰ τῇσι πόνον τʼ ἐχέμεν καὶ ὀϊζὺν νωλεμέως, αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινὼ νόσφιν ἐφʼ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καθορώμενος αἶαν Μυσῶν τʼ ἀγχεμάχων καὶ ἀγαυῶν ἱππημολγῶν γλακτοφάγων Ἀβίων τε δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων. ἐς Τροίην δʼ οὐ πάμπαν ἔτι τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινώ· οὐ γὰρ ὅ γʼ ἀθανάτων τινα ἔλπετο ὃν κατὰ θυμὸν ἐλθόντʼ ἢ Τρώεσσιν ἀρηξέμεν ἢ Δαναοῖσιν. οὐδʼ ἀλαοσκοπιὴν εἶχε κρείων ἐνοσίχθων· καὶ γὰρ ὃ θαυμάζων ἧστο πτόλεμόν τε μάχην τε ὑψοῦ ἐπʼ ἀκροτάτης κορυφῆς Σάμου ὑληέσσης Θρηϊκίης· ἔνθεν γὰρ ἐφαίνετο πᾶσα μὲν Ἴδη, φαίνετο δὲ Πριάμοιο πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν. ἔνθʼ ἄρʼ ὅ γʼ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἕζετʼ ἰών, ἐλέαιρε δʼ Ἀχαιοὺς

Lattimore commentary

Zeus turns aside to gaze at peoples to the north, who were to the Greeks distant and semibarbarous. Thracian territory overlaps the border between current Greece and Turkey; Mysians lived in today’s Bulgaria (though the Catalogue of Trojan Allies knows of a another branch: 2.858); Hippomolgoi (the “horse milker”) and the Abioi (whose name was interpreted as “without violence”) were associated with lands the Classical Greeks knew as Scythia (now the Ukraine and southern Russia). The righteousness of these tribes accords with the mythical notion that peoples furthest removed in time or space from current civilization are least damaged by its problems. “Thracian” Samos (later “Samothrace”), in the northern Aegean forty miles northwest of Troy, was so called to distinguish it from the Greek island Samos that lies to the south, off the coast near modern Kusadasi. The island was a center of the worship of the Great Mother of importance to sailors throughout antiquity. The mountain on which Poseidon sits, 5,250 feet tall, in fact offers a full view of the Trojan plain—evidence that this portion of the poem must be based on someone’s personal observation of landscape.

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thumos