Adrasteia (Ἀδράστεια) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Adrasteia — Adrasteia of the Propontis — where a seer read his own sons' deaths, and sent them to Troy anyway.

A small Trojan-allied realm on the Propontis shore of the Troad, mustered under the brothers Adrastos and Amphios. Both captains fell before Ilios, and at the tenth year of the returns no lord comes home to Adrasteia — the anti-nostos, foreknown and unstopped.

Leader at Troy: Adrastos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Adrastos.

Role in the Trojan War: A Trojan ally from the Propontis coast, arrayed in the Trojan Catalogue just after Pandaros' Zeleia. Its two brother-captains, Adrastos and Amphios, led the men of Adrasteia, Apaisos, Pityeia and Tereia to Priam's war — and both were slain there.

The homecoming: No return — both lords fell at Troy, the seer-father's warning unheeded.

Along the southern shore of the Propontis, where the Troad runs down to the narrow sea, lay Adrasteia and the land of Apaisos, with the town of Pityeia and the steep hill of Tereia. It was a modest holding among the many peoples Priam summoned to defend Ilios, but Homer marks it out for a grief that has nothing to do with its size.\n\nAdrasteia mustered under two brothers, Adrastos and Amphios of the linen corslet, the sons of Merops of Perkote. Merops was no common father: he was the finest soothsayer of his people, a man who \"beyond all men knew soothsaying,\" and he read in the fates what was coming. He would have held his boys back from the murderous war. But they gave him no heed, and marched — and the fates of black death led them on, exactly as he had seen. In an atlas of returns, Adrasteia is where the tragedy is written before a single ship reaches Troy: a nostos foreknown to be impossible, and taken anyway.\n\nIn the great division of the host at the tomb of Myrine before the city, Adrasteia's companies formed up among the Trojan allies, listed in the Catalogue straight after the men of Zeleia (ZEL) who drank the dark water of Aisepos under Ida's nethermost foot, led by Pandaros of the bow. Their neighbour on the other side was Asios son of Hyrtakos (PER), who led the folk of Perkote and Praktios, of Sestos, Abydos and bright Arisbe — Perkote being Merops' own city, so that the seer's house and Asios' command overlapped along the same stretch of coast. Above them all stood Hector and the Trojans (TRO) whose vassals they were, and beside them the princely Dardanians (DAR) under Aineias son of Anchises, chief of the allied strength.\n\nBoth of Merops' sons perished in the fighting before Ilios, and with them the direct line of the seer of Perkote was cut off on the plain. So Merops' foresight was fulfilled in the cruelest form a father's gift can take: he outlived the war and both his children, having warned them true and been ignored.\n\nAt the dramatic present, ten years into the scattering returns of the Achaeans, the towns of the Propontis have no lords riding home. Where the kings of Mycenae and Pylos and Ithaka's isles wait on their nostoi for good or ill, Adrasteia's is already sealed and empty — two captains dead at Troy, an old seer left childless by the sea, and a small country that gave its whole ruling house to Priam's losing cause.

“the two sons of Merops of Perkote, that beyond all men knew soothsaying, and would have hindered his children marching to murderous war. But they gave him no heed, for the fates of black death led them on.” — Iliad 2.831-834