Aetolians (Καλυδών) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Aetolians — Rocky Calydon and Pleuron — the forty black ships of Aetolia, and the one captain who came home whole.

The Aetolian realm of the western shore, whose old royal house of Oineus and Meleager had died out before the war, leaving Thoas son of Andraemon to lead forty ships to Troy. He fought among the foremost, rode inside the wooden horse, and — rare among the Achaean captains — returned unscathed to reign still in Calydon.

Leader at Troy: Thoas.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Thoas.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Forty black ships from Calydon and Pleuron under Thoas son of Andraemon, hailed "far the best of the Aetolians"; he won an aristeia over Peiros the Thracian, rallied the host at Idomeneus' side, and was among the picked men shut inside the wooden horse.

The homecoming: Home unscathed — one of the very few — and still king in Calydon.

Along the western shore, over against Ithaca and the isles, lie the lands of the Aetolians — Pleuron and Olenos and Pylene, Chalkis down by the sea, and rocky Kalydon on its hill. It is old country, once ruled by the great house of Oineus; but by the time the host mustered for Troy that house was a ruin of empty halls. The sons of great-hearted Oineus were no more; golden-haired Meleagros, to whose hands the kingship of the Aetolians had once been committed, was dead; Oineus himself lived no longer. So the lordship passed sideways, out of the direct line, and came at last to Thoas son of Andraemon — for Andraemon had wedded Gorge, Oineus' daughter, and when Diomedes had set the aged Oineus' affairs in order and gone back to Argos, the seat fell to that branch. Thoas thus rules a realm haunted by names greater than his own, and it is the mark of the man that, of all the captains who once bore those names, he is among the very few who will come home whole. At Troy the Aetolians brought forty black ships — a middling contingent — yet Thoas fought like the best of them. Homer names him "far the best of the Aetolians, skilled in throwing the dart, and good in close fight," and adds that in the assembly few of the Achaians surpassed him when the young men strove in debate: a spear-hand and an orator both. His great deed comes early. When Peiros the Thracian had smashed Diores of the Epeians (EPE) with a jagged stone and speared him dying in the dust, it was Thoas who ran the Thracian down — driving his spear above the pap into the lung, then closing with the sword to take his life — so that the two captains, Thracian and Epeian, lay stretched side by side. Thoas' vengeance thus binds Aetolia to the Epeians of Elis, whose fallen leader he avenged, and against the Thracians (THR) of Peiros. Later, when Hektor's onset broke the Achaian nerve, it is Thoas who steadies the line with counsel; and Poseidon himself, rising to rally the Cretans, borrows the very voice of "Thoas, son of Andraimon, that ruled over the Aitolians," to shame Idomeneus (CRE) back into the fight — a measure of how the god reckoned his authority among men. When Troy fell at last, Thoas was reckoned worthy of the wooden horse, one of the chosen warriors who lay hidden in its belly and rose to open the gates. He belongs, then, to the innermost circle of the sack — not a name of the first rank like Agamemnon of Mycenae (MYC), the overlord whose muster he joined, but a captain trusted at the decisive hour. His blood, too, ties him to the greatest of the Achaean returns. The Aetolian line is the line of Tydeus, Oineus' son, who quarrelled with his kin and wandered to Argos, where he begot Diomedes (ARG); so the Argive hero is Aetolian by descent, cousin to the house Thoas inherited, and it was Diomedes' own hand that confirmed that house in Calydon. And in the fullness of the returns the western realm draws in another wanderer: they tell that Odysseus of the Cephallenians (CEP), driven at the last into exile from his own island, came to Aetolia, to Thoas son of Andraemon, married the king's daughter, and there died in old age, leaving a son Leontophonus — so that the man of many devices ends his days a guest in Calydon's halls. At the dramatic present, while so many kings lie dead abroad or wander the wine-dark sea, Thoas is simply home. He returned unscathed from the war and holds his father's seat over Pleuron and mountainous Kalydon, "honoured like a god by the people." His one further cameo is a memory of the campaign itself: in the false tale Odysseus spins to the swineherd, a cold night by the ships, it is Thoas who "rose up quickly and cast off his purple mantle" and ran for the ships — the small, human image of the good warrior that the whole realm might stand for. Of the forty Aetolian ships, the captain came back; and in a world of murdered and shipwrecked kings, that is renown enough.

“For the sons of great-hearted Oineus were no more, neither did he still live, and golden-haired Meleagros was dead, to whose hands all had been committed, for him to be king of the Aitolians.” — Iliad 2.641-644