Arcadians (Τεγέα) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Arcadians — Landlocked highlanders who had to be given ships — whose king sailed to Troy and washed up in Cyprus.

The inland realm of Arcadia, seated at Tegea, sent sixty ships to Troy under Agapenor — landsmen Agamemnon himself had to furnish with vessels. The storm off Euboea drove Agapenor to Cyprus, where he founded Paphos and never returned; Hippothous now holds the Arcadian throne.

Leader at Troy: Agapenor.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Agapenor.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean, a loyal Peloponnesian contingent subordinate to Agamemnon of Mycenae, who lent them their ships. Sixty vessels of inland spearmen 'skilled in fight' under Agapenor son of Ankaios, close-quarter fighters rather than seafarers.

The homecoming: Blown to Cyprus, founded Paphos — never came home to Arcadia.

In the high heart of the Peloponnese lay Arcadia, a land of landlocked highlanders who knew nothing of the sea — 'beneath the steep mountain of Kyllene, beside the tomb of Aipytos, where are warriors that fight hand to hand.' Its seat was Tegea, and its towns were mountain-towns: lovely Mantineia, Stymphelos of the birds, Pheneos and Orchomenos abounding in flocks. Its lord was Agapenor son of Ankaios, king after Echemus of the old Tegean line — that same Echemus who, in the generation before, had slain Hyllus son of Heracles in single combat at the Isthmus and turned back the Dorians from the Peloponnese.\n\nWhen the muster went out against Troy, the Arcadians answered as Achaeans, and Agapenor led sixty ships of them, 'and in each ship embarked many Arkadian warriors skilled in fight.' But these were herdsmen of the inland glens, not sailors; and so the war's own overlord had to set them afloat. Agamemnon king of men himself gave them their benched ships to cross the wine-dark sea — a debt that bound Arcadia tightly to the house of Atreus at MYC, whose sceptre commanded the whole host. In the Catalogue the Arcadian contingent stands between the Pylians of Nestor (PYL) and the Epeians of Elis (EPE), their nearest neighbours across the Peloponnesian uplands and the border-rock of the Alpheios. Skilled in the close spear-work of men who cannot flee to ships, they held their place through the ten years' toil until Ilion fell.\n\nBut of all the Achaean lords who set out from that shore, Agapenor was among those the sea would not let home. The great storm that broke over the returning Greeks off Euboea caught the Arcadian fleet and drove it far south to Cyprus. There the king came ashore and never left it: he became the founder of Paphos, and raised the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Palaepaphos, Old Paphos, where before the Cyprians had worshipped the goddess only at Golgi. So the landsman who had to be given ships to reach Troy ended his days a sea-cast colonist on a far island, and Arcadia saw its king no more. Long after, a descendant of his line, Laodice, would send home from divine Cyprus a woven robe to Athena Alea at Tegea, the one thread that still tied the exiled house to its 'broad fatherland.'\n\nAt the dramatic present of the returns, then, Tegea's throne stands empty of its war-king. Agapenor is lost overseas, founding shrines under Cyprian Aphrodite; and because he did not come back from Troy, the Arcadian kingdom has devolved upon Hippothous son of Cercyon, who reigns now — and who, men say, will make not Tegea but Trapezus the seat of his rule. Arcadia is thus among the realms whose war was won and whose homecoming failed: a contingent that fought loyally under Agamemnon's borrowed sails, only for its lord to be scattered by the same divine anger that undid so many of the victors on the road back from the sack.

“For Agamemnon king of men himself gave them benched ships wherewith to cross the wine-dark sea, even he the son of Atreus; for matters of seafaring concerned them not.” — Iliad 2.612-614