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

Boeotians — Fifty ships off the Boeotian plain — five captains sailed to Troy, and one grey captain brought the survivors home.

The federation of the Boeotian plain that opens the Catalogue of Ships: five captains, fifty vessels, the muster-ground at Aulis. Four of its five leaders fell at Troy; Leitos alone survived to bring the remnant — and Arkesilaos's bones — back home.

Leader at Troy: Peneleos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean federation that opens the Catalogue of Ships: five captains, fifty ships of a hundred and twenty men each. The host first mustered on their shore at Aulis; in battle they held the left beside the Phokians, and Leitos and Peneleos were among the men Poseidon rallied to save the ships from Hector's fire.

The homecoming: Four of the five captains fell at Troy; Leitos alone brought the survivors home.

Boeotia was never a kingdom but a federation of the broad green plain between Helikon and the Euripos strait — a league of towns that opens the great Catalogue of Ships before every other Achaean land. Five captains led it to Troy: Peneleos, Leitos, Arkesilaos, Prothoenor and Klonios, lords of Hyria and rocky Aulis, of Thespeia and Koroneia and grassy Haliartos, of lesser Thebes and holy Onchestos where Poseidon keeps his bright grove. Fifty hollow ships they brought, and — alone among the contingents given a crew-count — each was manned by a hundred and twenty young Boeotians, the stoutest complements in the fleet. Their soil bore the war's very beginning. It was on the Boeotian shore at Aulis that the whole Achaean host first gathered "freighted with trouble for Priam and the Trojans"; there, round a spring beneath a fair plane-tree, Kalchas read the omen of the serpent and the sparrows that fixed the ten-year siege. So the Boeotians did not merely join the muster — they were the muster's ground, watching Agamemnon's [MYC] thousand ships assemble in their own waters. In the fighting line they held the left, their station set "hard by the Boiotians" alongside the Phokians [PHO]; and immediately behind them in the Catalogue stand the Minyai of Orchomenos [ORC], Askalaphos and Ialmenos the sons of Ares with thirty ships more — the other half of the Boeotian country, sailing under separate captains. They were there in the darkest hour of the war. When Hector breached the wall and the Trojans poured down upon the ships, Poseidon in the guise of Kalchas went among the reeling defenders and summoned Leitos and "the hero Peneleos" by name to stem the rout — the two Boeotians ranked beside Teukros, Meriones and Antilochos among the men who saved the fleet from fire. But the return is a tale of four graves abroad and one road home. The plain of Boeotia was already snarled in the war's undertow before Troy: Thebes' own lord Thersander, son of Polyneices, had died in the Mysian misadventure at the hands of Telephus [MYS] when the fleet first mistook its course; because Thersander's heir Tisamenus was still a child, command of the Theban levy passed to Peneleos. And the Mysian house struck the Boeotians twice — for Peneleos in turn "fell before Eurypylus' spear," cut down by Telephus's son when that late-coming ally nearly burned the ships a second time. Arkesilaos too died under the walls; Prothoenor and Klonios likewise fell at Ilios. Of the five captains who sailed, four never saw the plain again. At the dramatic present it is Leitos alone who has come home — the single Boeotian commander to survive the sack and lead the remnant back across the sea. Nor did he come empty-handed: he bore the bones of Arkesilaos back from Troy, and they rest still by the river at Lebadeia, while Leitos' own tomb the men of Plataea keep. In Thebes the boy Tisamenus, son of the slain Thersander and grandson of Amphiaraus, has grown to take the throne his father left — the line unbroken, though the Furies of Laius and Oedipus that hounded the house have not yet done with it. So Boeotia's nostos is the quietest kind: not a king murdered nor a wanderer lost, but four barrows raised on foreign soil and one grey captain shepherding the survivors home to bury their dead.

“Of these there came fifty ships, and in each one embarked young men of the Boiotians an hundred and twenty.” — Iliad 2.509-510