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

Dardanians — Dardania of many-fountained Ida — the elder house of Troy, whose lord alone carried the seed of Dardanos out of the fire.

The senior branch of Troy's royal house, seated on the slopes of Ida under Aeneas son of Anchises. Second only to Hector among the Trojans, Aeneas was twice snatched from death by the gods, and — alone of the great captains — survives the sack to bear his father and son westward, his line fated by Poseidon's own word to reign.

Leader at Troy: Aeneas.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Aeneas.

Role in the Trojan War: Trojan. Captain of the Dardanians, the second contingent of the host behind Hector's Trojans; a first-rank warrior twice rescued by the gods, who held the wall in the last assault and cut his way out of the burning city.

The homecoming: Survives the sack and departs west — the one Trojan return that founds a kingdom.

Older than Ilios itself is Dardania, the ancestral seat on the many-fountained slopes of Ida. First Zeus the cloud-gatherer begat Dardanos, "and he stablished Dardania, for not yet was holy Ilios built upon the plain to be a city of mortal men, but still they dwelt on slopes of many-fountained Ida." From Dardanos came Erichthonios, then Tros, and Tros's line divided the blood of Troy: Ilos's branch went down to build the citadel on the plain (Laomedon, Priam, Hector), while Assarakos's branch — Kapys, Anchises, and Anchises' son — kept the elder hill-country. So the Dardanians (TRO's own kin, the senior house) are cousins to the reigning Trojans, and their captain Aeneas was conceived by "bright Aphrodite to Anchises amid the spurs of Ida, a goddess wedded to a mortal."\n\nAt Troy the Dardanians marched as the second contingent of the host — behind only Hector's Trojans, "the greatest hosts by far and the goodliest" — Aeneas leading, and with him Antenor's two sons Archelochos and Akamas, "well skilled in all the ways of war." Yet a grievance ran under the alliance: "Aineias was ever wroth against goodly Priam, for that Priam gave him no honour, despite his valour among men." It is a resentment the gods themselves will vindicate, for the crown Priam withheld, fate has reserved for Aeneas's seed.\n\nTwice the immortals plucked their favourite from certain death, and each rescue binds the Dardanian to an enemy realm. In the great day of Diomedes (ARG), Aeneas sought out his catalogue-neighbour Pandaros of Zeleia (ZEL) and the two charged Tydeus' son together; but Pandaros fell, and when Aeneas bestrode the body Diomedes crushed his hip with a boulder "such as two men, as men now are, would not avail to lift." His mother Aphrodite caught him up in her white arms — was wounded in the wrist by Diomedes and let him fall — and Apollo hid him in a dusky cloud and bore him to Pergamos, where Leto and Artemis healed him. Later, over the corpse of his brother-in-law Alkathoos, he traded spears with Idomeneus of Crete (CRE); and at the last he stood alone against Achilles the Myrmidon (MYR) — the same Achilles who had once chased him down Ida's steeps and sacked Lyrnessos. Aeneas hefted a great stone and would have thrown, when Poseidon, though sworn foe of Troy, lifted him bodily clear of the Peleiad's sword, declaring that "the race of Dardanos perish not without seed or sign," for the house of Priam Zeus already hated — and it was appointed that Aeneas escape.\n\nThat divine reprieve is the whole shape of his nostos. When the city burned, Aeneas fought through Priam's streets by night, "many had he slain"; but seeing Ilios lost, he set his aged father Anchises on his broad shoulders, took his little son by the hand, and, with Aphrodite parting the flames before him, carried the seed of Dardanos out of the fire. Calchas himself cried to the Achaeans to hold their spears: Aeneas "is fated by the high Gods' decree to pass from Xanthus, and by Tiber's flood to found a city holy and glorious through all time, and to rule o'er tribes of men far-sundered."\n\nSo at the tenth year of the returns the reckoning stands strangely. Troy is ash and Priam's line extinguished; Agamemnon's overlord-house at Mycenae (MYC) came home to the axe; other Achaeans wander the wine-dark sea. But of all the great captains of the war, the one whose "return" is a beginning is a Trojan — Aeneas the Dardanian, borne westward with his father and his child toward a shore where his children's children shall reign. His westward foundations are the Returning-Heroes overlay: the only nostos that ends not in a hall regained but in a kingdom yet unbuilt.

“But thus shall the might of Aineias reign among the Trojans, and his children's children, who shall be born in the aftertime.” — Iliad 20.307-308