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

Doulichion — Doulichion of the forty ships — Meges the peer of Ares, who led the Echinean isles to Troy and never rounded Kaphereus home.

The grain-rich island realm off Elis, forty black ships strong under Meges son of Phyleus. Meges fought among the foremost defenders of the Achaean wall, but on the voyage home he was wrecked and drowned on the Kapherean rocks; at the dramatic present his lordless island sends the largest pack of suitors to plague neighboring Ithaca.

Leader at Troy: Meges.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Meges.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Meges the peer of Ares led forty black ships from Doulichion and the Echinean isles — a contingent equal to Nestor's and Thoas' — and stood among the best of the Danaans defending the ships against Hector.

The homecoming: Never rounded the cape — drowned on the Kapherean rocks on the way home.

Doulichion, "rich in grain," is the largest of the little kingdoms strung in the sea over against Elis — it and the holy Echinean isles, close-clustered with clear-seen Ithaca, Same and wooded Zacynthus in the western island-fringe of the Achaean world. Its lord was Meges, son of knightly Phyleus, whom Homer calls the peer of Ares. His house was Elean by blood: Phyleus was son of Augeas of the Epeians, and "erst changed his habitation to Doulichion for anger against his father," carrying the line across the water to the grain-lands where Meges came to rule.\n\nWhen the host gathered for Ilios, Meges brought forty black ships — the same tally the catalogue gives to Nestor of Pylos (PYL) and to Thoas of the Aetolians (AET), and to Amphimachus of the Epeians (EPE) whose Elean kin were Meges' own. Apollodorus counts him the same forty. He was no mere name in the levy. In the great battle at the wall, when Hector broke against the beached ships "like a flame of fire," it was Aias and prince Idomeneus, Teukros, Meriones "and Meges the peer of Ares" who called up the best of the warriors and held the line. In the same crisis Homer sets him leading the Epeians into battle beside Amphion and Drakios — the man of Doulichion fighting at the head of his father's old Elean people, the two realms bound in his single spear.\n\nBut the sea kept the accounting that Troy did not. When the citadel was sacked and the fleets scattered for home, Nauplius — grieving still for his son Palamedes, whom Odysseus' guile had brought to a stoning while the kings favored Agamemnon (MYC) — kindled a false beacon on Mount Kaphereus in Euboea. The homing ships stood in for the light, thinking it a harbor, and were dashed on the Capherian rocks; "many men perished." Among them was Meges. Apollodorus names him plainly: "Meges and Prothous, with many others, were cast away at Caphereus in Euboea" — the lord of Doulichion drowned in the same surf as Prothous of the Magnetes (MAG), whose surviving Magnesians drifted on to Crete. The peer of Ares outlived ten years of war to die within sight of the Greek mainland.\n\nSo at the dramatic present, in the tenth year of the returns, Doulichion is a realm without its returning lord — and the vacancy shows in an ugly way. Of all the suitors besieging Penelope in Odysseus' hall on nearby Ithaca (CEP), the greatest number come from Doulichion: "From Dulichium there be two and fifty chosen lords, and six serving men go with them" — more than from Same, Zacynthus and Ithaca combined. Their captain is the one wooer Homer half-admires, Amphinomus, son of Nisus, "a good man and a rich" of Doulichion, whose fair words please Penelope even as his fellows plot murder in the master's absence. The island that once launched forty ships for a rightful king now pours out its young men to prey on the house of another lord lost at sea. That is Doulichion's nostos: not a homecoming but its absence — the leader drowned off Kaphereus, and his lordless grain-rich isle turned to riot.

“And them of Doulichion and the holy Echinean Isles that stand beyond the sea over against Elis, even these did Meges lead, the peer of Ares.” — Iliad 2.625-627