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

Halizones — The silver-land at the edge of the world, whose king gave Agamemnon his first kill.

The Halizones marched from far-off Alybe, "birthplace of silver," among Troy's remotest allies. Their king Odios was the first man felled in Agamemnon's aristeia; ten years into the returns, no ship of Alybe ever turned home.

Leader at Troy: Odios.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Odios.

Role in the Trojan War: Trojan allies from the farthest Pontic east, led by Odios and Epistrophos. They fought for Priam on the outer wing beside the Paphlagonians and Mysians; Odios was the first warrior cut down in Agamemnon's opening slaughter (Il. 5.38-42).

The homecoming: Their king fell first under Agamemnon's spear — no ship of Alybe ever turned home.

Out of the farthest east, from the silver-veined land of Alybe, came the Halizones — one of the remotest peoples ever mustered under the towers of Ilios. In the great roll of Troy's allies they stand almost at the world's rim, named past the Paphlagonians and the wild-mule country of the Eneti, "from far away in Alybe, where is the birthplace of silver." No walled seat, no counted fleet, no city is set down for them in the song; only a long road out of the Pontic dawn and two captains, Odios and Epistrophos, who led their folk to die for a city not their own. They were Troy's men to the marrow. When Priam's cause called the tribes of Asia to the plain of the Skamandros, the Halizones answered from beyond the Paphlagonians of Pylaimenes and beside the Mysians of Chromis and Ennomos the augur — the outermost wing of that vast allied host that made the fields before Ilios "flame with bronze." What deeds their spearmen did in the long fighting the poet leaves in shadow, save for the fall of their king. That fall came early and hard. When Athene led raging Ares out of the mellay and the Danaans surged forward, Agamemnon lord of men opened the slaughter of Diomedes' great day upon the very body of the Halizones' king: he hurled huge Odios from his chariot as the man turned to flee, and drove the spear through his back between the shoulders and clean out through his breast, so that he fell with a crash and his armour clanged upon him (Il. 5.38-42). Thus the first man cut down in that whole terrible book was the far-come lord of Alybe — felled by the same king of men whose own homecoming would end under the axe at Mycenae (MYC). It is a small, bitter symmetry the tradition loved: Agamemnon slew the stranger-king who had no return, and then found none himself. At the dramatic present, ten years into the returns, there is no return to tell of here — no nostos, no ship of Alybe turning home across the Pontos, no throne resettled. Troy is ash; the allied kings are scattered or dead; and Odios lies where he fell on the Trojan plain. His fellow-captain Epistrophos, if he lived, led whatever remnant of the silver-land's spearmen back along that immense road eastward — but the song does not follow them, and Alybe keeps its grief unrecorded. The Halizones enter the tale to march for Troy (TRO) and to give Agamemnon his first kill; they leave it as a name at the edge of the map, a country famed only for the metal in its hills and the lord it never got back. (A caution the heralds themselves would note: another Odios walks these poems — the Achaean herald sent with Aias and Odysseus to Achilles' hut (Il. 9.170). He is no kin to the fallen king of Alybe; they share only a name.)

“And the Alizones were led of Odios and Epistrophos, from far away in Alybe, where is the birthplace of silver.” — Iliad 2.856-857