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

Kos — Kos, the isle of Eurypylos — thirty ships under the grandsons of Herakles, scattered by storm and never brought home.

A Heraclid island realm of the Dodecanese that sent thirty ships to Troy under the brothers Pheidippos and Antiphos. Both survived the war but were storm-scattered on the return — Pheidippos driven at last to Cyprus, Antiphos founding Thessaly among the Pelasgians.

Leader at Troy: Pheidippos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Pheidippos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Kos and its neighbouring isles sent thirty hollow ships under the Heraclid brothers Pheidippos and Antiphos — a sea-contingent of the Dodecanese, present through the full ten years to the fall of Troy without a recorded aristeia.

The homecoming: Storm-scattered from Mimas — Pheidippos driven by way of Andros to settle in far-off Cyprus.

Kos, the island city of Eurypylos, lay at the head of a scatter of Dodecanese isles — Nisyros, Krapathos (Karpathos), Kasos and the Kalydnian Isles — and to Troy it sent thirty hollow ships. It was a Heraclid realm: its captains were Pheidippos and Antiphos, the two sons of king Thessalos son of Herakles, so that in their veins ran the blood of the greatest of heroes. Their grandfather had already written Kos into the older songs, for when Herakles was sailing home from the first Troy, Hera drove him with storms onto this very island; the Coans took him for a pirate and pelted him with stones, but he stormed the town by night and slew its king, Eurypylos son of Poseidon — the same Eurypylos whose name the Iliad still fixes to the city a generation later.\n\nUnder Agamemnon of Mycenae [MYC], the overlord of the whole host, the Coan brothers held their place in the middle of the great Catalogue of Ships, arrayed just after beautiful Nireus of Syme [SYM] and his three vessels. Homer names them and their thirty ships and then, as with many of the lesser-sung captains, leaves their spears to the anonymous slaughter of the plain — no aristeia is set down for either brother, and no death. They were princes of the sea-marches, not front-rank slayers like Achilles or Aias; their glory is a glory of lineage and of ships. Yet they stood the ten years through, and were still alive to see Ilios burn — which is more than can be said of their kinsman Tlepolemos of Rhodes [RHO], another grandson of Herakles from the neighbouring islands, who fell early under the spear of Sarpedon the Lycian.\n\nAnd here the nostos turns bitter, for surviving the war did not mean coming home. After the sack of Ilium, Pheidippos and Antiphos put out together with a loose flotilla of the returning kings — Menestheus of Athens [ATH], the men of Elephenor the Abantes' lord [ABA], and Philoctetes [MEL] — and they sailed in company only as far as Mimas on the Ionian coast. There the fellowship broke apart. Antiphos struck north to the land of the Pelasgians [PEL]; taking possession of it, he gave it the name it bears to this day and called it Thessaly, after his own father Thessalos — so that one brother did not return to Kos at all, but became the founder-king of a wholly new country. Pheidippos and his Coans were caught by the storm and driven first to Andros, and then far south again to Cyprus, where at last, weary of the sea, he settled and reigned. Neither Heraclid prince ever sat again on the throne of Kos.\n\nSo at the dramatic present, in the tenth year of the returns, Kos is a realm whose royal house has scattered across the whole width of the world: its lord Pheidippos a king in Cyprus, his brother a king among the Pelasgians of the north, and the island of Eurypylos left without the grandsons of Herakles who once led its thirty ships to Troy. It is the fate the tradition marks with a single phrase — storm-scattered on the return.

“And of them that possessed Nisyros and Krapathos and Kasos and Kos the city of Eurypylos, and the Kalydnian Isles, of them Pheidippos and Antiphos were leaders, the two sons of king Thessalos son of Herakles. With them were arrayed thirty hollow ships.” — Iliad 2.676-680