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

Lycians — Lykia by the eddying Xanthos — the farthest-marching allies, whose divine-blooded kings came home only on the wings of Sleep and Death.

The southernmost great ally of Troy, ruled by the cousin-kings Sarpedon (son of Zeus) and Glaukos. Both fell at Troy — Sarpedon to Patroklos, Glaukos to Aias — and each was borne miraculously home to Lykia, leaving the realm bereft of the kings who marched the longest road of all.

Leader at Troy: Sarpedon.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Sarpedon.

Role in the Trojan War: Foremost of Troy's allies, marching from the farthest land of all under the cousin-kings Sarpedon and Glaukos; Sarpedon first breached the Achaean wall before he was slain by Patroklos, and Glaukos led the Lykians on until he fell to Aias over Achilles' body.

The homecoming: Slain at Troy by Patroklos — borne home to Lykia on the wings of Sleep and Death.

Far to the south-east of Troy, farther than any other host that marched to Priam's aid, lay wide Lykia — a land of orchard-terraces and wheat-bearing tilth along the banks of the eddying Xanthos, from which its warrior-kings held their great demesne. Its seat was the city of Xanthos on that same river, and its people were the Lykian shieldmen, \"who of old are fierce in strong battle.\" Of all the allies numbered in the great catalogue, the Lykians came from the greatest distance to fight — a measure of the bond of blood and oath that drew them to the doomed citadel.\n\nThe realm went to war firmly on the Trojan side, and it sent two kings, cousins both, sprung from the hero Bellerophon of Ephyre: Sarpedon, son of Zeus himself, and blameless Glaukos, son of Hippolochos. \"And Sarpedon and blameless Glaukos led the Lykians from far away in Lykia by eddying Xanthos,\" the muster runs. They ruled as a pair and fought as a pair — the two men \"look on as gods\" in Lykia, granted the chiefest seats and full cups and the fat demesne by Xanthos, and knowing that such honour was a debt to be repaid in the foremost rank.\n\nGlaukos gave the war one of its strangest and gentlest moments. Meeting Diomedes of Argos in the no-man's-land between the armies — hence the link to ARG — he answered the Argive's challenge with the immortal words on the generations of leaves, and the two discovered an ancestral guest-friendship binding their houses. Rather than fight, they exchanged armour and clasped hands, though Zeus \"took from Glaukos his wits,\" so that he gave gold for bronze, the price of five score oxen for the price of nine. It was Sarpedon and Glaukos, too, who spearheaded the assault on the Achaean rampart: Sarpedon tore down a whole battlement with his strong hands and first breached the wall before the ships, while Glaukos, climbing beside him, was pierced through the arm by an arrow from Teukros — the bowman half-brother of Aias of Salamis (SAL), whose house would later close the Lykian account.\n\nBut the flower of the realm was cut down before Troy fell. When Sarpedon met Patroklos — captain of the Myrmidons (MYR) — Zeus, powerless before fate, \"shed bloody raindrops on the earth, honouring his dear son,\" and Sarpedon fell \"as falls an oak, or a silver poplar, or a slim pine.\" Dying, he begged Glaukos to save his body from despoiling. Then Zeus wrought the one true Lykian homecoming: at Apollo's hand the corpse was bathed in the river, anointed with ambrosia, and given to the twin brethren Sleep and Death, who \"swiftly set him down in the rich land of wide Lykia,\" where his kindred raised a barrow and a pillar over him. This is the realm's nostos in its purest form — the son of Zeus came home, but only as a body borne on the wings of Sleep and Death.\n\nGlaukos long carried the war for his fallen cousin, but he too was doomed. In the desperate struggle over the corpse of Achilles — where he fought alongside Aeneas of the Dardanians (DAR) and the Trojans (TRO) whose city he had crossed the world to defend — he was slain by Telamonian Aias, first of the Salaminians. As with Sarpedon, the gods honoured the Lykian king: his body was snatched from the melee and \"the gods wrought for an honour to the Lycian king\" his passage back to his own land.\n\nSo at the dramatic present, ten years into the returns, Lykia has no living lord who fought at Troy. Both her kings lie under barrows by the Xanthos, borne home not in triumph but by miracle, out of the far country where they fell. The realm that sent its two divine-blooded kings the longest road of any ally received, in the end, only their honoured dead.

“now — for assuredly ten thousand fates of death do every way beset us, and these no mortal may escape nor avoid — now let us go forward, whether we shall give glory to other men, or others to us.” — Iliad 12.326-328