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

Mysians — The augur's Mysians — who read every fate but the one that took their captain in the river.

A Trojan-allied levy out of Mysia, fierce hand-to-hand fighters led by Chromis and Ennomos the seer. Ennomos, for all his auguries, was cut down by Achilles in the Skamandros — and never sailed home.

Leader at Troy: Chromis.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Ennomos.

Role in the Trojan War: A Trojan-allied contingent from Mysia, mustered under Chromis and Ennomos the augur — fierce fighters hand to hand, posted toward Thymbre. Ennomos fell to Achilles during the god-like river-aristeia in the Skamandros.

The homecoming: No homecoming: Ennomos the augur was slain at Troy, cut down by Achilles in the river.

The Mysians came to Ilios from the near country of Asia — neighbours of the Troad who answered the muster of Priam. Homer marks them among the peoples on whom Zeus turned his shining eyes away from the ships: 'the Thracian horsebreeders, and the Mysians, fierce fighters hand to hand.' They were a people of the close press, autoschedon men who lived or died at arm's length, and they were reckoned enough of a power that they had once given Priam a team of strong-hooved harness-mules — a king's gift between neighbouring houses.\n\nTwo captains led them in the Catalogue of the allies: Chromis, and Ennomos the augur — the oionistes, the bird-reader. It is Ennomos whom the poet dwells upon, and dwells with grim irony: 'yet with all his auguries warded he not black fate from him.' Here is a seer who could read the flight of birds and the will of heaven, and could not read the one death that was coming for himself. In the ordering of the host he stands with the Lycians and the haughty Mysians drawn up toward Thymbre — so Dolon tells Odysseus and Diomedes in the night — the allied wing away from the Trojan centre.\n\nWhen the fighting closed over the body of Patroklos, Hector went crying among his noblest allies to steel them — Mesthles and Glaukos and Medon, Hippothoos and Phorkys, 'and Chromios and the augur Ennomos.' It was not for numbers alone that Priam's son had gathered them from their cities, he told them, but to guard the wives and infant children of Troy; and there the Mysian captains stood in the front of that terrible day. This is the war alignment of the realm entire: a Trojan levy, brigaded on the allied flank, thrown into the worst of the press for a city not their own.\n\nEnnomos' end came in the water. When Achilles, wild for Patroklos, went down into the Skamandros and choked its stream with Trojan dead — 'when he made havoc of the Trojans there and of the rest' — the augur of the Mysians was among them, vanquished by the hand of fleet-footed Aiakides in the river. All his birds had not bought him a single hour. So there is no nostos to tell of this house: no ship turned home, no seat to which a lord returned. The Mysian dead lay in Troy's river with the Trojan dead, and the story of the returns — which is the story of every other realm on this map — simply never began for them.\n\nThe cross-threads are these. It was Achilles of the MYR (Myrmidons) who slew Ennomos, the same river-rampage that drowned so many allies of Troy; the Mysians' fate is a footnote to that aristeia. Their overlord was TRO (the Trojans) — Priam who took their gift of mules, Hector who called their captains by name over Patroklos. In the Catalogue they march shoulder to shoulder with the eastern allies: the PHR (Phrygians) of Askanios follow them line for line, the MAE (Maeonians) under Tmolos come next, and the HAL (Halizones) of far Alybe stand just before them — a whole roll of Asian peoples drawn to Ilios. And by Dolon's own reckoning the Mysians camped toward Thymbre beside the LYC (Lycians), Sarpedon's and Glaukos' men, the staunchest of Troy's foreign spears.

“And the Mysians were led of Chromis and Ennomos the augur, yet with all his auguries warded he not black fate from him, but was vanquished by the hand of fleet-footed Aiakides in the river.” — Iliad 2.858-861