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

Orchomenos — Orchomenos of the Minyai — gold-heavy seat of two sons of Ares, whence thirty ships sailed and only one brother came home.

The ancient treasure-city of the Minyans, led to Troy by the war-god's own sons Askalaphos and Ialmenos. Askalaphos was speared by Deiphobos beneath the walls; Ialmenos rode home inside the Wooden Horse's victory and now rules the round-walled seat alone.

Leader at Troy: Askalaphos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Ialmenos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Thirty ships from Orchomenos and Aspledon under the brother-kings Askalaphos and Ialmenos, sons of Ares. Askalaphos was slain by Deiphobos and avenged by Meriones; Ialmenos entered the Wooden Horse and brought the survivors home.

The homecoming: One son of Ares fell at Troy; the other led the remnant home to rule alone.

Orchomenos of the Minyai — Minyeios Orchomenos, set apart from the Boeotian Orchomenos of Thebes' plain — was among the oldest and richest seats in all Achaea. When Achilles in his wrath weighs the ransom Agamemnon offers and finds it worthless, it is this city's name he reaches for as the very byword of treasure: not for all "the revenue of Orchomenos or Egyptian Thebes where the treasure-houses are stored fullest" would he yield. Here rose the round stone treasury of Minyas, a wonder said to rival any in Greece; here the Graces were worshipped in their oldest shrine. With its twin town Aspledon it sent its men to the war under two brothers who were no common lords.\n\nFor Askalaphos and Ialmenos were sons of Ares himself. The war-god had come privily to Astyoche, a stately maiden, in the upper chamber of the palace of Aktor son of Azeus; and the two she bore him grew to take the Minyan kingdom and lead its people east. In the muster of the ships they follow close upon the fifty sail of the Boeotians (BOE), their neighbours across the same rich vale of the Minyai: "they that dwelt in Aspledon and Orchomenos of the Minyai were led of Askalaphos and Ialmenos, sons of Ares." With them sailed thirty hollow ships — a middling contingent, but bound to the great oath, for both brothers had once stood among the suitors of Helen at Sparta and were sworn to defend her chosen lord.\n\nThe war took the elder son. In the press before the ships, when Deiphobos, Priam's Trojan (TRO) prince, hurled at Idomeneus and missed, his spear passed instead through the shoulder of Askalaphos son of Enyalios, and he fell in the dust and clutched the earth in his outstretched hand — while high on Olympus, held back by the design of Zeus among the restrained gods, awful loud-voiced Ares knew nothing yet of his son's fall. The Trojans swarmed the corpse; Deiphobos tore the shining helm from the dead man's head. But Meriones of Crete (CRE), peer of swift Ares, sprang forward like a vulture and drove his spear through Deiphobos' arm so the vizored casque fell clanging to the ground — vengeance snatched over the body of the god's slain son.\n\nIalmenos endured to the end. Fierce among the chosen, he was one of the heroes who climbed into the hollow belly of the carven Horse to take the city from within, sitting in silence between victory and death while the fleet stole away to Tenedos. And when Troy at last was ash, it was Ialmenos who gathered the remnant of the Minyai and led them home over the sea — the surviving son of Ares now sole lord of Orchomenos and Aspledon, ruling in the present hour where two brothers once had ruled. The house that Achilles named for its gold still stands; but one of its Ares-born kings lies under Trojan earth, and only the younger came back to sit the round-walled throne.

“even all the revenue of Orchomenos or Egyptian Thebes where the treasure-houses are stored fullest” — Iliad 9.381