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

Paphlagonians — Paphlagonia of the wild mules — where Pylaimenes of rugged heart led his shield-men from the Enetae to die under Menelaos' spear.

A Trojan-allied realm on the far Euxine shore, breeder of wild mules, led to Ilios by rough-hearted Pylaimenes. He fell to Menelaos and his son Harpalion beside him — the line snuffed out at Troy, its warriors driving their dead home without a lord.

Leader at Troy: Pylaimenes.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Pylaimenes.

Role in the Trojan War: Trojan allies from the distant southern shore of the Euxine. Pylaimenes led the great-hearted Paphlagonian shield-men to Ilios, where he was cut down by Menelaos; his son Harpalion, who came with him, fell to an arrow of Meriones.

The homecoming: Slain by Menelaos at Troy — no homecoming; only mourners bore the Paphlagonian dead back to Ilios.

Far off on the southern shore of the Euxine lay the land of the Paphlagonians, out of the country of the Enetae, "whence is the breed of wild mules." Theirs was a rugged sea-country: they held Kytoros and dwelt about Sesamos, and kept their famed houses round the river Parthenios and about Kromna and Aigialos and lofty Erythinoi. So distant a folk were they that Apollonius, singing of an earlier age, reckoned the Paphlagonians "of Pelops" and set them where the dark water of the Billaeus breaks — a people of the world's rim, come from beyond the reach of the Achaean kings. When, in the ninth year of the siege, allies gathered to the Trojans from the surrounding lands, the Paphlagonians answered — for they stood with Ilios (TRO), not against her. Their lord was Pylaimenes son of Bilsates, whom the roll of the host names "Pylaimenes of rugged heart," leader of the Paphlagonians from the land of the Eneti. In the great catalogue his name stands flanked by fellow far-comers: before him the Paeonians of Pyraichmes with their curving bows from broad Axios (PAE), and after him the Alizones led of Odios and Epistrophos from silver Alybe (HAL) — the outermost wing of the barbarian muster arrayed against the sons of the Achaians. Pylaimenes did not live to see the wooden horse. He fell to Menelaos, king of Lacedaemon (LAC) and brother of the overlord Agamemnon of Mycenae (MYC) — the very man for whose stolen wife the whole war was waged. So the rough-hearted Paphlagonian died in the dust of Troy at the hand of the wronged husband himself, and no ship would ever carry him back to Kytoros. This was the deepest wound to the far realm: its king struck down not in his own land but on a stranger's plain, an alliance paid for in a leader's blood. Grief did not spare his house. His son Harpalion had "followed his dear father to Troy, to the war, nor ever came again to his own country." When Harpalion drove his spear at the shield of Menelaos and could not pierce it, and shrank back through the press, Meriones of the Cretans (CRE) shot him through with a bronze-shod arrow, and he "breathed away his soul, lying stretched like a worm on the earth." The Paphlagonians, great of heart, tended him busily, set him in a chariot, and drove him to sacred Ilios sorrowing, and with them went his father shedding tears — and there was no atonement for the dead son. Paris (of TRO), who had been Harpalion's host among the many Paphlagonians, loosed an arrow in wrath for his sake and slew Euchenor of Corinth. This is the Paphlagonians' whole tragedy in miniature: a nostos turned inside-out, a boy borne home not to his own country but only to the doomed city he came to save. At the dramatic present the Achaean lords are scattered on the long roads of return — Agamemnon to the axe, Odysseus to the wandering deep, Menelaos blown to Egypt — but for Paphlagonia there is no return to weigh at all. Its king and his heir both lie in the earth of the Troad; the far realm's part in the war ended before the walls fell. In the later telling of Quintus, a champion named Aethicus, "of Paphlagonian men the staunchest to stem the tide of war," still fought among the last defenders of Ilios — the leaderless remnant of Pylaimenes' host, holding the line for a city that could no longer save them, and to which they themselves had come only to die far from the wild-mule pastures of the Parthenios.

“Harpalion that followed his dear father to Troy, to the war, nor ever came again to his own country.” — Iliad 13.645