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

Phocians — Thirty black ships from beneath Parnassos — the league of rocky Pytho, whose own son Epeios built the horse that felled Troy.

The Phocian league — no single throne, but the sacred land of Pytho — sent thirty ships to Troy under the brothers Schedios and Epistrophos. Schedios fell to Hektor's spear; Epistrophos brought the contingent home and rules at the dramatic present, while the house of Strophius in Phocis shelters the exiled Orestes.

Leader at Troy: Schedios.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Epistrophos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Thirty black ships under the joint command of the brothers Schedios and Epistrophos, stationed on the left of the line hard by the Boeotians — and it was a man of Phocian Panopeus, Epeios, who framed the wooden horse by which Ilios was at last taken.

The homecoming: Schedios fell to Hektor at Troy; his brother Epistrophos led the Phocians safely home.

Phocis was no single-throned kingdom but a league of the towns beneath Parnassos, and its heart was sacred: rocky Pytho, the oracle of Apollo, the navel of the earth, whither the old song tells that Leto herself once climbed "through the fair lawns of Panopeus." From Kyparissos and Pytho and holy Krisa, from Daulis and Panopeus, from Hyampolis and Lilaia by the springs of the goodly Kephisos, the Phocians mustered thirty black ships. They were led jointly by Schedios and Epistrophos, sons of great-hearted Iphitos son of Naubolos, and drawn up on the left of the Achaean host, hard by the men of neighbouring Boeotia (BOE) — marshalled shoulder to shoulder with them, as the Locrians (LOC) of Aias son of Oileus stood next in the line. The realm's proudest deed at Troy came not from its captains but from one of its own: Epeios son of Panopeus — a name he shared with the Phocian town. At the funeral games of Patroklos he stood forth, "a man great and valiant and skilled in boxing," and battered his opponent to win the sturdy mule, boasting he was the best man there even if he fell short in open war. But his true glory was the guile of the wooden horse. By the aid of Athene he framed the great beast of timber, "the guileful thing, that goodly Odysseus led up into the citadel, when he had laden it with the men who wasted Ilios." Thus a Phocian craftsman built the very engine of Troy's fall — and it was Odysseus of the Cephallenians (CEP) who drove it up into the doomed city. When Demodocus sings that song in the hall of the Phaeacians, it is Phocian handiwork he celebrates. The war took its toll on the league's own leaders. Schedios, elder son of Iphitos and captain of the Phocians, was slain by Hektor of the Trojans (TRO) amid the fighting over the fallen — one more Achaean lord cut down by the great bulwark of Ilios before the walls came down at last. His brother Epistrophos survived, and it was he who gathered the surviving Phocians and their thirty ships and led them home. His is an unbroken nostos: no shipwreck, no usurper, no axe at the door. At the dramatic present, ten years into the returns, Epistrophos rules the land of Parnassos in peace. And in the world of the returns, Phocis has become something more than a homecoming — it is a place of refuge and reckoning for another house. When Agamemnon of Mycenae (MYC) was cut down by Aigisthos, his young son Orestes was smuggled away to be raised in Phocis by Strophius the Phocian, alongside Strophius' own son Pylades. From this land the avenger came: Orestes, "grown up," went first to Delphi to ask Apollo's leave, then departed secretly with faithful Pylades to Mycenae to kill the usurper and restore the line of Atreus — the deed that rings across the whole world of the nostoi. So the sacred ground of Pytho, at the heart of the Phocian league, is both the oracle that sanctioned the vengeance and the soil that reared its instrument.

“the horse of wood, which Epeius made by the aid of Athene, even the guileful thing, that goodly Odysseus led up into the citadel, when he had laden it with the men who wasted Ilios.” — Od. 8.492-495