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

Phylake — Phylake of the forty ships — home of the man who leapt first onto Troy, and first into the dark.

The southeastern-Thessalian realm of Protesilaos, first Achaean to land at Troy and first to die there. He never returned; his brother Podarkes led the forty ships on, only to fall in turn, and at the dramatic present Phylake mourns two dead kings.

Leader at Troy: Protesilaos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Protesilaos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Forty black ships from the Pagasaean shore under Protesilaos, who by prophecy leapt first from the ships onto Trojan soil and was cut down at once — the war's opening Greek death. His brother Podarkes then marshalled the grieving, leaderless contingent.

The homecoming: The first Achaean to fall at Troy — he never came home.

Phylake sat in the flat southeastern corner of Thessaly, above the Pagasaean gulf — a land of grain and grazing: flowery Pyrasos, where Demeter keeps her sanctuary; Iton, mother of flocks; Antron by the sea-shore; and Pteleos couched in grass. Its lord was warlike Protesilaos, son of Iphiklos, of the old house of Phylakos. Yet in the Catalogue of Ships his story is already told in the past tense, for he is the one great Achaean who was dead before the fighting had rightly begun: "now ere this the black earth held him fast." From Phylake and its towns sailed forty black ships. When the fleet grounded on the Trojan strand a prophecy hung over the landing — that the first man ashore would be the first to die. Protesilaos leapt down all the same, far first of the Achaians, cut down "not a few of the barbarians," and fell. Homer names his slayer only as a Dardanian warrior — the men of Aineias off Ida (see DAR) — while later song gives the blow to Hektor of the Trojans himself (TRO). So the whole war opened on a death charged to Phylake, and though his men fought on they "yearned for the noble dead." His memory clung to the beach for all ten years. His hull was drawn up on the strand beside the ships of Aias of Salamis, at the lowest stretch of the Achaean wall — and it was there, at that weak point, that Hektor's storming reached the fleet. Hektor seized the stern of "the fair ship that had borne Protesilaos to Troia, but brought him not back again," and thrust his firebrand at it; the half-burnt ship became the hinge of the war. There too Patroklos, sallying in Achilles' armour from the Myrmidon lines (MYR), cast his first spear "by the stern of the ship of great-hearted Protesilaos" and struck down Pyraichmes, leader of the Paionian horse (PAE), quenching the fire. The dead king's ship thus marks the very ground where the tide turned back from the Achaeans. Nor was Protesilaos the last of his blood to die at Troy. His younger brother Podarkes, "of the stock of Ares," took up the command and led the Phthians of Phylake beside Medon through the long fighting. But in the war's tenth year, when the Amazon Penthesileia came to Priam's aid, she cut down Podarkes as he avenged his fallen comrade Klonie of Phylake — struck through the arm, he reeled from the fight and died in his friends' arms. Both sons of Iphiklos, elder and younger, lie in Trojan earth; the realm's note is bitterly plain — the first Achaean to fall, and his brother slain after him. This is the nostos of Phylake: there is none. At the dramatic present of the returns the seat has no returning king to welcome. In Phylake the torn-cheeked widow of Protesilaos — Laodameia in the songs — was left alone, her bridal chamber but half-built, when he sailed. And the contingent itself found no clean homecoming: driven from their course, the people of Protesilaos were cast away on Pellene near the plain of Canastrum, settling far from the Boibeian pastures they had left. Where the house of Atreus at Mycenae (MYC) at least gets its blood-price and its avenger, Phylake gets only the elm-shaded tomb of its first hero above the Hellespont. The realm's older glory lay in its herds. Phylake's founder Phylakos, and after him Iphiklos, held famous cattle guarded so that neither man nor beast could come near — and around them turns the great saga that binds Phylake to Pylos (PYL): Neleus would give his daughter Pero to no man but him who drove off "from Phylace the kine of mighty Iphicles." Only the seer Melampus dared it; taken and bound a year in Phylake, he was freed, and drove the shambling cattle away to Pylos to win the bride for his brother Bias. So even Phylake's peacetime fame is a story of its cattle carried off — a fitting seat for a king who himself was carried off first of all.

“for a Dardanian warrior slew him as he leapt from his ship far first of the Achaians” — Iliad 2.701-702