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

Rhodians — Chalky Kameiros to golden Lindos — the sea-island of the Heraklids, whose king fell before the wall and never sailed home.

Rhodes, settled in three Dorian cities by the exiled Heraklid Tlepolemos, sent nine ships to Troy. Tlepolemos closed with Sarpedon, wounded the Lykian, and was killed by him; his host was later scattered to Crete and the far west, and at the dramatic present his Argive widow Polyxo rules the island for their orphan son.

Leader at Troy: Tlepolemos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Tlepolemos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Nine ships from the three Rhodian cities under Tlepolemos, son of Herakles; in the fighting he closed with Sarpedon, drove his spear through the Lykian's thigh, and was himself run through and killed — a grandson of Zeus felled by a son of Zeus.

The homecoming: Their king fell at Troy and never came home; his host was scattered to Crete and the far west, and his widow reigns.

Rhodes is a Heraklid island, won by an exile's sword. Tlepolemos, "Herakles' son goodly and tall," was born to the hero by Astyocheia, whom Herakles carried off from Ephyre by the river Selleeis when he laid waste the cities of strong men. Grown to manhood within the strong palace walls, Tlepolemos struck down his own father's aged uncle, Likymnios of the stock of Ares — inadvertently, they say, for the old man ran in between as Tlepolemos beat a servant with his stick. Blood-guilty and threatened by the other sons and grandsons of Herakles, he built ships in haste, gathered much folk, and fled across the deep. So he came to Rhodes a wanderer, enduring hardships; his people settled by kinship in three tribes, and Kronion poured upon them exceeding great wealth. Those three tribes are the island's three cities — Lindos, Ialysos, and chalky Kameiros — with Lindos and its temple of Lindian Athena for a seat. From this sea-realm Tlepolemos led nine ships of the lordly Rhodians to Troy, a compact contingent set in the Catalogue beside his near neighbours: Nireus of Syme (SYM), the fairest man that came up under Ilios after Achilles but a weakling with a scanty host; and the thirty ships of the Koan realm (KOS) under Pheidippos and Antiphos, sons of Thessalos son of Herakles — kinsmen of Tlepolemos, for all three are of Herakles' blood, and Herakles himself once sacked Kos. Across the plain waited another grandson of Zeus, but on the Trojan side. For Tlepolemos' war ends in a single duel, the meeting of two descendants of Zeus. When Zeus roused his son Sarpedon, captain of the Lykians (LYC), against the Achaeans, Tlepolemos went to meet him, each taunting the other's descent — the Heraklid against the son of Zeus. Tlepolemos drove his spear clean through Sarpedon's thigh, grazing the bone, so that Zeus for a while warded death from his son; but Sarpedon's cast struck Tlepolemos full in the neck, and the dark night covered his eyes. So the king of Rhodes fell early, before the wall and the ships, and never saw his island again — while the Lykian he wounded lived on, until Patroklos slew him and Zeus mourned him with a rain of blood. The nostos of Rhodes is therefore a homecoming without its king. When Troy was sacked, the people of Tlepolemos put to sea and touched at Crete (CRE) — the neighbouring realm of Idomeneus, whose eighty ships flanked them in the muster — but the winds drove them off their course, and they were carried far west and settled at last in the Iberian islands, lost to Greece. Rhodes itself did not go leaderless. Tlepolemos had brought with him in his flight his wife Polyxo, an Argive, and at the dramatic present she is queen of the island, left with an orphan boy and ruling in her fallen husband's room. And Rhodes keeps its grief sharp. In the Rhodians' own telling, when Menelaos was dead and Orestes (MYC) still a wanderer, Helen was driven from Sparta (LAC) by Nikostratos and Megapenthes and fled to Rhodes, to her friend Polyxo. But Polyxo had not forgotten who first set the war in motion, nor who widowed her at Troy. She sent handmaidens dressed as Furies against Helen at the bath; they seized her and hanged her upon a tree — and for this the Rhodians keep a sanctuary of Helen of the Tree. So the island whose king died in the tenth year of the war would one day take, with its own hands, the price of that death from the woman for whom it was fought.

“led from Rhodes nine ships of the lordly Rhodians, that dwelt in Rhodes in threefold ordering, in Lindos and Ialysos and chalky Kameiros.” — Iliad 2.653-656