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

Tenedos — Sacred Tenedos, Apollo's island off the Troad — where the war made its first landing, and the returns their first parting.

A small holy island off the Troad, of Laomedon's blood and sacred to Apollo Smintheus. Its king Tenes and his father Cycnus both fell to Achilles at the first landing, yet the island became the Greeks' staging-post — for the Horse, and for the fatal muster where the homeward voyages first split apart.

Leader at Troy: Tenedos.

Role in the Trojan War: Trojan-aligned island kingdom off the Troad, of Laomedon's blood by its king Tenes. Both Tenes and his father Cycnus fell to Achilles at the first landing; thereafter the island served as the Achaean staging-post — the fleet hid behind it for the ruse of the Horse, and mustered there for the voyage home.

The homecoming: Kingless — the island where every homecoming began, and first splintered.

Off the windy Troad, a day's easy row from Priam's beaches, lies the island of Tenedos — small, holy, and sacred above all to Apollo, whom the Trojans invoke as Smintheus: the god who \"standest over Chryse and holy Killa, and rulest Tenedos with might.\" Between it and rugged Imbros, in a cave in the depths of the mere, Poseidon stalls his immortal horses when he comes to the war. The island takes its very name from Tenes, a castaway prince: son of Cycnus by Proclia, daughter of Laomedon — so that the blood of Troy's old royal house runs in the kings of Tenedos, and the island stands, by kin and by cult, on the Trojan side.\n\nIts story is a story of first blood. When the Achaean host first put to sea from Aulis it touched at Tenedos, and Tenes saw the fleet standing in and tried to fend it off with hurled stones from the shore. Achilles cut him down with a sword-stroke to the breast — though Thetis his mother had forewarned him never to kill Tenes, for whoever slew him would himself die by the hand of Apollo. So the first man Achilles killed in the whole war was this island-king, and in killing him he sealed his own doom: the arrow of Apollo that would one day find him was already promised at Tenedos. His father Cycnus fought on for Priam and fell in his turn at the great landing, brained by a stone from Achilles' hand after he had slain Protesilaus and reft the life from many more — 'Cycnus, who had smitten first Protesilaus, then had reft the life from many more, till Peleus' son slew him.' Thus the house of Tenedos gave the war two of its earliest dead, both to the same Myrmidon spear (see MYR, and TRO whose royal blood they shared).\n\nBut Tenedos is remembered less for how it fell than for what it became: the pivot on which the whole war turned. When at last the Greeks feigned their flight and left the horse before Priam's gate, it was behind Tenedos that the fleet lay hidden through the night; Sinon kindled his beacon on the grave of Achilles, and from Tenedos the ships came stealing back over the water to open the sack of Troy. The island that had blooded the war now cloaked its ending.\n\nAnd it is here that the nostoi themselves begin — and first shatter. Nestor tells it plainly to Telemachos in sandy Pylos: with Troy fallen, half the host quarrelled with Agamemnon and half sailed, and 'when we came to Tenedos, we did sacrifice to the gods, being eager for the homeward way; but Zeus did not yet purpose our returning.' There, on this Trojan island turned Greek anchorage, the great fellowship of the returns split for good. Odysseus of the Cephallenians turned his curved ships back to Agamemnon (CEP, MYC); Nestor of Pylos, Diomedes son of Tydeus of Argos, and after them fair-haired Menelaos of Lacedaemon drove on for home (PYL, ARG, LAC). Every homecoming in this atlas — the ten-year wandering, the murder at the welcome-feast, the storm off Euboea — forks from that one sacrifice on the beach of Tenedos.\n\nOf its own returns the island has little to tell, for it had no king to bring home: Tenes lay slain before the war began, Cycnus before the walls. When Achilles sacked the island its spoils were shared out among the chiefs, and to Nestor, because always in counsel he excelled them all, the Achaeans gave fair-tressed Hekamede, daughter of great-hearted Arsinoos, who now mixes the old man's wine in far Pylos. So at the dramatic present Tenedos is a kingless island — no ruler restored, no lord awaited — remembered chiefly as the place where the returns were born and broken, and where the mightiest of the Achaeans first courted his death.

“And when we came to Tenedos, we did sacrifice to the gods, being eager for the homeward way; but Zeus did not yet purpose our returning.” — Odyssey 3.159-160