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

Zeleia — Zeleia beneath Ida — realm of the bow that broke the oath, whose lord never came home.

A small Trojan-allied realm at the foot of Mount Ida, seat of Pandaros the master-archer to whom Apollo gave the bow. Pandaros broke the sworn truce by wounding Menelaos and reopened the war — and was cut down by Diomedes; ten years on, no lord has returned to Zeleia.

Leader at Troy: Pandaros.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Pandaros.

Role in the Trojan War: A Trojan ally under Priam's banner. Pandaros led the men of Zeleia; his arrow broke the oath-sworn truce and reopened the war by wounding Menelaos, and later wounded Diomedes — who then slew him.

The homecoming: No return — the lord of the bow fell under Ida, his tongue split by Diomedes' spear.

Beneath the nethermost foot of Mount Ida, where the dark waters of the Aisepos run down toward the Propontis, lay Zeleia — a small, rich realm of men whom Homer calls 'the Troes,' subjects of Priam's Troy though set apart from the city itself. Its lord was Pandaros, glorious son of Lykaon, 'to whom Apollo himself gave the bow.' No sceptre and no broad muster made Zeleia great; it was the fame of one archer's hand that set this realm in the Catalogue among the allies of Ilios.\n\nZeleia stood with Troy (TRO) and marched under Priam's captains, its stalwart shield-bearing ranks following Pandaros from the streams of Aisepos. In the roll of the Trojan host it stands first of the allied contingents, named just before Adresteia and Apaisos, whose captains Adrestos and Amphios (ADR) led the neighbouring lands of the Ida country — kindred allies drawn from the same slope of the sacred mountain.\n\nPandaros' great deed was a crime. When a truce had been sworn to settle the whole war on the single combat of Menelaos and Paris, Athene came down disguised and coaxed the archer's 'fool's heart' to loose an arrow at Menelaos and win favour before Alexandros. He unsheathed his polished bow of ibex-horn tipped with gold, vowed to Apollo a hecatomb of firstling lambs 'when he should have returned to his home in the city of holy Zeleia,' and shot. Athene herself turned the shaft aside, so that it only grazed the flesh of the son of Atreus (LAC) — but the oath was broken, the war reopened, and every Achaian death thereafter traced back to Pandaros' string. That vow to sacrifice on his homecoming is the bitter irony of his tale: he would never make it.\n\nIn the fighting of the next day Pandaros drew his bow again and struck Diomedes of Argos (ARG) through the shoulder-plate in the midst of the hero's aristeia. But the wound did not stop Tydeus' son. Mounting a chariot beside Aineias of the Dardanians (DAR) — the two boasting themselves born of Lykaon and of Anchises and Aphrodite — Pandaros cast his spear, pierced Diomedes' shield, and cried his triumph too soon. Diomedes hurled back, and 'Athene guided the dart upon his nose beside the eye, and it pierced through his white teeth,' cutting his tongue at the root; he fell from the car, his armour clanging over him, 'and there his soul and strength were unstrung.' Aineias bestrode the corpse like a lion, and in the struggle that followed Diomedes crushed his hip with a great stone and wounded even Aphrodite who came to save her son.\n\nAt the dramatic present, ten years into the returns, there is nothing to return to Zeleia. Its one lord lies dead under Ida, his bow broken, the promised lambs unslain. Where Mycenae's king came home to an axe and Ithaca still waits for its wanderer, Zeleia's story ended on the plain: a realm remembered not for a nostos but for the single arrow that turned a truce back into war.

“Of these Lykaon's glorious son was leader, Pandaros, to whom Apollo himself gave the bow.” — Iliad 2.826-827