Quoted from
epsilon 337.
Dymas (genitive Dymantos), father of Hecuba (
epsilon 337) and the Asios in whose form Apollo appears in order to urge Hector (
Homer,
Iliad 16.717), occurs in a genealogy of Phrygian kings and nobles known to
Homer, who may draw his knowledge of ancient
Troy↗ from some contact with the
Phrygia↗ of the great King Midas, contemporary (he died in the Cimmerian raid of 696) with the probable dates of the author of the
Iliad and
Odyssey, and married to a daughter of a real King Agamemnon of Cyme, the Greek city with the best claim to
Homer's childhood. The
Lives of
Homer, which may contain some grains of biographical truth (see
omicron 251, notes), say that he wrote an epitaph for Midas (see
mu 1036, although certainly not the one they quote, unless it is a translation from Phrygian).
It is also interesting to note that Athena appears in the
Odyssey in the form of a child of "sea-going" Dymas, to Nausicaa. Certain possible parallels with the fictitious Phaeacians (both peoples lost their mastery of the sea) suggest that
Homer may draw for his portrait in
Odyssey 6 from the Phrygians.
This Dymas (Dymant-) is to be distinguished from the eponymous ancestor of the Dorian tribe Dymanes (
Ephorus,
Stephanus of
Byzantium↗), Dymainai or (in
Sparta↗) Dymanis (
scholia on
Pindar,
Pythian 1.121) or Dymanatai (
Herodotus 5.68.13), a certain Dymas (stem Dyman-; erroneously Dymant- at
Pausanias 7.17.6. and
Lycophron,
Alexandra 1388), son of Aigimios (
Stephanus of
Byzantium↗, s.v. Dymanes (240.12), quoting
Ephorus; Hesiod fr.10(a).7;
Alcman fr.19.8).
1Homer, Iliad 3.184.