HELLENES ("Ellnves")

The name by which the Greeks called and still call themselves.

Originally it and the territorial name 'Hellas' appear to have been confined to an area south of the river Spercheios, in the vicinity of Thermopylae. In Homer the Greeks are called 'Achaeans', 'Argives', or Danai, but 'Panhellenes' appear under Aias, son of Oeleus, the Locrian hero (Il.2.530), and 'Hellenes' under Achilles (Il.2.684), whose home was the Sperceios valley. Similarly, 'Hellas' is a district in Achilles' kingdom (Il.2.683), though it apparently extended southwards, perhaps to Eleon in Boeotia (Il.9.447 ff.).

How and why the name came to be applied to all Greeks and the whole of Greece is uncertain, but the original centre of the amphictiony which later came to control Delphi was at Anthele in the area where the original Hellenes lived (Hdt.7.200.2), and it is possible that the name came to have a wider connotation as the influence of Delphi spread, perhaps in connection with western colonization.

On the other hand, the title of the umpires at the Olympian Games, hellanodikai, if early, may indicate that the spread of the name had something to do with those games.

J.F.Lazenby,

"Oxford Classical Dictionary," 3rd ed. (1996), p.677