Achaean

Achaean, any of the ancient Greek people, identified in Homer, along with the Danaoi and the Argeioi, as the Greeks who besieged Troy. Their area as described by Homer—the mainland and western isles of Greece, Crete, Rhodes, and adjacent isles, except the Cyclades—is precisely that covered by the activities of the Mycenaeans in the 14th–13th century bc, as revealed by archaeology. From this and other evidence, some authorities have identified the Achaeans with the Mycenaeans. Other evidence suggests that the Achaeans did not enter Greece until the so-called Dorian invasions of the 12th century bc. It seems at least possible that Homer’s Achaean chiefs, with their short genealogies and their renown for infiltrating into Mycenaean kingships by way of military service and dynastic marriages, held power in the Mycenaean world only for a few generations in its last, warlike, and semibarbarous phase, until replaced by the Dorians, their relatively close kindred. The Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese in historic times were reckoned by Herodotus to be descendants of these earlier Achaeans. The name Ahhiyawā, occurring in Hittite documents of the 14th and 13th centuries bc, has sometimes been identified with the Achaeans, but this is disputed.