The
Achaeans (
Greek ??a???,
Akhaioí) is one of the collective names used for the Greeks in
Homer's
Iliad (used 598 times) and
Odyssey. The other names are the
Danaans (
?a?a??, used 138 times in the
Iliad) and the
Argives (
???e???, used 29 times in the
Iliad). In the historical period, the Achaeans were the inhabitants of the region of
Achaea, a region in the north central part of the
Peloponnese. The city states of this region formed a confederation known as the
Achaean League which was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
The Achaeans are one of the four main tribes occupying the ancient Greek mainland (Achaeans, Aeolians, Ionians, Dorians). The name Achaeans came to mean all the Greeks[citation needed] in the oral tradition that was crystallized by Homer; earlier usage is unattested.
The Homeric "long-haired Achaeans" would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from ca. 1600 BC, with a history as a tribe that may have gone back to the prehistoric Hellenic immigration in the late 3rd millennium BC. It has been suggested that the Achaeans had not settled in the Greek mainland until the Dorian invasions(?) of the 12th century BC. It is possible that Homer's Achaean leaders held power in the Mycenean world but were replaced by the Dorians. Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of these earlier Achaeans.
A scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans, and is still hotly debated.
