La polykoiranía omerica e post-omerica: un indefinito potere dei molti tra lessico e teoria politica

Book II of the Iliad shows a significant moment of political crisis when Agamemnon loses the control over the Achaean army after his false announcement of the retreat from the besiege of Troy. Odysseus restores order and remembers the soldiers that the power of one man is better than the government of the many. He calls this situation polykoiranía, but he and the Homeric poems as a whole do not pro-vide us with any further information concerning what this polykoiranía really is. Is it a form of government, a well identified po-litical regime, or anything else? Through a lexical analysis focused on the occurrences of this word in the ancient Greek literature, the es-say tries to answer these questions, with a view to outlining the most significant elements of a political idea which is usually relegated to the background or, worse, outside the debate concerning the forms of government, despite its first appearance in the Iliad, that is, in one of the most famous, influencing and quoted work in political litera-ture, particularly in the ancient one.