Galaxy/The codex of Ucalegon

Ucalegon (Ancient Greek Οὐκαλέγων, "doesn't worry") was a Trojan elder and friend of Priam who sat at the Scaean gates when Helen came to the wall in Homer's Iliad. Virgil's Aeneid remembers his house burning in the sack of Troy; the name later became a literary eponym for a neighbour whose house is on fire.

Adapted from Wikipedia, "Ucalegon" · CC BY-SA 4.0

I.Homeric elder

In Iliad 3 Ucalegon is named among the Trojan demogerontes who sit with Priam above the Scaean gates and marvel at Helen. Homer gives him no combat role; he is a counsellor of Troy's old men.

Virgil (Aeneid 2.311–312) has Aeneas see Ucalegon's house already burning as the city falls — the image Juvenal and later writers recycle as a byword for imminent neighbourly disaster.

II.Reception

From Rabelais to modern fiction the name marks a neighbour in flames or a ship/storm namesake. The atlas id ucalegon-trojan is the Iliadic elder only.

AT A GLANCE

Greek nameUkalēgōn (Ὀυκαλήγων)
Typehero
DomainsTrojan elder · Scaean Gate counsel
EtymologyGreek Oukalégōn is commonly glossed "doesn't worry" or "care-free." Latin poetry made iam proximus ardet Ucalegon proverbial for a neighbour's house already ablaze.
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