Ἀχαιός. If Sophocles were more careful in regard to details of the heroic age, ‘Achaean,’ as designating a man from a particular district, would naturally point to Phthiotis in southern Thessaly, where the subjects of Achilles ‘were called Myrmidons, Hellenes, and Achaeans’<*> Il. 2. 684). Herodotus can still speal of “Ἀχαιΐη” (7. 173) and “Ἀχαιοί” (7. 197) in this sense,—meaning those whom in 7. 132 he calls “Ἀχαιοὶ οἱ Φθιῶται”. But a poet who makes Orestes compete at the Pythian games against a Barcaean (727) was just as likely to use “Ἀχαιὸς” in the local sense which it acquired after the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus,—a man from ‘Achaia’ on the Corinthian Gulf. If this is (as I suppose) what he really meant, then we see how his mind worked in making this list; we have (1) two Peloponnesians; (2) then he goes south to Cyrenaica for two more competitors; and (3) the remaining six come from Northern Greece.
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VI: The Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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