Minions & Myrmidons - To Serve and Obey

After watching the animated theatrical treat Despicable Me, how could you not want your own bevy of minions? As cute as little yellow pill bugs, yet ever so much more capable and resourceful, they can shop for a child's toy or build you a fully operational spacecraft! Yes, I want me some minions, as I noted on Facebook recently. To which a friend responded he would prefer some myrmidons. Well, same difference, I wrote back. To which he retorted, au contraire, they are hardly close to the same thing, myrmidons being the warriors who followed the heroic Achilles into battle against Troy and minions being dime-a-dozen servants.

So who would be the better underling -- a minion or a myrmidon? A thorough scan of several dictionaries shows that both terms have at some point been used positively and negatively to label a dutiful follower (see definitions farther down). Minion seems to have carried the negative sense longer and more routinely, but myrmidon at some point accrued its own connotations of lackey.

Perhaps the dualistic definitions of these terms hint at an age-old hierarchy of esteem in which we hold leaders and followers. One follows the leader, as we learn in childhood games. Leaders inspire admiration and even awe. They are exemplars who can do things better than others, or visionaries who can see farther than others, or simply individuals of such great charisma, they inspire loyalty and imitation (for better or worse). Followers are, well, not really celebrated and revered. They are, at best, sidekicks to the heroes. Sure, there are cases when the worker bees get due credit for their essential role in saving the day, as Scotty manages to skirt the Enterprise past a black hole, or dozens of men claim the name of Spartacus, or Patroclus rallies Achilles' men to the Greeks' rescue against the Trojans as the great warrior sits out the battle in a fit of pique. But leaders generally carry the day.

Myrmidon's etymology is entertaining in its own right with its derivation from the Greek term myrmex for ant. According to the renowned classics scholar Edith Hamilton, the Myrmidons were men created by Zeus from ants to repopulate the island nation of Aegina after its people were decimated by a plague. As recounted by the Latin poet Ovid, the pestilence was sent by an enraged Hera, the divine wife of Zeus, after she discovers her husband has once again been philandering, this time with the maiden for whom the island is named. King Aeacus, son of Zeus and Aegina (and grandfather of Achilles), begs his father for help, pointing out a colony of industrious ants and asking Zeus to make of them a people numerous enough to fill his depleted city. The next day he discovers his prayer has been answered as a multitude gathers outside his palace crying out that they are his faithful subjects.

Of course, Ovid and his ancient Roman contemporaries didn't know that the majority of ants are female.

Here's what the dictionaries had to say about minions and myrmidons:

From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Myrmidon
1. Greek Mythology, A member of a warlike Thessalian people who were ruled by Achilles and followed him on the expedition against Troy.
2. myrmidon. A faithful follower who carries out orders without question.

minion
1. An obsequious follower or dependent; a syncophant.
2. A subordinate official.
3. One who is highly esteemed or favored; a darling.
From French mignon, darling, from Old French mignot, mignon.

From the New Oxford American Dictionary:
Myrmidon
• a member of a warlike Thessalian people led by Achilles at the siege of Troy.
• (usu. myrmidon) a hired ruffian or unscrupulous subordinate: e.g., he wrote to one of Hitler's myrmidons.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin Myrmidones (plural), from Greek Murmidones

minion
a follower or underling of a powerful person, esp. a servile or unimportant one.
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from French mignon, mignonne.

And from the granddaddy of dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary:
myrmidon
1. (With capital M.) One of a warlike race of men inhabiting ancient Thessaly, whom, according to the Homeric story, Achilles led to the siege of Troy (Illiad II. 684).
2. A soldier of (one's) body-guard; a faithful follower or servant. [OED notes this usage is now obsolete.]
3. An unscrupulously faithful follower or hireling; a hired ruffian; a base attendant.
b. Chiefly mymrdon of the law, of justice: applied contemptuously to a policeman, bailiff, or other inferior administrative officer of the law.

minion
The ultimate etymology is disputed: according to some the word is a derivative of OHG [Old High German] minnja, minna love; others refer it to Celtic min- small.
1. A beloved object, darling, favourite. [OED notes that this usage is now rare or obsolete.]
a. A lover or lady-love. Chiefly, and in later use exclusively with contemptuous or opprobrious sense, a mistress or paramour.
b. One specially favoured or beloved; a dearest friend, a favourite child, servant, or animal; the 'idol' of a people, a community, etc. Now only in contemptuous sense.
c. esp. a favourite of a sovereign, prince, or other great person; esp. opprobriously, one who owes everything to his patron's favour, and is ready to purchase its continuance by base compliances, a 'creature'.
2. A gallant, an exquisite. [Also obsolete.]
3. A small ordinance. [Ditto.]
4. A kind of peach, in full minion peach. [Apparently still in use as not labeled rare or obsolete.]
5. Printing The name of a type intermediate in size between 'nonpareil' and 'brevier'.
6. adj. Dainty, elegant, fine, pretty, neat.