[798] Xerxês passing by Adramyttium, and leaving the range of Mount Ida on his left hand, ἤϊε ἐς τὴν Ἰλιάδα γῆν.... Ἀπικομένου δὲ τοῦ στρατοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν Σκάμανδρον ... ἐς τὸ Πριάμου Πέργαμον ἀνέβη, ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσασθαι. Θεησάμενος δὲ, καὶ πυθόμενος κείνων ἕκαστα, τῇ Ἀθηναίῃ τῇ Ἰλιάδι ἔθυσε βοῦς χιλίας· χοὰς δὲ οἱ μάγοι τοῖσιν ἥρωσιν ἐχέαντο.... Ἅμα ἡμέρῃ δὲ ἐπορεύετο, ἐν ἀριστερῇ μὲν ἀπέργων Ῥοιτεῖον πόλιν καὶ Ὀφρυνεῖον καὶ Δάρδανον, ἥπερ δὴ Ἀβύδῳ ὅμουρος ἐστιν· ἐν δεξιῇ δὲ, Γέργιθας Τευκρούς (Herod. vii. 43).

Respecting Alexander (Arrian, i. 11), Ἀνελθόντα δὲ ἐς Ἴλιον, τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ θῦσαι τῇ Ἰλιάδι, καὶ τὴν πανοπλίαν τὴν αὑτοῦ ἀναθεῖναι ἐς τὸν ναὸν, καὶ καθελεῖν ἀντὶ ταύτης τῶν ἱερῶν τινα ὅπλων ἔτι ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ ἔργου σωζόμενα· καὶ ταῦτα λέγουσιν ὅτι οἱ ὑπασπισταὶ ἔφερον πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰς μάχας. Θῦσαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Ἑρκείου λόγος κατέχει, μῆνιν Πριάμου παραιτούμενον τῷ Νεοπτολέμου γένει, ὃ δὴ ἐς αὐτὸν καθῆκε.

The inhabitants of Ilium also showed the lyre which had belonged to Paris (Plutarch, Alexand. c. 15).

Chandler, in his History of Ilium, chap. xxii. p. 89, seems to think that the place called by Herodotus the Pergamum of Priam is different from the historical Ilium. But the mention of the Iliean Athênê identifies them as the same.

[799] Strabo, xiii. p. 602. Ἑλλάνικος δὲ χαριζόμενος τοῖς Ἰλιεῦσιν, οἷος ὁ ἐκείνου μῦθος, συνηγορεῖ τῷ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι πόλιν τὴν νῦν τῇ τότε. Hellanikus had written a work called Τρωϊκά.

[800] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10. Skylax places Ilium twenty-five stadia, or about three miles, from the sea (c. 94). But I do not understand how he can call Skêpsis and Kebrên πόλεις ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ.

[801] See Xenoph. Hellen. iii. i. 16; and the description of the seizure of Ilium, along with Skêpsis and Kebrên, by the chief of mercenaries, Charidêmus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat. c. 38. p. 671: compare Æneas Poliorcetic. c. 24, and Polyæn. iii. 14.

[802] Arrian, l. c. Dikæarchus composed a separate work respecting this sacrifice of Alexander, περὶ τῆς ἐν Ἰλίῳ θυσίας (Athenæ. xiii. p. 603; Dikæarch. Fragm. p. 114, ed. Fuhr).

Theophrastus, in noticing old and venerable trees, mentions the φηγοὶ (Quercus æsculus) on the tomb of Ilus at Ilium, without any doubt of the authenticity of the place (De Plant. iv. 14); and his contemporary, the harper Stratonikos, intimates the same feeling, in his jest on the visit of a bad sophist to Ilium during the festival of the Ilieia (Athenæ. viii. p. 351). The same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Æschinês (p. 737), in which his visit of curiosity to Ilium is described—as well as about Apollônius of Tyana, or the writer who describes his life and his visit to the Trôad; it is evident that he did not distrust the ἀρχαιολογία of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real Troy (Philostrat. Vit. Apollôn. Tyan. iv. 11).

The goddess Athênê of Ilium was reported to have rendered valuable assistance to the inhabitants of Kyzikus, when they were besieged by Mithridatês, commemorated by inscriptions set up in Ilium (Plutarch, Lucull. 10).

[803] Strabo, xiii. p. 603-607.

[804] Livy, xxxv. 43; xxxvii. 9. Polyb. v. 78-111 (passages which prove that Ilium was fortified and defensible about B. C. 218). Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ νῦν ἐστι, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν καὶ ἐξέβαλον Ἀντίοχον τὸν μέγαν ἐκ τῆς ἐντὸς τοῦ Ταύρου. Φησὶ γοῦν Δημήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος, μειράκιον ἐπιδημήσας εἰς τὴν πόλιν κατ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς καιροὺς, οὕτως ὠλιγωρημένην ἰδεῖν τὴν κατοικίαν, ὥστε μηδὲ κεραμωτὰς ἔχειν τὰς στέγας. Ἡγησιάναξ δὲ, τοὺς Γαλάτας περαιωθέντας ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης, ἀναβῆναι μὲν εἰς τὴν πόλιν δεομένους ἐρύματος, παραχρῆμα δ᾽ ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸ ἀτείχιστον· ὕστερον δ᾽ ἐπανόρθωσιν ἔσχε πολλήν. Εἶτ᾽ ἐκάκωσαν αὐτὴν πάλιν οἱ μετὰ Φιμβρίου, etc.

This is a very clear and precise statement, attested by an eye-witness. But it is thoroughly inconsistent with the statement made by Strabo in the previous chapter, a dozen lines before, as the text now stands; for he there informs us that Lysimachus, after the death of Alexander, paid great attention to Ilium, surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia in circumference, erected a temple, and aggregated to Ilium the ancient cities around, which were in a state of decay. We know from Livy that the aggregation of Gergis and Rhœteium to Ilium was effected, not by Lysimachus, but by the Romans (Livy, xxxviii. 37); so that the first statement of Strabo is not only inconsistent with his second, but is contradicted by an independent authority.

I cannot but think that this contradiction arises from a confusion of the text in Strabo’s first passage, and that in that passage Strabo really meant to speak only of the improvements brought about by Lysimachus in Alexandreia Trôas; that he never meant to ascribe to Lysimachus any improvements in Ilium, but, on the contrary, to assign the remarkable attention paid by Lysimachus to Alexandreia Trôas, as the reason why he had neglected to fulfil the promises held out by Alexander to Ilium. The series of facts runs thus:—1. Ilium is nothing better than a κώμη; at the landing of Alexander; 2. Alexander promises great additions, but never returns from Persia to accomplish them; 3. Lysimachus is absorbed in Alexandreia Trôas, into which he aggregates several of the adjoining old towns, and which flourishes under his hands; 4. Hence Ilium remained a κώμη when the Romans entered Asia, as it had been when Alexander entered.

This alteration in the text of Strabo might be effected by the simple transposition of the words as they now stand, and by omitting ὅτε καὶ, ἤδη ἐπεμελήθη, without introducing a single new or conjectural word, so that the passage would read thus: Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου (Alexander’s) τελευτὴν Λυσίμαχος μάλιστα τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας ἐπεμελήθη, συνῳκισμένης μὲν ἤδη ὑπ᾽ Ἀντιγόνου, καὶ προσηγορευμένης Ἀντιγόνιας, μεταβαλούσης δὲ τοὔνομα· (ἔδοξε γὰρ εὐσεβὲς εἶναι τοὺς Ἀλεξάνδρον διαδεξαμένους ἐκείνου πρότερον κτίζειν ἐπωνύμους πόλεις, εἶθ᾽ ἑαυτῶν) καὶ νέων κατεσκεύασε καὶ τεῖχος περιεβάλετο ὅσον 40 σταδίων· συνῴκισε δὲ εἰς αὐτὴν τὰς κύκλῳ πόλεις ἀρχαίας, ἤδη κεκακωμένας. Καὶ δὴ καὶ συνέμεινε ... πόλεων. If this reading be adopted, the words beginning that which stands in Tzschucke’s edition as sect. 27, and which immediately follow the last word πόλεων, will read quite suitably and coherently,—Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν, etc., whereas with the present reading of the passage they show a contradiction, and the whole passage is entirely confused.

[805] Livy, xxxviii. 39; Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Κατέσκαπται δὲ καὶ τὸ Σίγειον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰλιέων διὰ τὴν ἀπείθειαν· ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις γὰρ ἦν ὕστερον ἡ παραλία πᾶσα ἡ μέχρι Δαρδάνου, καὶ νῦν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις ἔστι.

[806] Strabo, xiii. 599. Παρατίθησι δὲ ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ τὴν Ἀλεξανδρίνην Ἑστίαιαν μάρτυρα, τὴν συγγράψασαν περὶ τῆς Ὁμήρου Ἰλιάδος, πυνθανομένην, εἰ περὶ τὴν νῦν πόλιν ὁ πόλεμος συνέστη, καὶ τὸ Τρωϊκὸν πεδίον ποῦ ἔστιν, ὃ μέταξυ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ὁ ποιητὴς φράζει· τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ τῆς νῦν πόλεως ὁρώμενον, πρόχωμα εἶναι τῶν ποταμῶν, ὕστερον γεγονός.

The words ποῦ ἔστιν are introduced conjecturally by Grosskurd, the excellent German translator of Strabo, but they seem to me necessary to make the sense complete.

Hesitæa is cited more than once in the Homeric Scholia (Schol. Venet. ad Iliad, iii. 64; Enstath. ad Iliad, ii. 538).

[807] Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἴχνος σώζεται τῆς ἀρχαίας πόλεως—εἰκότως· ἅτε γὰρ ἐκπεπορθημένων τῶν κύκλῳ πόλεων, οὐ τελέως δὲ κατεσπασμένων, οἱ λίθοι πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων ἀνάληψιν μετηνέχθησαν.

[808] Appian, Mithridat. c. 53; Strabo, xiii. p. 594; Plutarch, Sertorius, c. 1; Velleius Paterc. ii. 23.

The inscriptions attest Panathenaic games celebrated at Ilium in honor of Athênê by the Ilieans conjointly with various other neighboring cities (see Corp. Inscr. Boeckh. No. 3601-3602, with Boeckh’s observations). The valuable inscription No. 3595 attests the liberality of Antiochus Soter towards the Iliean Athênê as early as 278 B. C.

[809] Arrian, i. 11; Appian ut sup.; also Aristidês, Or. 43, Rhodiaca, p. 820 (Dindorf p. 369). The curious Oratio xi. of Dio Chrysostom, in which he writes his new version of the Trojan war, is addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium.

[810] The controversy, now half a century old, respecting Troy and the Trojan war—between Bryant and his various opponents, Morritt, Gilbert Wakefield, the British Critic, etc., seems now nearly forgotten, and I cannot think that the pamphlets on either side would be considered as displaying much ability, if published at the present day. The discussion was first raised by the publication of Le Chevalier’s account of the plain of Troy, in which the author professed to have discovered the true site of Old Ilium (the supposed Homeric Troy), about twelve miles from the sea near Bounarbashi. Upon this account Bryant published some animadversions, followed up by a second treatise, in which he denied the historical reality of the Trojan war, and advanced the hypothesis that the tale was of Egyptian origin (Dissertation on the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians as described by Homer, showing that no such Expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed, by Jacob Bryant; seemingly 1797, though there is no date in the title-page: Morritt’s reply was published in 1798). A reply from Mr. Bryant and a rejoinder from Mr. Morritt, as well as a pamphlet from G. Wakefield, appeared in 1799 and 1800, besides an Expostulation by the former addressed to the British Critic.

Bryant, having dwelt both on the incredibilities and the inconsistencies of the Trojan war, as it is recounted in Grecian legend generally, nevertheless admitted that Homer had a groundwork for his story, and maintained that that groundwork was Egyptian. Homer (he thinks) was an Ithacan, descended from a family originally emigrant from Egypt: the war of Troy was originally an Egyptian war, which explains how Memnôn the Ethiopian came to take part in it: “upon this history, which was originally Egyptian, Homer founded the scheme of his two principal poems, adapting things to Greece and Phrygia by an ingenious transposition:” he derived information from priests of Memphis or Thêbes (Bryant, pp. 102, 108, 126). The Ἥρως Αἰγύπτιος, mentioned in the second book of the Odyssey (15), is the Egyptian hero, who affords, in his view, an evidence that the population of that island was in part derived from Egypt. No one since Mr. Bryant, I apprehend, has ever construed the passage in the same sense.

Bryant’s Egyptian hypothesis is of no value; but the negative portion of his argument, summing up the particulars of the Trojan legend, and contending against its historical credibility, is not so easily put aside. Few persons will share in the zealous conviction by which Morritt tries to make it appear that the 1100 ships, the ten years of war, the large confederacy of princes from all parts of Greece, etc., have nothing but what is consonant with historical probability; difficulties being occasionally eliminated by the plea of our ignorance of the time and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7-21). Gilbert Wakefield, who maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost intensity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Paine (W. p. 17), is still more displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells us that “grave disputation in the midst of such darkness and uncertainty is a conflict with chimæras” (W. p. 14).

The most plausible line of argument taken by Morritt and Wakefield is, where they enforce the positions taken by Strabo and so many other authors, ancient as well as modern, that a superstructure of fiction is to be distinguished from a basis of truth, and that the latter is to be maintained while the former is rejected (Morritt, p. 5; Wake. p. 7-8). To this Bryant replies, that “if we leave out every absurdity, we can make anything plausible; that a fable may be made consistent, and we have many romances that are very regular in the assortment of characters and circumstances: this may be seen in plays, memoirs, and novels. But this regularity and correspondence alone will not ascertain the truth” (Expostulation, pp. 8, 12, 13). “That there are a great many other fables besides that of Troy, regular and consistent among themselves, believed and chronologized by the Greeks, and even looked up to by them in a religious view (p. 13), which yet no one now thinks of admitting as history.”

Morritt, having urged the universal belief of antiquity as evidence that the Trojan war was historically real, is met by Bryant, who reminds him that the same persons believed in centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, augury, aruspicy; Homer maintaining that horses could speak, etc. To which Morritt replies, “What has religious belief to do with historical facts? Is not the evidence on which our faith rests in matters of religion totally different in all its parts from that on which we ground our belief in history?” (Addit. Remarks, p. 47).

The separation between the grounds of religious and historical belief is by no means so complete as Mr. Morritt supposes, even in regard to modern times; and when we apply his position to the ancient Greeks, it will be found completely the reverse of the truth. The contemporaries of Herodotus and Thucydidês conceived their early history in the most intimate conjunction with their religion.

[811] For example, adopting his own line of argument (not to mention those battles in which the pursuit and the flight reaches from the city to the ships and back again), it might have been urged to him, that by supposing the Homeric Troy to be four miles farther off from the sea, he aggravated the difficulty of rolling the Trojan horse into the town: it was already sufficiently hard to propel this vast wooden animal full of heroes from the Greek Naustathmon to the town of Ilium.

The Trojan horse, with its accompaniments Sinon and Laocoôn, is one of the capital and indispensable events in the epic: Homer, Arktinus, Leschês, Virgil, and Quintus Smyrnæus, all dwell upon it emphatically as the proximate cause of the capture.

The difficulties and inconsistencies of the movements ascribed to Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad, when applied to real topography, are well set forth in Spohn, De Agro Trojano, Leipsic, 1814; and Mr. Maclaren has shown (Dissertation on the Topography of the Trojan War, Edinburgh, 1822) that these difficulties are nowise obviated by removing Ilium a few miles further from the sea.

[812] Major Rennell argues differently from the visit of Alexander, employing it to confute the hypothesis of Chevalier, who had placed the Homeric Troy at Bounarbashi, the site supposed to have been indicated by Dêmêtrius and Strabo:—

“Alexander is said to have been a passionate admirer of the Iliad, and he had an opportunity of deciding on the spot how far the topography was consistent with the narrative. Had he been shown the site of Bounarbashi for that of Troy, he would probably have questioned the fidelity either of the historical part of the poem or his guides. It is not within credibility, that a person of so correct a judgment as Alexander could have admired a poem, which contained a long history of military details, and other transactions that could not physically have had an existence. What pleasure could he receive, in contemplating as subjects of history, events which could not have happened? Yet he did admire the poem, and therefore must have found the topography consistent: that is, Bounarbashi, surely, was not shown to him for Troy.” (Rennell, Observations on the Plain of Troy, p. 128).

Major Rennell here supposes in Alexander a spirit of topographical criticism quite foreign to his real character. We have no reason to believe that the site of Bounarbashi was shown to Alexander as the Homeric Troy, or that any site was shown to him except Ilium, or what Strabo calls New Ilium. Still less reason have we to believe that any scepticism crossed his mind, or that his deep-seated faith required to be confirmed by measurement of distances.

[813] Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδ᾽ ἡ τοῦ Ἕκτορος δὲ περιδρομὴ ἡ περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔχει τι εὔλογον· οὐ γάρ ἐστι περίδρομος ἡ νῦν, διὰ τὴν συνεχῆ ῥάχιν· ἡ δὲ παλαιὰ ἔχει περιδρομήν.

[814] Mannert (Geographie der Griechen und Römer, th. 6. heft 3. b. 8. cap. 8) is confused in his account of Old and New Ilium: he represents that Alexander raised up a new spot to the dignity of having been the Homeric Ilium, which is not the fact: Alexander adhered to the received local belief. Indeed, as far as our evidence goes, no one but Dêmêtrius, Hestiæa, and Strabo appears ever to have departed from it.

[815] There can hardly be a more singular example of this same confusion, than to find elaborate military criticisms from the Emperor Napoleon, upon the description of the taking of Troy in the second book of the Æneid. He shows that gross faults are committed in it, when looked at from the point of view of a general (see an interesting article by Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 205, “Napoleon on the Capture of Troy”).

Having cited this criticism from the highest authority on the art of war, we may find a suitable parallel in the works of distinguished publicists. The attack of Odysseus on the Ciconians (described in Homer, Odyss. ix. 39-61) is cited both by Grotius (De Jure Bell. et Pac. iii. 3, 10) and by Vattel (Droit des Gens, iii. 202) as a case in point in international law. Odysseus is considered to have sinned against the rules of international law by attacking them as allies of the Trojans, without a formal declaration of war.

[816] Compare Herodot. v. 24-122; Thucyd. i. 131. The Ἰλιὰς γῆ is a part of the Trôad.

[817] Herodot. vii. 43.

[818] Herodot. v. 122. εἷλε μὲν Αἰολέας πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν Ἰλιάδα γῆν νέμονται, εἷλε δὲ Γέργιθας, τοὺς ἀπολειφθέντας τῶν ἀρχαίων Τεύκρων.

For the migration of the Teukrians and Mysians into Europe, see Herodot. vii. 20; the Pæonians, on the Strymôn, called themselves their descendants.

[819] Herodot. ii. 118; v. 13.

[820] Strabo, xiii. p. 604; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 4.

Kephalôn of Gergis called Teukrus a Krêtan (Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀρίσβη).

[821] Clearchus ap. Athæne. vi. p. 256; Strabo, xiii. p. 589-616.

[822] Homer, Hymn. in Vener. 116.

[823] Iliad, ii. 863. Asius, the brother of Hecabê, lives in Phrygia on the banks of the Sangarius (Iliad, xvi. 717).

[824] See Hellanik. Fragm. 129, 130. ed. Didot; and Kephalôn Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρισβή.

[825] Skêpsis received some colonists from the Ionic Miletus (Anaximenês apud Strabo, xiv. p. 635); but the coins of the place prove that its dialect was Æolic. See Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, tom. i. note 180.

Arisbê also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from Mitylênê (Eustath. ad Iliad. xii. 97).

The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain around Ilium is noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin, Remarks and Observations on the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p. 44): it is also easily worked: “a couple of buffaloes or oxen were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Constantinople it takes twelve or fourteen.”

[826] Ephôrus ap. Harpocrat. v. Κεβρῆνα.

[827] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10; iii. 1, 10-15.

One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric narrative of the Trojan war, is to vindicate Athênê from the charge of having unjustly destroyed her own city of Ilium (Orat. xi. p. 310: μάλιστα διὰ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ὅπως μὴ δοκῇ ἀδίκως διαφθεῖραι τὴν ἑαυτῆς πόλιν).

[828] Strabo, x. p. 473; xiii. p. 604-605. Polemon. Fragm. 31. p. 63, ed. Preller.

Polemon was a native of Ilium, and had written a periegesis of the place (about 200 B. C., therefore earlier than Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis): he may have witnessed the improvement in its position effected by the Romans. He noticed the identical stone upon which Palamêdês had taught the Greeks to play at dice.

The Sminthian Apollo appears inscribed on the coins of Alexandreia Trôas; and the temple of the god was memorable even down to the time of the emperor Julian (Ammian. Marcellin. xxii. 8). Compare Menander (the Rhetor) περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, iv. 14; apud Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. p. 304; also περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, iv. 17.

Σμίνθος, both in the Krêtan and the Æolic dialect, meant a field-mouse: the region seems to have been greatly plagued by these little animals.

Polemon could not have accepted the theory of Dêmêtrius, that Ilium was not the genuine Troy: his Periegesis, describing the localities and relics of Ilium, implied the legitimacy of the place as a matter of course.

[829] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 42:—

[830] Pausanias, x. 12, 8; Lactantius, i. 6, 12; Steph. Byz. v. Μέρμησσος; Schol. Plat. Phædr. p. 315, Bekker.

The date of this Gergithian Sibyll, or of the prophecies passing under her name, is stated by Hêrakleidês of Pontus, and there seems no reason for calling it in question.

Klausen (Æneas und die Penaten, book ii. p. 205) has worked out copiously the circulation and legendary import of the Sibylline prophecies.

[831] Herodot. v. 94. Σίγειον ... τὸ εἷλε Πεισίστρατος αἰχμῇ παρὰ Μιτυληναίων ... Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀποδεικνύντες λόγῳ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον Αἰολεῦσι μετεὸν τῆς Ἰλιάδος χώρης, ἢ οὐ καὶ σφι καὶ τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, ὅσοι Ἑλλήνων συνεξεπρήξαντο Μενέλεῳ τὰς Ἑλένης ἁρπαγάς. In Æschylus (Eumenid. 402) the goddess Athênê claims the land about the Skamander, as having been presented to the sons of Thêseus by the general vote of the Grecian chiefs:—

In the days of Peisistratus, it seems Athens was not bold enough or powerful enough to advance this vast pretension.

[832] Charôn of Lampsacus ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 2; Bernhardy ad Dionys. Periêgêt. 805. p. 747.

[833] Such at least is the statement of Strabo (xii. p. 590); though such an extent of Lydian role at that time seems not easy to reconcile with the proceedings of the subsequent Lydian kings.

[834] Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod, Theogon. 802.

[835] We read in the Iliad that Asteropæus was grandson of the beautiful river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him, admits the dignity of this parentage, but boasts that his own descent from Zeus was much greater, since even the great river Achelôus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157-191). Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simoïs to his aid (213-308). Tyrô, the daughter of Salmôneus, falls in love with Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237). Achelôus appears as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9).

There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what is told of the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor, the great mountain Tonga Riro: “I am the Heu-Heu, and rule over you all, just as my ancestor Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands above all this land.” (E. J. Wakefield, Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. ch. 17. p. 465). Heu-Heu refused permission to any one to ascend the mountain, on the ground that it was his tipuna or ancestor: “he constantly identified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor” (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in New Zealand are accounted by the natives masculine and feminine: Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the neighborhood (ibid. ii. c. 4. p. 97).

The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says,—

“I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty (said they with great respect) would really never consent to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing.

“Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane. But he must come to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being—a sovereign princess who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it—the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage” (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. iii. p. 20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity of Mother Nerbudda (chapter xxvii. p. 261); also of the holy personality of the earth. “The land is considered as the MOTHER of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance to her son; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of the fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops by the chief himself or his immediate agents, were considered by the people in this light—either it should not be done at all, or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing to the Deity” (Ch. xxvii. p. 248).

See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees—the Peepultree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the description of the annual marriage celebrated between the sacred pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, and the sacred shrub Toolsea, celebrated at great expense and with a numerous procession (chap. xix. p. 158; xxiii. p. 185).

[836] See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14):—

A certain kindred between men and serpents (συγγένειάν τινα πρὸς τοὺς ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent: the original hero of this gens was said to have been transformed from a serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii. p. 588).

[837] Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr expresses it neatly (63)—

Also the remarkable story of Euênius of Apollônia, his neglect of the sacred cattle of Hêlios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93: compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130).

I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Persons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its soldiers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enormity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): “Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquando transmitterentur? Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam: modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicuti cœlum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: quæque vacuæ, eas publicas esse. Solem deinde respiciens, et cœtera sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat—vellentne contueri inane solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wandering and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its warriors were all slain, its women and children sold as slaves.

I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and death both to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical prosopopœia. His appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings and sympathies of Hêlios.

Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the gloss “quasi coram,” to mark that the speaker here passes into a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe the comprehension of Hêlios under a point of view so new to them. While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the personification of the sun, Boiocalus would have had some trouble to make his tribe comprehend the re-ification of the god Hêlios.

[838] Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of Nikias: οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους ὡς, εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23, and Periklês, c. 32; Diodôr. xii. 39; Dêmêtr. Phaler. ap. Diogen. Laërt, ix. 9, 1).

“You strange man, Melêtus,” said Socratês, on his trial, to his accuser, “are you seriously affirming that I do not think Hêlios and Selênê to be gods, as the rest of mankind think?” “Certainly not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (this is the reply of Melêtus), Socratês says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.” “Why, my dear Melêtus, you think you are preferring an accusation against Anaxagoras! You account these Dikasts so contemptibly ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of such doctrines! Is it from me that the youth acquire such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to announce such views as my own—not to mention their extreme absurdity?” (ἄλλως τε καὶ οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 14. p. 26).

The divinity of Hêlios and Selênê is emphatically set forth by Plato, Legg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 7; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 8; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant. c. 40. p. 1053; and Schaubach ad Anaxagoræ Fragmenta, p. 6.

[839] Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Düntzer:—

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to the same general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a preceding age, the inmates of which were in nearer contact with the gods than they themselves (Odyss. viii. 223; Iliad, v. 304; xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleôs et Thetidos, v. 382-408.

Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys. Hal. Art Rhetor. cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at Alexandria Trôas, proper and complimentary forms to invite a great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia:—ὥσπερ γὰρ Ἀπόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Σμινθίοις, ἥνικα ἐξῆν θεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις νῦν προσδέχεται (περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικ. s. iv. c. 14. ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor, t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native of Alexandria Trôas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see Walz. Præf. ad t. ix. p. xv.-xx.; and περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, sect. iv. c. 17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time, embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards.

[840] P. A. Müller observes justly, in his Saga-Bibliothek, in reference to the Icelandic mythes, “In dem Mythischen wird das Leben der Vorzeit dargestellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen Verstande, der jugendlichen Einbildungskraft, und dem vollen Herzen, erscheint.”

(Lange’s Untersuchungen über die Nordische und Deutsche Heldensage, translated from P. A. Müller, Introd. p. 1.)

[841] Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus, “spectatâ opulentiâ donisque regum, quæque alia lætum antiquitatibus Græcorum genus incertæ vetustati adfingit, de navigatione primum consuluit” (Tacit. Hist. ii. 4-5).

[842] Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες· οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι. Istros followed this opinion also: but the more common view seems to have considered all who combated at Troy as heroes (see Schol. Iliad, ii. 110; xv. 231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp. Di. 158).

In reference to the Trojan war, Aristotle says—καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς Ἡρωϊκοῖς περὶ Πριάμου μυθεύεται (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare vii. 1).

[843] Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as an act entirely human and physical (ἐμιγη—παρελέξατο); and this was the common opinion in the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedæmonian king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182).] Euripidês sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), but Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the actual son of Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying was admonished in a dream to respect the person of his wife Periktionê, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the child Plato (Plutarch, Quæst. Sympos. p. 717. viii. 1; Diogen. Laërt. iii. 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life of Numa, c. 4; compare Life of Thêseus, 2) discusses the subject, and is inclined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy and tenderness in a god: Pausanias deals timidly with it, and is not always consistent with himself; while the later rhetors spiritualize it altogether. Meander, περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, (towards the end of the third century B. C.) prescribes rules for praising a king: you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs: perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son of some god; for many who seem to be from men, are really sent down by God and are emanations from the Supreme Potency—πολλοὶ τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων εἰσὶ, τῇ δ᾽ ἀληθείᾳ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καταπέμπονται καὶ εἰσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ κρείττονος· καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν Ἀμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ ἦν Διός. Οὕτω καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέτερος το μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ τὴν καταβολὴν οὐράνοθεν ἔχει, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again—περὶ Σμινθιακῶν—Ζεὺς γένεσιν παιδῶν δημιουργεῖν ἐνενόησε—Ἀπόλλων τὴν Ἀσκληπιοῦ γένεσιν ἐδημιούργησε, p. 322-327; compare Hermogenês, about the story of Apollo and Daphnê, Progymnasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p. 220.

The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had himself composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo—περὶ Ἐγκωμίων, c. 3. t. ix. p. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy of notice. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women much was said respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sapphô, to the composers of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268).

Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320); the spiritual character of which hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god.

We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself, in the shape of a dolphin, swam before a Krêtan vessel and guided it to Krissa, where he directed the terrified crew to open the Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was not correct: the god had not himself appeared in the shape of a dolphin—he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel (Plutarch. de Solertiâ Animal. p. 983). See also a contrast between the Homeric Zeus, and the genuine Zeus, (ἀληθινὸς) brought out in Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. c 30. p. 426.

Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to the δαίμονες: see the singular controversy started among the fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors—Νόμου ὄντος, παρθένους καὶ καθαρὰς εἶναι τὰς ἱερείας, ἱερεία τις εὑρέθη ἀτόκιον φέρουσα, καὶ κρίνεται.... Ἀλλ᾽ ἐρεῖ, φασὶ, διὰ τὰς τῶν δαιμόνων ἐπιφοιτήσεις καὶ ἐπιβουλὰς περιτεθεῖσθαι. Καὶ πῶς οὐκ ἀνόητον κομιδῆ τὸ τοιοῦτον; ἔδει γὰρ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὴν παρθενίαν φορεῖν τι ἀποτρόπαιον, οὐ μὴν πρὸς τὸ τεκεῖν (Anonymi Scholia ad Hermogen. Στάσεις, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162).

Apsinês of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to be a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. Ἀψίνης). The anecdote respecting the rivers Skamander and Mæander, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Æschines (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle.