lower temperature, or at least is so considered by the natives,' and is gratefully cool in the heat of summer.

For poetry this coincidence appears sufficient, and in regard to the position of Troy itself, it seems quite enough to find a hill rising above the sources just mentioned, not only agreeing in all particulars with the kind of position which the ancients usually chose for their towns, but the only situation in this region which will combine all the requisites they sought for, namely, a height overlooking a fertile maritime plain, situated at a sufficient distance from the sea to be secure from the attacks of pirates, furnished with a copious and perennial supply of water, presenting a very strong and healthy position for the city, and for the citadel a hill beyond the reach of bow-shot from the neighbouring heights, defended at the back by steep banks and precipices, surrounded by a deep valley and broad torrent, and backed and defended beyond the river by mountains, which supplied timber and fuel. That it was precisely such a situation as the ancients invariably preferred, might be shown from a great variety of examples, both in Greece and Asia and it can hardly be doubted that a person, totally unacquainted with the Iliad, but accustomed to observe the positions of ancient towns, would fix on Bunár-bashi for the site of the city to which this region belonged.

:

It may be objected to this arrangement of the Trojan rivers and to this position of Troy-1. That the Scamander was the larger

This I learn from Dr. Clarke, (Travels vol. ii. p. 109.) It suggests a question whether these fountains have not been in the same state of temperature in all ages, although vulgar opinion, or a love of fable, may have ascribed to them a difference, which would not have been disproved even in the present day, without the help of the thermometer. The poet would probably adhere to the local tale, even though he had examined the fountains so minutely as to be of a different opinion. An inclination to mix truth with fiction, to believe whatever is marvellous or makes a good story, and still oftener to repeat it without believing it, has in all ages been a characteristic of the Greeks, and it is so still. It was the foundation of their mythology, and derived from the fertile imagination and poetical genius inherent in the nation. Thus Pausanias tells us, the Greeks feigned that Hercules dragged Cerberus out of Hell, through a cavern at Cape Tanarus, though (as he adds,) this cavern has not any subterraneous passage whatever. Thus travellers in Greece at the present day are continually amused with local fables resembling those of antiquity, repeated by all, but believed by scarcely any, and in general, least of all by those who live in the places from whence they originate.

The water of the springs of Bunár-bashi seems to be nearly of the same temperature, of 60° all the year, and will consequently feel cool when the air is at 70° or 80°, and warm when it is at 40° or 50°. It has often occurred to me in Greece to find the same source which I had admired in the summer for its refreshing coolness, disagreeably tepid, and flat to the taste in winter.

VOL. XVII.

Cl. Jl.

NO. XXXV.

K

2

of the two streams, and consequently must be ascribed to the Méinder-2. That this name is itself a corroboration of the identity-3. That it is strongly confirmed by the words of a native of the country, Demetrius of Scepsis, as quoted by Strabo,' and by the remarks of Strabo himself. It must be observed, however, that in the climate of Greece and Asia Minor, subject to great droughts in summer, a perennial stream of pure water, however diminutive, was of more importance than a large torrent, which, winding through low grounds, affords only water that is either turbid or stagnant. We all know what importance the Greeks attached to the smallest sources, which furnished a constant supply of water. In this view, therefore, the rivulet of Bunár-bashi was more likely than the Méinder to have been the God Scamander, and as being more peculiarly the river Troy, may easily be supposed to have given name to the united stream, after its junction with the other branch. When Troy and its ruins had perished, when its site had ceased to be known; when the fountains of Bunár-bashi had lost their fame and local importance, and the waters of its stream had been diverted into another channel, it seems not at all unnatural, that the name of Méinder should have been transferred from the united stream to the whole of the Easternmost branch throughout its entire course from the summit of Ida to the embouchure in the Hellespont, and that the name of Simoeis should have become obsolete. There are many instances of a change of names in the rivers of Greece from one age to another, and an example of a transmutation of name in two branches of the same stream, under circumstances which cannot so easily be accounted for as in the rivers of the Troas, is to be found in Thessaly, where the river called Apidanus by Herodotus and Thucydides is undoubtedly the same as the Enipeus of later writers, whose Apidanus is at twelve miles distance, and joins the other stream not far from the confluence of the united river with the Peneus. The word Méinder, too, it must be observed, is still applied to two other rivers on the West - coast of Asia Minor, the Cayster and Meander, and, like the

I Εμπειρος δ ̓ ἂν τῶν τόπων, ὡς αν ἐπιχώριος ἀνὴρ ὁ Δημήτριος, τότε μὲν οὕτως λέο γει περὶ αὐτῶν. Ἐστὶ γὰρ λόφος τὶς τῆς Ἴδης Κότυλος ὑπέρκειται δ ̓ οὗτος ἑκατόν που καὶ εἴκοσι σταδίοις Σκήψεως· ἐξ οὗ ὅ τε Σκάμανδρος ῥεῖ καὶ ὅ Γρανικὸς καὶ Αἴσηπος. Strabo, l. 13. ed. Casaubon, p. 602. In another place, p. 597, Strabo says the Scamander divided the territory of Cebrene from that of Scepsis.

2 The lowest state of the Grecian rivers is not in July, as the reviewer of Mr. Gell's book in the Edinburgh Review, No. 12. p. 274. supposes, but just before the autumnal rains, and if these are not copious, sometimes even so late as December and January. In July the snows are not all melted in the mountains.

names Don and Don-au,' applied to so many of the rivers of Europe, seems to be a generic word belonging to the language of this part of Asia, before the time of the Greek colonies, and of which Scamander and Maander were the Greek forms.

2

Strabo is a witness that the coast of the Troad at the mouth of the river had gained considerably upon the sea. It would be surprising, indeed, if a phænomenon so common in other places, under like circumstances, had not taken place upon a coast, where every requisite favors it, and where it is probable that this operation of nature has been further assisted (instead of prevented, as has sometimes been supposed,) by the current of the Dardanelles, which causes an eddy in many points of the coast of the Hellespont, proportioned to its own rapidity. It may surely be allowed, therefore, in adjusting the Homeric topography, to suppose the marshes and low land near the mouth of the river to be of a formation subsequent to the time of the Trojan war. In trying to identify the Scamander and Simoeis of Homer, Strabo confesses himself puzzled. This is not surprising. An intelligent native of the country (Demetrius) informs him that the Scamander springs from a single source in the same summit of Mount Ida, which gives rise to the Granicus and Esepus: on the other hand, he finds Homer's fountains of the Scamander quite in a different place; but remarking, that they have no communication with the river then called Scamander by the natives (the Méinder), he is obliged to reconcile the difficulty, by supposing either that they were supplied by a subterraneous communication from the Scamander, (Méinder,) or that they were considered the fountains of the Scamander, because they were near it.3 As neither of these suppo

The Greeks made Tanaïs out of Don, and the Romans Danubius out of Donau.

2 The depositions at the mouth of the Meander have removed the coast to a considerable distance from Miletus, Priene, and Myus, which were formerly maritime cities, and Chandler thought the same thing had happened to Bargylia and Caryanda, whose position seems beyond the influence of that river. It is impossible to reconcile the topography of Thermopyla and the neighbouring district, with the description of it given in the sober prose of Herodotus, without previously supposing, that all the lower part of the plain is of recent formation, and that the Spercheius has added six miles to the length of its ancient course.

3 After citing the well-known description of the fountains from the 22d book of the Iliad, he says,

Οὔτε γὰρ θερμὰ νῦν ἐν τῷ τόπῳ ευρίσκεται, οὐδ ̓ ἡ τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου πηγὴ ἐνταῦθα, ἀλλ ̓ ἐν τῷ ὄρει· καὶ μία, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ δύο. Τὰ μὲν οὖν θερμὰ ἐκλελεῖφθαι εἰκός· τὸ δὲ ψυ χρὸν κατὰ διάδοσιν ὑπεκρέον ἐκ τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου κατὰ τοῦτο ἀνατέλλειν τὸ χωρίον, ἢ καὶ διὰ τὸ πλησίον εἶναι τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου, καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ὕδωρ λέγεσθαι τοῦ Σκαμάνδρου πηγήν· οὕτω γὰρ λέγονται πλείους πηγαὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ ποταμοῦ.

Strabo Geog. lib. 13. p. 602.

sitions are very plausible, it seems more easy to imagine that the nanie of Scamander had been applied before the time of Strabo to the Easternmost branch, formerly called Simoeis. The geographer remarks also, that there were no hot waters in his time at the Homeric fountains of the Scamander, and supposes they had failed in the lapse of time. Their condition, therefore, seems to have been the same in his time as it is now.

In Ptolemy the order of names argues only that which appears sufficiently from Homer, namely, that the Simoeis was the Easternmost branch of the river, and it will therefore equally support the hypothesis advanced in the preceding pages, or the opinion of those, who take one of the streams which run into the Méinder from the Northward to have been the Simoeis, and Troy consequently to have been upon the heights towards the Upper Dardanelles.1

2

The words of Pliny warrant the conjecture, that the waters of the Troad were in the same state in his time, as they are at the present day, namely, a new mouth of the Scamander to the South of Sigaum, formed by an artificial canal, and the old Scumander, at the mouth of the Méinder.

Dionysius Periegetes, in two passages where he speaks of the Xanthus and Simoeis, designates the latter by the epithet of Idæan, thus affording an argument that it was the Méinder, the only stream on this side, which has its sources in the highest parts of the mountain. It may be asked how it happens, that these three authors call this branch of the river Simveis, at a period, when we have already supposed it to have been known in the country by the name of Scamander. The answer would be, that as the name of Simoeis must, upon the supposition already advanced, have then been obsolete, these writers must have spoken of the Homeric Simoeis, which was the more likely, as they were the authors of mere compilations, and in all probability had never been upon the spot. But it must be allowed, that very little reliance can be placed upon such information.

Ipsaque Troas Antigonia dicta, nune Alexandria, colonia Romana. Oppidum Nee. Scamander amnis navigabilis, et in promontorio quondam Sigæum oppidum. Dein portus Achæorum in quem influit Xanthus Simoenti junctus, stagnumque prius faciens, Palæ-Scamander."

Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. 5. c. 30.

There are some other points upon which we cannot institute a comparison between the Homeric topography and the actual state of the country, until we are in possession of an accurate survey of the whole region. Until the levels have been examined, no wellfounded conjecture can be made as to the line of coast in the time of the Trojan war, and the probable direction of the river in the lower part of its course. The levels, also, will best determine how far from the sea the two streams may have joined in former ages, and in what part of the ancient line of the coast the mouth of the river is likely to have been.

When we have a more perfect knowledge of the country, some of those features of the Homeric topography, which are not of a nature to undergo much change in the lapse of time, may be more clearly recognised, and it may then also be determined, whether any of the streams which run into the Méinder from the northward are sufficient in size, or length of course, or permanence, to be the Idaan Simoeis. It may then perhaps be admitted that Dr. Clarke's conjectures are just-that the river of Kalifat is the Simoeis, and that the springs of Bunár-bashi were only called the sources of the Scamander, as discharging their waters into that river. In the present view of the question, however, it appears difficult to believe, that a river, stagnant in the month of March,' as Dr. Clarke describes the Kalifatli, should have been the Simoeis of Homer and it seems almost necessary to conclude, that if the Méinder must be the Scamander of Homer, there is nothing left for it but to make the Thímbrek the Simoeis.

2

It has been said that the distance of Bunár-bashi from the sea is irreconcileable with the events in the Iliad, which took place on the day of the death of Patroclus, for that if Troy was at Bunár-bashi, the Greeks having twice pursued the enemy to the walls of the oity, and having been twice driven back again to their camp, must have fought over a space of forty or fifty miles in one day. But supposing the distance from the coast to Bunár-bashi to be now ten miles, we must first deduct, in order to calculate

The very season in which the streams of this country are at the highest, as Dr. Clarke himself experienced in crossing the Méinder.

2

Bryant's Observations on Le Chevalier, p. 2, 3, 4. Edinburgh Review, No. 12. p. 237.

3 It is true that this day must be curtailed by some hours, because the Greeks did not gain any ground towards Troy till after the hour of the woodman's meal, (II. A. v. 84.) which, to judge by modern customs in the same country, is about nine o'clock in the forenoon; there still remain, however, more than ten hours of daylight (supposing the season to have been summer, as has generally been imagined), a space of time sufficient for the operation performed.