ians, 1000 Phocians, and a number of Boeotians under the Persian banners. When, therefore, we estimate the resources of Greece, at this time of" impending ruin," we must not merely take the account given by Brent, that she could produce only 378 ships; but duly weighing all the circumstances connected with the Persian war, form our opinion of Brent's argument upon just and sound information. Then it will be seen, that so far from not being able to bring into the field a force so great as that which she sent against Troy, the means, and power of Greece had increased in a surprising degree, and that a force nearly double of that in question was actually produced from a few of her states alone. "that The next argument Brent uses, is to show the improbability, an oath should have been so weighty an obligation, as to unite them under the command of a leader not much superior to themselves in power," and says he, "It is not likely that such a motley crew of savages, could ever have been actuated by any motive," "to abandon the management of their own territories, &c." (See CLASSICAL JOURNAL, No. Ix. p. 16.) " and attack the Trojans who had never injured them, never held intercourse with them." Upon considering the real state of Greece, and the manners of mankind at that period, there are few who will seriously maintain an argument such as this; Greece was not in the barbarous and savage state in which Brent would have it appear; its inhabitants had arrived at a state of civilisation, which, compared with the early ages, is astonishing. They had been living together in cities for some time; a mode of life implying a settled intention of occupancy, and requiring a certain degree of municipal government; to establish which, a proportion of forethought is requisite, incompatible with our ideas of a rude and savage people; for they never are able to look beyond the present moment, or guard against future occurrences. The commerce which they had with the Phoenicians and Egyptians is another strong proof of their civilisation. It was not the mere interchange of articles, bearing no relative value; the sort of commerce which a civilised nation carries on with a rude one; but it was a spirit of adventure and industry, urging them to a commercial intercourse with nations, better acquainted than themselves with the arts and luxuries of life, and from whom they learnt the first rudiments of those sciences, and that learning, which have since illuminated the whole world. Even supposing for an instant, that."they were a motley crew of savages," there is still no ground for supposing that the suitors of Helen would not have been bound by the oath they had taken. The sanctity of an oath, and the scrupulous veneration with which it is regarded among a rude people, is well known. Among all the barbarous nations, with which later ages have become acquainted, this is invariably found to be the case. If the North American makes a vow, he will go over land and sea to fulfil it. The Arabian will sooner lose his life, than break his word, and why are we to suppose that the Grecians were more destitute of honor? It is not upon this story, however, that the truth or falsehood of the Trojan war rests. The chieftains of Greece were induced by other powerful motives, to undertake this expedition: they were actuated by the hope of plunder, and by the desire of revenge; one of the most pre- Οὐ γὰρ πώποτ' ἐμὰς βοῦς ἤλασαν, οὐδὲ μὲν ἵππους, Κάρπον ἐδηλήσαντ'· ἐπειὴ μάλα πολλὰ μεταξὺ Οὔρεά τε σκιόεντα, θάλασσά τε ἠχήεσσα. ̓Αλλά σοι, ὦ μέγ' ἀναιδές, ἅμ ̓ ἑσπόμεθ, ̓ ὄφρα σὺ χαίρῃς, Πρὸς Τρώων· τῶν οὔτι μετατρέπῃ, οὐδ ̓ ἀλεγίζεις. Ulysses feigned madness, as an excuse, but when discovered, did not dare to refuse to join the army. All these circumstances prove, that personal hostility alone did not induce the Grecians to unite against Troy; and, that the power and authority of the sons of Atreus were held in a great degree of respect. Their interest too was another strong motive. Asia Minor was at that time one of the richest countries in the world. The rumor of so great an enterprise would at once collect together all those petty Grecian chieftains, who, delighting in plundering expeditions, were constantly engaged in a free-booting warfare, and subsisted by a predatory mode of life, and who joined the army in the hope of booty. That this booty was a very great inducement, Homer tells us every where. It was of no small importance to the commanders themselves. Even Agamemnon quarrelled with Achilles, rather than part with his share of the plunder, and through the whole war, the principal employment of the army when not actually engaged in the siege, was in ravaging and ransacking the neighbouring towns. By thus laying waste the country, two purposes were served. The combined troops were kept together by participating in the plunder; and the army was in a certain degree supplied with provisions. This constant marauding in a great measure prevented the Grecians from becoming listless, and weary of the pro Eschylus. Danaid, 2 Lib. 1. Iliad. tracted length of the siege. To have at once assaulted the city would have been impolitic and dangerous; for in those ages, war was not considered as a science, nor its improvements known, and as the fortifications of Troy were peculiarly strong, it would have been a useless loss of men to have attempted it. When the Tro jans had retired within their walls, the only method the Grecian General could pursue was blockade: and in order to weaken the powers of Phrygia, and to straiten the city for provisions, the warfare of pillage was begun, and carried on till the country was completely exhausted. But we ought not to suppose, that during this period no attack was made upon the city itself, although Homer does not mention it. This would be a very unfair way of arguing, as his poem is confined to the transactions of a very short period during the last year of the war; and at any rate Brent has no right to say that the Grecians remained for nine years inactive, when we know that they were attacking the Trojans, in a less open, but in as certain a way, as if they had been continually storming the walls of Troy. I The next point of discussion is, whether Paris ever carried away Helen. Now, nothing was more common than rapes of this description during the first ages of Greece. The Phrygians had fitted out a fleet under the command of Paris, a Trojan prince, for the purpose of piratical warfare, and perhaps to retaliate upon the Greeks, for some such attack of theirs. Landing in Greece, he was hospitably entertained by the king of Sparta, Menelaus, whose wife he seduced away, and at the same time seized upon as much of the property of her husband as he could meet with. Is there any thing at all improbable in this? If this marauding expedition of Paris had been the only instance of the kind, with which we were acquainted, there might have been some ground of doubt as to its truth: but, as we have many stories of the same kind recorded, which happened near the time of this war, they completely prove that such was the genius of the age, and such the opinion the Greeks entertained of the manners of their ancestors, without some farther proof, than what is called by Brent, the improbability of the story, it will require no small degree of scepticism, to turn a deaf ear to all the strong presumptive evidence in support of its truth. Brent himself speaks of " plundering expeditions," and "unprincipled free-booters," yet considers it as so extraordinary an event, that Trojans should plunder as well as Greeks, and as still more extraordinary that the Greeks should be roused to revenge the attack. Exploits like that of Paris have even been common in later periods. During the twelfth century, in the age of chivalry, the Knights Errant were to succour distressed damsels, and, if injured, to revenge them. In Treland the following similar case happened, even more remarkable in its consequences than the rape of Helen. "Dermot king of Leinster, (says Mitford,) formed a design on Derrorghal, a celebrated beauty, wife of O'Ruark king of Leitrim, and between force and fraud, he succeeded in carrying her off. O'Ruark resented the affront as might be expected. He procured a confederacy of neighbouring chieftains, with the king of Connaught, the 1 Io, Ariadne, Medea, &c. most powerful prince in Ireland, at their head. Leinster was invaded, the princess was recovered, and after hostilities continued with various success during several years, Dermot was expelled from his kingdom." The English conquest of Ireland, by Henry II. to whom Dermot had applied for assistance, followed soon after.' Brent may, however, as well refuse to believe one story as the other; they are both equally probable, and both equally true. The chieftains of Ireland possessed as little of "the honor of real heroes," and felt as little "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," as the heroes of Homer, but yet they joined in the enterprise, from motives such as are assigned to the Grecians; and therefore when we give credence to the alleged expedition against Troy, we are not giving credit to a "wild and extravagant tale, unparallelled in the annals of mankind." 2 He Brent affirms that the Grecian army could " procure subsistence only by plundering the whole of that part of Asia Minor." surely must have forgotten, that a large body of the army had been dispatched to cultivate the Thracian Chersonese, and obtain provisions for those employed in the war: aware of the strength of the place, and the length of time it would require to take it, the commanders wished to provide against a dependence upon the produce of the country itself, which would have been inadequate for their support: Brent's statement is therefore incorrect. He next lays some stress upon "the uncertainty respecting Helen's place of abode during the event: the strong doubts whether she ever was carried away, &c." Herodotus and Euripides agree in saying, upon the authority of some Egyptian priests, (as likely to be mistaken as Homer,) that Helen was left in Egypt: and allowing such to be the case, it proves no more, than that there were various stories existing as to the fate of Helen, for surely it cannot invalidate the general truth of Homer's story: since they all admit, that the siege of Troy actually took place; and as it shows that the Egyptians themselves had no idea of the credit they deserved, according to Mr. Bryant's theory, nor the claim they possessed to be the inventors of the Trojan war, so far from militating against, it is an argument in favor of its truth. It also proves, that the Egyptians did not consider Homer in the light of a plagiarist, else they certainly would have mentioned it to Herodotus, who made so many and such particular inquiries, as to what they knew of the story. Though I do not pretend to say, that we are to believe every single circumstance Homer has told us, and though I allow that he has greatly decorated his subject,-and what poet is there who has not done so ?-the truth of his story is no way impeached by it. The only historians of the early ages were the poets, and it is perfectly impossible, that a fictitious history known at one time to be false, could ever by any human means have afterwards been forced upon mankind as a reality. An instance of the kind never happened, and when Brent objects to the authenticity of the account given us, because Homer indulges a little in poetical fiction; he might with 1 Hume. Lyttleton. 2 Thucydides. Lib. I. cap. 11. almost as much appearance of justice, declare that the Crusades never happened, because Tasso's Jerusalem is in a great degree fabulous. Brent then enters into "a cursory survey" of Mr. Bryant's reasoning, to prove that no such city as Troy ever existed in Phrygia, and affirms that the site of Troy never has been ascertained even by the ancients." I am perfectly aware, that the exact spot on which the ancient city was situated, they did not discover: but they seem to have been well acquainted with the plain itself. Strabo lib. XIII. p. 600. gives a long account of it. He mentions that there were no remains of the city visible in his time, and accounts for this by saying, that the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities took stones from its ruins to build their own habitations, and Demetrius of Scepsis a native of the country, whom he quotes, accuses Histæa Alexandrina of mistake, in asserting that Achilleum was built of those stones by Periander, for the stones of Troy, he says, were of a different kind. Troy must therefore at one time have existed in that part of Phrygia, or else how came Demetrius to be acquainted with its ruins? and he must have been convinced it had, or he would not have used that expression., Chevalier in his dissertation shows that Strabo was wrong in Mis description: but still Strabo's evidence as to the existence of Troy is not invalidated. Alexander the Great, though he perhaps did not find its exact situation, yet found all the different tombs and marks, mentioned in Homer and other authors. He visited those of Achilles and Patroclus,' and upon that of Achilles is said to have offered a sacrifice. From the concurring circumstances, he was perfectly convinced that he had found nearly where the ancient city stood, or he would not have built his Ilium where he did: but at any rate, it does not follow, that because he did not build his city on the exact site of ancient Troy, he did not know where that site was. For as he was founding a city which he intended should in after times become great and florishing, he would most likely choose such a situation, as at the same time that it kept up the memory of those events he wished to record, might also possess those advantages necessary for a commercial town. And if he did not find the exact spot, this only proves that the traces were either totally obliterated, or very slight, a circumstance which can be "parallelled" by the case of other cities, though Brent denies it. Mr. Morritt instances "New Ilium," a city once very considerable, Abydos and Tyre, "a city full as powerful, and much more lately destroyed." To these may be added Thebes Exaτóμmλ01" the ruins of which were visible in the time of Juvenal, 66 Atque vetus Theba centum jacet obruta portis:" many others might be named. But the mention of these few is sufficient to prove the fact, and that is all required. Brent denominates the accounts given by the persons who have visited the plain of Troy, "a farrago of contradiction, misrepresentation, and inaccuracy." This is strong language, and would seem to require the support of a little proof. None however is given, there is nothing but bold assertion: and upon examination it will be seen, that Arrian. lib. I. |