XIV. LEGENDS OF THEBES

The Bœôtians generally, throughout the historical age, though well endowed with bodily strength and courage,[617] are represented as proverbially deficient in intelligence, taste and fancy. But the legendary population of Thêbes, the Kadmeians, are rich in mythical antiquities, divine as well as heroic. Both Dionysus and Hêraklês recognize Thêbes as their natal city. Moreover, the two sieges of Thêbes by Adrastus, even taken apart from Kadmus, Antiopê, Amphiôn and Zethus, etc., are the most prominent and most characteristic exploits, next to the siege of Troy, of that preëxisting race of heroes who lived in the imagination of the historical Hellênes.

[617] The eponym Bœôtus is son of Poseidôn and Arnê (Euphorion ap. Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 507). It was from Arnê in Thessaly that the Bœôtians were said to have come, when they invaded and occupied Bœôtia. Euripidês made him son of Poseidôn and Melanippê. Another legend recited Bœôtus and Hellên as sons of Poseidôn and Antiopê (Hygin. f. 157-186).

The Tanagræan poetess Korinna (the rival of Pindar, whose compositions in the Bœôtian dialect are unfortunately lost) appears to have dwelt upon this native Bœôtian genealogy: she derived the Ogygian gates of Thêbes from Ogygus, son of Bœôtus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. iii. 1178), also the Fragments of Korinna in Schneidewin’s edition, fr. 2. p. 432.

It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphiôn and Zethus, who are given to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thêbes and the first builders of its celebrated walls. They are the sons of Zeus by Antiopê, daughter of Asôpus. The scholiasts who desire to reconcile this tale with the more current account of the foundation of Thêbes by Kadmus, tell us that after the death of Amphiôn and Zethus, Eurymachus, the warlike king of the Phlegyæ, invaded and ruined the newly-settled town, so that Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found it.[618] But Apollodôrus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers at a lower point in the series. According to them, Bêlus and Agenôr were the sons of Epaphus, son of the Argeian Iô, by Libya. Agenôr went to Phœnicia and there became king: he had for his offspring Kadmus, Phœnix, Kilix, and a daughter Eurôpa; though in the Iliad Eurôpa is called daughter of Phœnix.[619] Zeus fell in love with Eurôpa, and assuming the shape of a bull, carried her across the sea upon his back from Egypt to Krête, where she bore to him Minôs, Rhadamanthus and Sarpêdôn. Two out of the three sons sent out by Agenôr in search of their lost sister, wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, abandoned the idea of returning home: Kilix settled in Kilikia, and Kadmus in Thrace.[620] Thasus, the brother or nephew of Kadmus, who had accompanied them in the voyage, settled and gave name to the island of Phasus.

[618] Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Eustath. ad loc. Compare Schol. ad Iliad. xiii. 301.

[619] Iliad, xiv. 321. Iô is κερόεσσα προμάτωρ of the Thêbans. Eurip. Phœniss. 247-676.

[620] Apollodôr. ii. 1, 3; iii. 1, 8. In the Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 178), Phœnix was recognized as son of Agenôr. Pherekydês also described both Phœnix and Kadmus as sons of Agenôr (Pherekyd. Fragm. 40, Didot). Compare Servius ad. Virgil. Æneid. 1. 338. Pherekydês expressly mentioned Kilix (Apollod. ib.). Besides the Εὐρώπεια of Stesichorus (see Stesichor. Fragm. xv. p. 73, ed. Kleine), there were several other ancient poems on the adventures of Europa; one in particular by Eumêlus (Schol. ad Iliad. vi. 138), which however can hardly be the same as the τὰ ἔπη τὰ εἰς Εὐρώπην alluded to by Pausanias (ix. 5, 4). See Wüllner de Cyclo Epico, p. 57 (Münster 1825).

Both Herodotus and Euripidês represent Kadmus as an emigrant from Phœnicia, conducting a body of followers in quest of Eurôpa. The account of Apollodôrus describes him as having come originally from Libya or Egypt to Phœnicia: we may presume that this was also the statement of the earlier logographers Pherekydês and Hellanikus. Conôn, who historicizes and politicizes the whole legend, seems to have found two different accounts; one connecting Kadmus with Egypt, another bringing him from Phœnicia. He tries to melt down the two into one, by representing that the Phœnicians, who sent out Kadmus, had acquired great power in Egypt—that the seat of their kingdom was the Egyptian Thêbes—that Kadmus was despatched, under pretence indeed of finding his lost sister, but really on a project of conquest—and that the name Thêbes, which he gave to his new establishment in Bœôtia, was borrowed from Thêbes in Egypt, his ancestorial seat.[621]

[621] Conôn, Narrat. 37. Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the tone of unbounded self-confidence with which Conôn winds up this tissue of uncertified suppositions—περὶ μὲν Κάδμου καὶ Θηβῶν οἰκίσεως οὗτος ὁ ἀληθὴς λόγος· τὸ δὲ ἄλλο μῦθος καὶ γοητεία ἀκοῆς.

Kadmus went from Thrace to Delphi to procure information respecting his sister Eurôpa, but the god directed him to take no further trouble about her; he was to follow the guidance of a cow, and to found a city on the spot where the animal should lie down. The condition was realized on the site of Thêbes. The neighboring fountain Areia was guarded by a fierce dragon, the offspring of Arês, who destroyed all the persons sent to fetch water. Kadmus killed the dragon, and at the suggestion of Athênê sowed his teeth in the earth:[622] there sprang up at once the armed men called the Sparti, among whom he flung stones, and they immediately began to assault each other until all were slain except five. Arês, indignant at this slaughter, was about to kill Kadmus; but Zeus appeased him, condemning Kadmus to an expiatory servitude of eight years, after which he married Harmonia, the daughter of Arês and Aphroditê—presenting to her the splendid necklace fabricated by the hand of Hêphæstos, which had been given by Zeus to Eurôpa.[623] All the gods came to the Kadmeia, the citadel of Thêbes, to present congratulations and gifts at these nuptials, which seem to have been hardly less celebrated in the mythical world than those of Pêleus and Thetis. The issue of the marriage was one son, Polydôrus, and four daughters, Autonoê, Inô, Semelê and Agavê.[624]

[622] Stesichor. (Fragm. 16; Kleine) ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 680. The place where the heifer had lain down was still shown in the time of Pausanias (ix. 12, 1).

Lysimachus, a lost author who wrote Thebaïca, mentioned Eurôpa as having come with Kadmus to Thêbes, and told the story in many other respects very differently (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1179).

[623] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 1-3. Pherekydês gave this account of the necklace, which seems to imply that Kadmus must have found his sister Eurôpa. The narrative here given is from Hellanikus; that of Pherekydês differed from it in some respects: compare Hellanik. Fragm. 8 and 9, and Pherekyd. Frag. 44. The resemblance of this story with that of Jasôn and Æêtês (see above, chap. xiii. p. 237) will strike everyone. It is curious to observe how the old logographer Pherekydês explained this analogy in his narrative; he said that Athênê had given half the dragon’s teeth to Kadmus and half to Æêtês (see Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13).

[624] Hesiod, Theogon. 976. Leukothea, the sea-goddess, daughter of Kadmus, is mentioned in the Odyssey, v. 334; Diodôr. iv. 2.

From the five who alone survived of the warriors sprung from the dragon’s teeth, arose five great families or gentes in Thêbes; the oldest and noblest of its inhabitants, coeval with the foundation of the town. They were called Sparti, and their name seems to have given rise, not only to the fable of the sowing of the teeth, but also to other etymological narratives.[625]

[625] Eurip. Phœniss. 680, with the Scholia; Pherekydês, Fragm. 44; Androtiôn, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13. Dionysius (?) called the Sparti an ἔθνος Βοιωτίας (Schol. Phœniss. 1. c).

Even in the days of Plutarch, there were persons living who traced their descent to the Sparti of Thêbes (Plutarch, Ser. Num. Vindict. p. 563).

All the four daughters of Kadmus are illustrious in fabulous history. Inô, wife of Athamas, the son of Æolus, has already been included among the legends of the Æolids. Semelê became the mistress of Zeus, and inspired Hêrê with jealousy. Misguided by the malicious suggestions of that goddess, she solicited Zeus to visit her with all the solemnity and terrors which surrounded him when he approached Hêrê herself. The god unwillingly consented, and came in his chariot in the midst of thunder and lightning, under which awful accompaniments the mortal frame of Semelê perished. Zeus, taking from her the child of which she was pregnant, sewed it into his own thigh: after the proper interval the child was brought out and born, and became the great god Dionysus or Bacchus. Hermês took him to Inô and Athamas to receive their protection. Afterwards, however, Zeus having transformed him into a kid to conceal him from the persecution of Hêrê, the nymphs of the mountain Nysa became his nurses.[626]

[626] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 2-9; Diodôr. iv. 2.

Autonoê, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral hero or god Aristæus, and was mother of Aktæôn, a devoted hunter and a favorite companion of the goddess Artemis. She however became displeased with him—either because he looked into a fountain while she was bathing and saw her naked—or according to the legend set forth by the poet Stesichorus, because he loved and courted Semelê—or according to Euripidês, because he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in the chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs set upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Aktæôn used to sleep when fatigued with the chase, and the spring whose transparent waters had too clearly revealed the form of the goddess, were shown to Pausanias near Platæa, on the road to Megara.[627]

[627] See Apollodôr. iii. 4, 3; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine; Pausan. ix. 2, 3; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodôr. iv. 81. The old logographer Akusilaus copied Stesichorus.

Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply references. I shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon it by Diodôrus and by Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner in which the literary Greeks of a later day dealt with their old national legends.

Both of them appear implicitly to believe the fact, that Aktæôn was devoured by his own dogs, but they differ materially in the explanation of it.

Diodôrus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition of the displeased goddess to punish Aktæôn, who, according to one story, had boasted of his superiority in the chase to Artemis,—according to another story, had presumed to solicit the goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great numbers of the feet of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offerings in her temple. “It is not improbable (observes Diodôrus) that the goddess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Aktæôn abused these hunting presents so far as to make them the means of gratifying his own desires towards one unapproachable in wedlock, or whether he presumed to call himself an abler hunter than her with whom the gods themselves will not compete in this department,—in either case the wrath of the goddess against him was just and legitimate (ὁμολογουμένην καὶ δικαίαν ὀργὴν ἔσχε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ θεός). With perfect propriety therefore (Καθόλου δὲ πιθανῶς) was he transformed into an animal such as those he had hunted, and torn to pieces by the very dogs who had killed them.” (Didot. iv. 80.)

Pausanias, a man of exemplary piety, and generally less inclined to scepticism than Diodôrus, thinks the occasion unsuitable for a miracle or special interference. Having alluded to the two causes assigned for the displeasure of Artemis (they are the two first-mentioned in my text, and distinct from the two noticed by Diodôrus), he proceeds to say, “But I believe that the dogs of Aktæôn went mad, without the interference of the goddess: in this state of madness they would have torn in pieces without distinction any one whom they met (Paus. ix. 2, 3. ἐγὼ δὲ ἄνευ θεοῦ πείθομαι νόσον λύσσαν ἐπιβαλεῖν τοῦ Ἀκταίωνος τοὺς κύνας).” He retains the truth of the final catastrophe, but rationalizes it, excluding the special intervention of Artemis.

Agavê, the remaining daughter of Kadmus, married Echiôn, one of the Sparti. The issue of these nuptials was Pentheus, who, when Kadmus became old succeeded him as king of Thêbes. In his reign Dionysus appeared as a god, the author or discoverer of the vine with all its blessings. He had wandered over Asia, India and Thrace, at the head of an excited troop of female enthusiasts—communicating and inculcating everywhere the Bacchic ceremonies, and rousing in the minds of women that impassioned religious emotion which led them to ramble in solitary mountains at particular seasons, there to give vent to violent fanatical excitement, apart from the men, clothed in fawn-skins and armed with the thyrsus. The obtrusion of a male spectator upon these solemnities was esteemed sacrilegious. Though the rites had been rapidly disseminated and fervently welcomed in many parts of Thrace, yet there were some places in which they had been obstinately resisted and their votaries treated with rudeness; especially by Lykurgus, king of the Edonian Thracians, upon whom a sharp and exemplary punishment was inflicted by Dionysus.

Thêbes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, at the head of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain divine honors and to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The venerable Kadmus, together with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their worship and praise to him along with the solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently opposed the new ceremonies, reproving and maltreating the god who introduced them: nor was his unbelief at all softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and for that of his followers. His mother Agavê, with her sisters, and a large body of other women from Thêbes, had gone out from Thêbes to Mount Kithærôn to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agavê, mad and bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thêbes the head of her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmonia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be transferred to the Elysian fields.[628]

[628] Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4; Theocrit. Idyll. xxvi. Eurip. Bacch. passim. Such is the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It is a striking proof of the deep-seated reverence of the people of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchic ceremonies, that they could have borne the spectacle of Agavê on the stage with her dead son’s head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), Μάκαιρ᾽ Ἀγαύη! This drama, written near the close of the life of Euripidês, and exhibited by his son after his death (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 67,), contains passages strongly inculcating the necessity of implicit deference to ancestorial authority in matters of religion, and favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with the dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see v. 196; compare vv. 389 and 422.—

Οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν. Πατρίους παραδοχὰς, ἅς θ᾽ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ Κεκτήμεθ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος, Οὐδ᾽ ἢν δι᾽ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρένων.

Such reproofs “insanientis sapientiæ” certainly do not fall in with the plot of the drama itself, in which Pentheus appears as a Conservative, resisting the introduction of the new religious rites. Taken in conjunction with the emphatic and submissive piety which reigns through the drama, they countenance the supposition of Tyrwhitt, that Euripidês was anxious to repel the imputations, so often made against him, of commerce with the philosophers and participation in sundry heretical opinions.

Pacuvius in his Pentheus seems to have closely copied Euripidês; see Servius ad Virg. Æneid. iv. 469.

The old Thespis had composed a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus: Suidas, Θέσπις; also Æschylus; compare his Eumenidês, 25.

According to Apollodôrus (iii. 5, 5), Labdakus also perished in a similar way to Pentheus, and from the like impiety,—ἐκείνῳ φρονῶν παραπλήσια.

Polydôrus and Labdakus successively became kings of Thêbes: the latter at his death left an infant son, Laius, who was deprived of his throne by Lykus. And here we approach the legend of Antiopê, Zêthus and Amphiôn, whom the fabulists insert at this point of the Thêban series. Antiopê is here the daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Lykus. She is deflowered by Zeus, and then, while pregnant, flies to Epôpeus king of Sikyôn: Nykteus dying entreats his brother to avenge the injury, and Lykus accordingly invades Sikyôn, defeats and kills Epôpeus, and brings back Antiopê prisoner to Thêbes. In her way thither, in a cave near Eleutheræ, which was shown to Pausanias,[629] she is delivered of the twin sons of Zeus—Amphiôn and Zêthus—who, exposed to perish, are taken up and nourished by a shepherd, and pass their youth amidst herdsmen, ignorant of their lofty descent.

[629] Pausan. i. 38, 9.

Antiopê is conveyed to Thêbes, where, after undergoing a long persecution from Lykus and his cruel wife Dirkê, she at length escapes, and takes refuge in the pastoral dwelling of her sons, now grown to manhood. Dirkê pursues and requires her to be delivered up; but the sons recognize and protect their mother, taking an ample revenge upon her persecutors. Lykus is slain, and Dirkê is dragged to death, tied to the horns of a bull.[630] Amphiôn and Zêthus, having banished Laius, become kings of Thêbes. The former, taught by Hermês, and possessing exquisite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to the rhythm of his song.[631]

[630] For the adventures of Antiopê and her sons, see Apollodôr. iii. 5; Pausan. ii. 6, 2; ix. 5, 2.

The narrative given respecting Epôpeus in the ancient Cyprian verses seems to have been very different from this, as far as we can judge from the brief notice in Proclus’s Argument,—ὡς Ἐπωπεὺς φθείρας τὴν Λυκούργου (Λύκου) γυναῖκα ἐξεπορθήθη: it approaches more nearly to the story given in the seventh fable of Hyginus, and followed by Propertius (iii. 15); the eighth fable of Hyginus contains the tale of Antiopê as given by Euripidês and Ennius. The story of Pausanias differs from both.

The Scholiast ad Apollôn. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were two persons named Antiopê; one, daughter of Asôpus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daughter of Nykteus, but there was a φήμη that she was daughter of Asôpus (ii. 6, 2). Asius made Antiopê daughter of Asôpus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epôpeus: such a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occurrence in the Greek legends) of Zêthus and Amphiôn (ap. Paus. 1. c).

The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though not very perfectly, in Sterk’s Essay De Labdacidarum Historiâ, p. 38-43 (Leyden, 1829).

[631] This story about the lyre of Amphiôn is not noticed in Homer, but it was narrated in the ancient ἔπη ἐς Εὐρώπην which Pausanias had read: the wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains (Paus. ix. 5, 4). Pherekydês also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of inscription (Ἀναγραφὴ) at Sikyôn recognized Amphiôn as the first composer of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musicâ, c. 3. p. 1132).

Zêthus marries Aêdôn, who, in the dark and under a fatal mistake, kills her son Itylus: she is transformed into a nightingale, while Zêthus dies of grief.[632] Amphiôn becomes the husband of Niobê, daughter of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous offspring, the complete extinction of which by the hands of Apollo and Artemis has already been recounted in these pages.

[632] The tale of the wife and son of Zêthus is as old as the Odyssey (xix. 525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zêthus died of grief (ix. 5, 5; Pherekydês, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias, however, as well as Apollodôrus, tells us that Zêthus married Thêbê, from whom the name Thêbes was given to the city. To reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zêthus and Amphiôn with those of Kadmus, as founders of Thêbes, Pausanias supposes that the latter was the original settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while the two former extended the settlement to the lower city (ix. 5, 1-3).

Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiopê and her twin sons—the rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zêthus—and the refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphiôn. For so Euripidês, in the drama of Antiopê unfortunately lost, presented the two brothers, in affectionate union as well as in striking contrast.[633] It is evident that the whole story stood originally quite apart from the Kadmeian family, and so the rudiments of it yet stand in the Odyssey; but the logographers, by their ordinary connecting artifices, have opened a vacant place for it in the descending series of Thêban mythes. And they have here proceeded in a manner not usual with them. For whereas they are generally fond of multiplying entities, and supposing different historical personages of the same name, in order to introduce an apparent smoothness in the chronology—they have here blended into one person Amphiôn the son of Antiopê and Amphiôn the father of Chlôris, who seem clearly distinguished from each other in the Odyssey. They have further assigned to the same person all the circumstances of the legend of Niobê, which seems to have been originally framed quite apart from the sons of Antiopê.

[633] See Valckenaer. Diatribe in Eurip. Reliq. cap. 7, p. 58; Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. ii. p. 811. There is a striking resemblance between the Antiopê of Euripidês and the Tyrô of Sophoklês in many points.

Plato in his Gorgias has preserved a few fragments, and a tolerably clear general idea of the characters of Zêthus and Amphiôn (Gorg. 90-92); see also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42.

Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of Euripidês, the former seemingly a translation.

Amphiôn and Zêthus being removed, Laius became king of Thêbes. With him commences the ever-celebrated series of adventures of Œdipus and his family. Laius forewarned by the oracle that any son whom he might beget would kill him, caused Œdipus as soon as he was born to be exposed on Mount Kithærôn. Here the herdsmen of Polybus king of Corinth accidentally found him and conveyed him to their master, who brought him up as his own child. In spite of the kindest treatment, however, Œdipus when he grew up found himself exposed to taunts on the score of his unknown parentage, and went to Delphi to inquire of the god the name of his real father. He received for answer an admonition not to go back to his country; if he did so, it was his destiny to kill his father and become the husband of his mother. Knowing no other country but Corinth, he accordingly determined to keep away from that city, and quitted Delphi by the road towards Bœôtia and Phôkis. At the exact spot where the roads leading to these two countries forked, he met Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of the attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which Œdipus killed Laius, not knowing him to be his father. The exact place where this event happened, called the Divided Way[634], was memorable in the eyes of all literary Greeks, and is specially adverted to by Pausanias in his periegesis.

[634] See the description of the locality in K. O. Müller (Orchomenos, c. i. p. 37).

The tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the days of Pausanias (x. 5, 2).

On the death of Laius, Kreôn, the brother of Jokasta, succeeded to the kingdom of Thêbes. At this time the country was under the displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx[635]—sent by the wrath of Hêrê and occupying the neighboring mountain of Phikium. The Sphinx had learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thêbans to resolve: on every occasion of failure she took away one of the citizens and ate him up. Still no person could solve the riddle; and so great was the suffering occasioned, that Kreôn was obliged to offer both the crown and the nuptials of his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve the salvation of the city. At this juncture Œdipus arrived and solved the riddle: upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, Œdipus was made king of Thêbes, and married Jokasta, not aware that she was his mother.

[635] Apollodôr. iii. 5, 8. An author named Lykus, in his work entitled Thêbaïca, ascribed this visitation to the anger of Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phix, from the Bœôtian Mount Phikium) is as old as the Hesiodic Theogony,—Φῖκ᾽ ὀλόην τέκε, Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον (Theog. 326).

These main tragical circumstances—that Œdipus had ignorantly killed his father and married his mother—belong to the oldest form of the legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The gods (it is added in that poem) quickly made the facts known to mankind. Epikasta (so Jokasta is here called) in an agony of sorrow hanged herself: Œdipus remained king of the Kadmeians, but underwent many and great miseries, such as the Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict.[636] A passage in the Iliad implies that he died at Thêbes, since it mentions the funeral games which were celebrated there in honor of him. His misfortunes were recounted by Nestôr, in the old Cyprian verses, among the stories of aforetime.[637] A fatal curse hung both upon himself and upon his children, Eteoklês, Polynikês, Antigonê and Ismênê. According to that narrative which the Attic tragedians have rendered universally current, they were his children by Jokasta, the disclosure of her true relationship to him having been very long deferred. But the ancient epic called Œdipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer, represented him as having after her death married a second wife, Euryganeia, by whom the four children were born to him: and the painter Onatas adopted this story in preference to that of Sophoklês.[638]

[636] Odyss. xi. 270. Odysseus, describing what he saw in the under-world, says,—

Μητέρα τ᾽ Οἰδιπόδαο ἴδον, καλὴν Ἐπικάστην, Ἣ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν αἰδρεΐῃσι νόοιο, Γημαμένη ᾧ υἱεῖ· ὁ δ᾽ ὃν πατέρ᾽ ἐξεναρίξας Γῆμεν· ἄφαρ δ᾽ ἀνάπυστα θεοὶ θέσαν ἀνθρώποισι. Ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν ἐν Θήβῃ πολυηράτῳ ἄλγεα πάσχων, Καδμείων ἤνασσε, θεῶν ὀλοὰς διὰ βουλάς· Ἡ δ᾽ ἔβη εἰς Αἰδάο πυλάρταο κρατεροῖο Ἁψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν ἀφ᾽ ὑψήλοιο μελάθρου, Ὧ ἄχεϊ σχομένη· τῷ δ᾽ ἄλγεα κάλλιπ᾽ ὀπίσσω Πολλὰ μάλ᾽, ὅσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες ἐκτελέουσιν.

[637] Iliad, xxiii. 680, with the scholiast who cites Hesiod. Proclus, Argum. ad Cypria, ap. Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græc. p. 10. Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν παρεκβάσει διηγεῖται ... καὶ τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν, etc.

[638] Pausan. ix. 5, 5. Compare the narrative from Peisander in Schol. ad Eurip. Phœniss. 1773; where, however, the blindness of Œdipus seems to be unconsciously interpolated out of the tragedians. In the old narrative of the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Œdipus does not seem to be represented as blind (Leutsch, Thebaidis Cyclici Reliquiæ, Götting. 1830, p. 42).

Pherekydês (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 52) tells us that Œdipus had three children by Jokasta, who were all killed by Erginus and the Minyæ (this must refer to incidents in the old poems which we cannot now recover); then the four celebrated children by Euryganeia; lastly, that he married a third wife, Astymedusa. Apollodôrus follows the narrative of the tragedians, but alludes to the different version about Euryganeia,—εἰσὶ δ᾽ οἵ φασιν, etc. (iii. 5, 8).

Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eur. Phœniss. 59) mentioned the self-inflicted blindness of Œdipus; but it seems doubtful whether this circumstance was included in the narrative of Pherekydês.

The disputes of Eteoklês and Polynikês for the throne of their father gave occasion not only to a series of tragical family incidents, but also to one of the great quasi-historical events of legendary Greece—the two sieges of Thêbes by Adrastus, king of Argos. The two ancient epic poems called the Thêbaïs and the Epigoni (if indeed both were not parts of one very comprehensive poem) detailed these events at great length, and as it appears, with distinguished poetical merit; for Pausanias pronounces the Cyclic Thêbaïs (so it was called by the subsequent critics to distinguish it from the more modern Thêbaïs of Antimachus) inferior only to the Iliad and Odyssey; and the ancient elegiac poet Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition.[639] Of this once-valued poem we unfortunately possess nothing but a few scanty fragments. The leading points of the legend are briefly glanced at in the Iliad; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclipsed and obliterated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophôn, contemporary with Euripidês, in his long epic, probably took no less liberties with the old narrative. His Thêbaïd never became generally popular, but it exhibited marks of study and elaboration which recommended it to the esteem of the Alexandrine critics, and probably contributed to discredit in their eyes the old cyclic poem.

[639] Pausan. ix. 9. 3. Ἐποιήθη δὲ ἐς τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον καὶ ἔπη, Θηβαΐς· τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι. Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταῦτα ἔγνωσαν· ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ τὰ ἔπη τὰ ἐς Ὀδυσσέα ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα. The name in the text of Pausanias stands Καλαῖνος, an unknown person: most of the critics recognize the propriety of substituting Καλλῖνος, and Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing so.

The Ἀμφιάρεω ἐξελασία ἐς Θέβας, alluded to in the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, seems to be the description of a special passage in this Thêbaïs.

The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege of Thêbes, had at least three preëxisting epic poems—the Thêbaïs, the Œdipodia, and the Alkmæônis,—from which they could borrow. The subject was also handled in some of the Hesiodic poems, but we do not know to what extent.[640] The Thêbaïs was composed more in honor of Argos than of Thêbes, as the first line of it, one of the few fragments still preserved, betokens.[641]

[640] Hesiod, ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680, which passage does not seem to me so much at variance with the incidents stated in other poets as Leutsch imagines.

[641] Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες (see Leutsch, ib. c. 4. p. 29).

SIEGES OF THEBES.

The legend, about to recount fraternal dissension of the most implacable kind, comprehending in its results not only the immediate relations of the infuriated brothers, but many chosen companions of the heroic race along with them, takes its start from the paternal curse of Œdipus, which overhangs and determines all the gloomy sequel.

Œdipus, though king of Thêbes and father of four children by Euryganeia (according to the Œdipodia), has become the devoted victim of the Erinnyes, in consequence of the self-inflicted death of his mother, which he has unconsciously caused, as well as of his unintentional parricide. Though he had long forsworn the use of all the ornaments and luxuries which his father had inherited from his kingly progenitors, yet when through age he had come to be dependent upon his two sons, Polynikês one day broke through this interdict, and set before him the silver table and the splendid wine-cup of Kadmus, which Laius had always been accustomed to employ. The old king had no sooner seen these precious appendages of the regal life of his father, than his mind was overrun by a calamitous phrenzy, and he imprecated terrible curses on his sons, predicting that there would be bitter and endless warfare between them. The goddess Erinnys heard and heeded him; and he repeated the curse again on another occasion, when his sons, who had always been accustomed to send to him the shoulder of the victims sacrificed on the altar, caused the buttock to be served to him in place of it.[642] He resented this as an insult, and prayed the gods that they might perish each by the hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians as well as in the old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately from the misguided Œdipus himself, but remotely from the parricide and incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer over the course of events—the Erinnys who executes that curse being the irresistible, though concealed, agent. Æschylus not only preserves the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even briefly glances at the causes assigned for it in the Thêbaïs, without superadding any new motives. In the judgment of Sophoklês, or of his audience, the conception of a father cursing his sons upon such apparently trifling grounds was odious; and that great poet introduced many aggravating circumstances, describing the old blind father as having been barbarously turned out of doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile and poverty. Though by this change he rendered his poem more coherent and self-justifying, yet he departed, from the spirit of the old legend, according to which Œdipus has contracted by his unconscious misdeeds an incurable taint destined to pass onward to his progeny. His mind is alienated, and he curses them, not because he has suffered seriously by their guilt, but because he is made the blind instrument of an avenging Erinnys for the ruin of the house of Laius.[643]

[642] Fragm. of the Thêbaïs, ap. Athenæ. xii. p. 465, ὅτι αὐτῷ παρέθηκαν ἐκπώματα ἃ ἀπηγορεύκει, λέγων οὕτως·

Αὐτὰρ ὁ διογένης ἥρως ξανθὸς Πολυνείκης Πρῶτα μὲν Οἰδίποδι καλὴν παρέθηκε τράπεζαν Ἀργυρέην Κάδμοιο θεόφρονος· αὐταρ ἔπειτα Χρύσεον ἔμπλησεν καλὸν δέπας ἥδεος οἴνου· Αὐτὰρ ὅγ᾽ ὡς φράσθη παρακείμενα πατρὸς ἑοῖο Τιμήεντα γέρα, μέγα οἱ κακὸν ἔμπεσε θυμῷ. Αἶψα δὲ παισὶν ἑοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπαρὰς Ἀργαλέας ἠρᾶτο· θεὸν δ᾽ οὐ λάνθαν᾽ Ἐριννύν· Ὡς οὐ οἱ πατρῷα γ᾽ ἐνὶ φιλότητι δάσαιντο, Εἶεν δ᾽ αμφοτέροις αἰεὶ πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε.

See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Reliq. p. 38.

The other fragment from the same Thêbaïs is cited by the Schol. ad Soph. Œdip. Colon. 1378.—

Ἴσχιον ὡς ἐνόησε, χαμαὶ βάλεν, εἶπέ τε μῦθον· Ὦ μοι ἐγὼ, παῖδές μοι ὀνειδείοντες ἔπεμψαν. Εὐκτο Διῒ βασιλῆϊ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανάτοισι, Χερσὶν ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων καταβήμεναι Ἄϊδος εἴσω.

Τὰ δὲ παραπλήσια τῷ ἐποποιῷ καὶ Αἴσχυλος ἐν τοῖς Ἕπτα ἐπι Θήβας. In spite of the protest of Schutz, in his note, I think that the scholiast has understood the words ἐπίκοτος τροφᾶς (Sept. ad Theb. 787) in their plain and just meaning.

[643] The curses of Œdipus are very frequently and emphatically dwelt upon both by Æschylus and Sophoklês (Sept. ad Theb. 70-586, 655-697, etc.; Œdip. Colon. 1293-1378). The former continues the same point of view as the Thêbaïs, when he mentions—

... Τὰς περιθύμους Κατάρας βλαψίφρονος Οἰδιπόδα (727);

or, λόγου τ᾽ ἄνοια καὶ φρενῶν Ἐριννύς (Soph. Antig. 584).

The Scholiast on Sophoklês (Œd. Col. 1378) treats the cause assigned by the ancient Thêbaïs for the curse vented by Œdipus as trivial and ludicrous.

The Ægeids at Sparta, who traced their descent to Kadmus, suffered from terrible maladies which destroyed the lives of their children; an oracle directed them to appease the Erinnyes of Laius and Œdipus by erecting a temple, upon which the maladies speedily ceased (Herodot. iv.).

After the death of Œdipus and the celebration of his funeral games, at which amongst others, Argeia, daughter of Adrastus (afterwards the wife of Polynikês), was present,[644] his two sons soon quarrelled respecting the succession. The circumstances are differently related; but it appears that, according to the original narrative, the wrong and injustice was on the part of Polynikês, who, however, was obliged to leave Thêbes and to seek shelter with Adrastus, king of Argos. Here he met Tydeus, a fugitive, at the same time, from Ætôlia: it was dark when they arrived, and a broil ensued between the two exiles, but Adrastus came out and parted them. He had been enjoined by an oracle to give his two daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar, and he thought this occasion had now arrived, inasmuch as one of the combatants carried on his shield a lion, the other a boar. He accordingly gave Deipylê in marriage to Tydeus, and Argeia to Polynikês: moreover, he resolved to restore by armed resistance both his sons-in-law to their respective countries.[645]

[644] Hesiod. ap. Schol. Iliad. xxiii. 680.

[645] Apollodôr. iii. 5, 9; Hygin. f. 69; Æschyl. Sept. ad Theb. 573. Hyginus says that Polynikês came clothed in the skin of a lion, and Tydeus in that of a boar; perhaps after Antimachus, who said that Tydeus had been brought up by swineherds (Antimach. Fragm. 27, ed. Düntzer; ap. Schol. Iliad. iv. 400). Very probably, however, the old Thêbaïs compared Tydeus and Polynikês to a lion and a boar, on account of their courage and fierceness; a simile quite in the Homeric character. Mnaseas gave the words of the oracle (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phœniss. 411).

On proposing the expedition to the Argeian chiefs around him he found most of them willing auxiliaries; but Amphiaräus—formerly his bitter opponent, but now reconciled to him, and husband of his sister Eriphylê—strongly opposed him.[646] He denounced the enterprise as unjust and contrary to the will of the gods. Again, being of a prophetic stock, descended from Melampus, he foretold the certain death both of himself and of the principal leaders, should they involve themselves as accomplices in the mad violence of Tydeus or the criminal ambition of Polynikês. Amphiaräus, already distinguished both in the Kalydônian boar-hunt and in the funeral games of Pelias, was in the Thêban war the most conspicuous of all the heroes, and absolutely indispensable to its success. But his reluctance to engage in it was invincible, nor was it possible to prevail upon him except through the influence of his wife Eriphylê. Polynikês, having brought with him from Thêbes the splendid robe and necklace given by the gods to Harmonia on her marriage with Kadmus, offered it as a bribe to Eriphylê, on condition that she would influence the determination of Amphiaräus. The sordid wife, seduced by so matchless a present, betrayed the lurking-place of her husband, and involved him in the fatal expedition.[647] Amphiaräus, reluctantly dragged forth, and foreknowing the disastrous issue of the expedition both to himself and to his associates, addressed his last injunctions, at the moment of mounting his chariot, to his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus, commanding Alkmæôn to avenge his approaching death by killing the venal Eriphylê, and by undertaking a second expedition against Thêbes.

[646] See Pindar, Nem. ix. 30, with the instructive Scholium.

[647] Apollodôr. iii. 6, 2. The treachery of “the hateful Eriphylê” is noticed in the Odyssey, xi. 327: Odysseus sees her in the under-world along with the many wives and daughters of the heroes.

The Attic dramatists describe this expedition as having been conducted by seven chiefs, one to each of the seven celebrated gates of Thêbes. But the Cyclic Thêbaïs gave to it a much more comprehensive character, mentioning auxiliaries from Arcadia, Messênê, and various parts of Peloponnêsus;[648] and the application of Tydeus and Polynikês at Mykênæ in the course of their circuit made to collect allies, is mentioned in the Iliad. They were well received at Mykênæ; but the warning signals given by the gods were so terrible that no Mykenæan could venture to accompany them.[649] The seven principal chiefs however were Adrastus, Amphiaräus, Kapaneus, Hippomedôn, Parthenopæus, Tydeus and Polynikês.[650] When the army had advanced as far as the river Asôpus, a halt was made for sacrifice and banquet; while Tydeus was sent to Thêbes as envoy to demand the restoration of Polynikês to his rights. His demand was refused; but finding the chief Kadmeians assembled at the banquet in the house of Eteoklês, he challenged them all to contend with him in boxing or wrestling. So efficacious was the aid of the goddess Athênê that he overcame them all; and the Kadmeians were so indignant at their defeat, that they placed an ambuscade of fifty men to intercept him in his way back to the army. All of them perished by the hand of this warrior, small in stature and of few words, but desperate and irresistible in the fight. One alone was spared, Mæon, in consequence of special signals from the gods.[651]

[648] Pausan. ii. 20, 4; ix. 9, 1. His testimony to this, as he had read and admired the Cyclic Thêbaïs, seems quite sufficient, in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the contrary (Æschylische Trilogie. p. 375).

[649] Iliad, iv. 376.

[650] There are differences in respect to the names of the seven: Æschylus (Sept. ad Theb. 461) leaves out Adrastus as one of the seven, and includes Eteoklus instead of him; others left out Tydeus and Polynikês, and inserted Eteoklus and Mekisteus (Apollodôr. iii. 6, 3). Antimachus, in his poetical Thêbaïs, called Parthenopæus an Argeian, not an Arcadian (Schol. ad Æschyl. Sept. ad. Theb. 532).

[651] Iliad, iv. 381-400, with the Schol. The first celebration of the Nemean games is connected with this march of the army of Adrastus against Thêbes; they were celebrated in honor of Archemorus, the infant son of Lykurgus, who had been killed by a serpent while his nurse Hypsipylê went to show the fountain to the thirsty Argeian chiefs (Apollod. iii. 6, 4; Schol. ad Pindar Nem. 1).

The Kadmeians, assisted by their allies the Phôkians and the Phlegyæ, marched out to resist the invaders, and fought a battle near the Ismênian hill, in which they were defeated and forced to retire within the walls. The prophet Teiresias acquainted them that if Menœkeus, son of Kreôn, would offer himself as a victim to Arês, victory would be assured to Thêbes. The generous youth, as soon as he learnt that his life was to be the price of safely to his country, went and slew himself before the gates. The heroes along with Adrastus now commenced a vigorous attack upon the town, each of the seven selecting one of the gates to assault. The contest was long and strenuously maintained but the devotion of Menœkeus had procured for the Thêbans the protection of the gods. Parthenopæus was killed with a stone by Periklymenus; and when the furious Kapaneus, having planted a scaling-ladder, had mounted the walls, he was smitten by a thunderbolt from Zeus and cast down dead upon the earth. This event struck terror into the Argeians, and Adrastus called back his troops from the attack. The Thêbans now sallied forth to pursue them, when Eteoklês, arresting the battle, proposed to decide the controversy by single combat with his brother. The challenge, eagerly accepted by Polynikês, was agreed to by Adrastus: a single combat ensued between the two brothers, in which both were exasperated to fury and both ultimately slain by each other’s hand. This equal termination left the result of the general contest still undetermined, and the bulk of the two armies renewed the fight. In the sanguinary struggle which ensued the sons of Astakus on the Thêban side displayed the most conspicuous and successful valor. One of them,[652] Melanippus, mortally wounded Tydeus—while two others, Leades and Amphidikus, killed Eteoklus and Hippomedôn. Amphiaräus avenged Tydeus by killing Melanippus; but unable to arrest the rout of the army, he fled with the rest, closely pursued by Periklymenus. The latter was about to pierce him with his spear, when the beneficence of Zeus rescued him from this disgrace—miraculously opening the earth under him, so that Amphiaräus with his chariot and horses was received unscathed into her bosom.[653] The exact spot where this memorable incident happened was indicated by a sepulchral building, and shown by the Thêbans down to the days of Pausanias—its sanctity being attested by the fact, that no animal would consent to touch the herbage which grew within the sacred inclosure. Amphiaräus, rendered immortal by Zeus, was worshipped as a god at Argos, at Thêbes and at Orôpus—and for many centuries gave answers at his oracle to the questions of the pious applicant.[654]

[652] The story recounted that the head of Melanippus was brought to Tydeus as he was about to expire of his wound, and that he gnawed it with his teeth, a story touched upon by Sophoklês (apud Herodian. in Rhetor. Græc. t. viii. p. 601, Walz.).

The lyric poet Bacchylidês (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 1535) seems to have handled the story even earlier than Sophoklês.

We find the same allegation embodied in charges against real historical men: the invective of Montanus against Aquilius Regulus, at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian, affirmed, “datam interfectori Pisonis pecuniam a Regulo, appetitumque morsu Pisonis caput” (Tacit. Hist. iv. 42).

[653] Apollodôr. iii. 6, 8. Pindar, Olymp. vi. 11; Nem. ix. 13-27. Pausan. ix. 8, 2; 18, 2-4.

Euripidês, in the Phœnissæ (1122 seqq.), describes the battle generally; see also Æsch. S. Th. 392. It appears by Pausanias that the Thêbans had poems or legends of their own, relative to this war: they dissented in various points from the Cyclic Thêbaïs (ix. 18, 4). The Thêbaïs said that Periklymenus had killed Parthenopæus; the Thêbans assigned this exploit to Asphodikus, a warrior not commemorated by any of the poets known to us.

The village of Harma, between Tanagra and Mykalêssus, was affirmed by some to have been the spot where Amphiaräus closed his life (Strabo, ix. p. 404): Sophoklês placed the scene at the Amphiaræium near Orôpus (ap Strabon. ix. p. 399).

[654] Pindar, Olymp. vi. 16. Ἕπτα δ᾽ ἔπειτα πυρᾶν νέκρων τελεσθέντων Ταλαϊονίδας Εἶπεν ἐν Θήβαισι τοιοῦτόν τι ἔπος· Ποθέω στρατιᾶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμᾶς Ἀμφότερον, μάντιν τ᾽ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάχεσθαι.

The scholiast affirms that these last expressions are borrowed by Pindar from the Cyclic Thêbaïs.

The temple of Amphiaräus (Pausan. ii. 23, 2), his oracle, seems to have been inferior in estimation only to that of Delphi (Herodot. i. 52; Pausan. i. 34; Cicero, Divin. i. 40). Crœsus sent a rich present to Amphiaräus, πυθόμενος αὐτοῦ τήν τε ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν πάθην (Herod. l. c); a striking proof how these interesting legends were recounted and believed as genuine historical facts. Other adventures of Amphiaräus in the expedition against Thêbes were commemorated in the carvings on the Thronus at Amyklæ (Pausan. iii. 18, 4).

Æschylus (Sept. Theb. 611) seems to enter into the Thêban view, doubtless highly respectful towards Amphiaräus, when he places in the mouth of the Kadmeian king Eteoklês such high encomiums on Amphiaräus, and so marked a contrast with the other chiefs from Argos.

Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he regarded as “the eye of his army,” and having seen the other chiefs killed in the disastrous fight, was forced to take flight singly, and was preserved by the matchless swiftness of his horse Areiôn, the offspring of Poseidôn. He reached Argos on his return, bringing with him nothing except “his garments of woe and his black-maned steed.”[655]

[655] Pausan. viii. 25, 5, from the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Εἵματα λυγρὰ φέρων σὺν Ἀρείονι κυανοχαίτῃ; also Apollodôr. iii. 6, 8.

The celebrity of the horse Areiôn was extolled in the Iliad (xxiii. 346), in the Cyclic Thêbaïs, and also in the Thêbaïs of Antimachus (Pausan. l. c.): by the Arcadians of Thelpusia he was said to be the offspring of Dêmêtêr by Poseidôn,—he, and a daughter whose name Pausanias will not communicate to the uninitiated (ἧς τὸ ὄνομα ἐς ἀτελέστους λέγειν οὐ νομίζουσι, l. c.). A different story is in the Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 346; and in Antimachus, who affirmed that “Gæa herself had produced him, as a wonder to mortal men” (see Antimach. Frag. 16. p. 102; Epic. Græc. Frag. ed. Düntzer).

Kreôn, father of the heroic youth Menœkeus, succeeding to the administration of Thêbes after the death of the two hostile brothers and the repulse of Adrastus, caused Eteoklês to be buried with distinguished honor, but cast out ignominiously the body of Polynikês as a traitor to his country, forbidding every one on pain of death to consign it to the tomb. He likewise refused permission to Adrastus to inter the bodies of his fallen comrades. This proceeding, so offensive to Grecian feeling, gave rise to two further tales; one of them at least of the highest pathos and interest. Antigonê, the sister of Polynikês, heard with indignation the revolting edict consigning her brother’s body to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those rites which were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act; and Kreôn, though forewarned by Teiresias of the consequences, gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son Hæmôn, to whom she was engaged to be married, in vain interceded for her life. In an agony of despair he slew himself in the sepulchre to which the living Antigonê had been consigned; and his mother Eurydikê, the wife of Kreôn, inconsolable for his death, perished by her own hand. And thus the new light which seemed to be springing up over the last remaining scion of the devoted family of Œdipus, is extinguished amidst gloom and horrors—which overshadowed also the house and dynasty of Kreôn.[656]

[656] Sophokl. Antigon. 581. Νῦν γὰρ ἐσχάτας ὑπὲρ Ῥίζας ἐτέτατο φάος ἐν Οἰδίπου δόμοις, etc.

The pathetic tale here briefly recounted forms the subject of this beautiful tragedy of Sophoklês, the argument of which is supposed by Boeckh to have been borrowed in its primary rudiments from the Cyclic Thêbaïs or the Œdipodia (Boeckh, Dissertation appended to his translation of the Antigonê, c. x. p. 146); see Apollodôr. iii. 7, 1.

Æschylus also touches upon the heroism of Antigonê (Sep. Theb. 984).

The other tale stands more apart from the original legend, and seems to have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the Athenians. Adrastus, unable to obtain permission from the Thêbans to inter the fallen chieftains, presented himself in suppliant guise, accompanied by their disconsolate mothers, to Thêseus at Eleusis. He implored the Athenian warrior to extort from the perverse Thêbans that last melancholy privilege which no decent or pious Greeks ever thought of withholding, and thus to stand forth as the champion of Grecian public morality in one of its most essential points, not less than of the rights of the subterranean gods. The Thêbans obstinately persisting in their refusal, Thêseus undertook an expedition against their city, vanquished them in the field, and compelled them by force of arms to permit the sepulture of their fallen enemies. This chivalrous interposition, celebrated in one of the preserved dramas of Euripidês, formed a subject of glorious recollection to the Athenians throughout the historical age: their orators dwelt upon it in terms of animated panegyric; and it seems to have been accepted as a real fact of the past time, with not less implicit conviction than the battle of Marathôn.[657] But the Thêbans, though equally persuaded of the truth of the main story, dissented from the Athenian version of it, maintaining that they had given up the bodies for sepulture voluntarily and of their own accord. The tomb of the chieftains was shown near Eleusis even in the days of Pausanias.[658]

[657] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 1; Eurip. Supp. passim; Herodot. ix. 27; Plato, Menexen. c. 9; Lysias, Epitaph. c. 4; Isokrat. Orat. Panegyr. p. 196, Auger.

[658] Pausan. i. 39, 2.

A large proportion both of the interesting persons and of the exalted acts of legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Nor can we on this occasion pass over the name of Evadnê, the devoted widow of Kapaneus, who cast herself on the funeral pile of her husband and perished.[659]

[659] Eurip. Supplic. 1004-1110.

The defeat of the seven chiefs before Thêbes was amply avenged by their sons, again under the guidance of Adrastus:—Ægialeus son of Adrastus, Thersander son of Polynikês, Alkmæôn and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaräus, Diomêdês son of Tydeus, Sthenelus son of Kapaneus, Promachus son of Parthenopæus, and Euryalus son of Mekistheus, joined in this expedition. Though all these youthful warriors, called the Epigoni, took part in the expedition, the grand and prominent place appears to have been occupied by Alkmæôn, son of Amphiaräus. Assistance was given to them from Corinth and Megara, as well as from Messênê and Arcadia; while Zeus manifested his favorable dispositions by signals not to be mistaken.[660] At the river Glisas the Epigoni were met by the Thêbans in arms, and a battle took place in which the latter were completely defeated. Laodamas, son of Eteoklês, killed Ægialeus, son of Adrastus; but he and his army were routed and driven within the walls by the valor and energy of Alkmæôn. The defeated Kadmeians consulted the prophet Teiresias, who informed them that the gods had declared for their enemies, and that there was no longer any hope of successful resistance. By his advice they sent a herald to the assailants offering to surrender the town, while they themselves conveyed away their wives and children, and fled under the command of Laodamas to the Illyrians,[661] upon which the Epigoni entered Thêbes, and established Thersander, son of Polynikês, on the throne.

[660] Homer, Iliad, iv. 406. Sthenelus, the companion of Diomêdês and one of the Epigoni, says to Agamemnôn,—

Ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ᾽ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ᾽ εἶναι· Ἡμεῖς καὶ Θήβης ἕδος εἵλομεν ἑπταπύλοιο, Παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνθ᾽ ὑπὸ τεῖχος Ἄρειον, Πειθόμενοι τεράεσσι θεῶν καὶ Ζηνὸς ἀρωγῇ· Αὐτοὶ δὲ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο.

[661] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 4. Herodot. v. 57-61. Pausan. ix. 5, 7; 9, 2. Diodôr. iv. 65-66.

Pindar represents Adrastus as concerned in the second expedition against Thêbes (Pyth. viii. 40-58).

Adrastus, who in the former expedition had been the single survivor amongst so many fallen companions, now found himself the only exception to the general triumph and joy of the conquerors: he had lost his son Ægialeus, and the violent sorrow arising from the event prematurely cut short his life. His soft voice and persuasive eloquence were proverbial in the ancient epic.[662] He was worshipped as a hero both at Argos and at Sikyôn, but with especial solemnity in the last-mentioned place, where his Herôum stood in the public agora, and where his exploits as well as his sufferings were celebrated periodically in lyric tragedies. Melanippus, son of Astakus, the brave defender of Thêbes, who had slain both Tydeus and Mekistheus, was worshipped with no less solemnity by the Thêbans.[663] The enmity of these two heroes rendered it impossible for both of them to be worshipped close upon the same spot. Accordingly it came to pass during the historical period, about the time of the Solonian legislation at Athens, that Kleisthenês, despot of Sikyôn, wishing to banish the hero Adrastus and abolish the religious solemnities celebrated in honor of the latter by the Sikyonians, first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this banishment into effect directly and forcibly. That permission being refused, he next sent to Thêbes an intimation that he was anxious to introduce their hero Melanippus into Sikyôn. The Thêbans willingly consented, and he assigned to the new hero a consecrated spot in the strongest and most commanding portion of the Sikyonian prytaneium. He did this (says the historian) “knowing that Adrastus would forthwith go away of his own accord; since Melanippus was of all persons the most odious to him, as having slain both his son-in-law and his brother.” Kleisthenês moreover diverted the festivals and sacrifices which had been offered to Adrastus, to the newly established hero Melanippus; and the lyric tragedies from the worship of Adrastus to that of Dionysus. But his dynasty did not long continue after his decease, and the Sikyonians then reëstablished their ancient solemnities.[664]

[662] Γλῶσσαν τ᾽ Ἀδρήστου μειλιχόγηρυν ἔχοι (Tyrtæus, Eleg. 9, 7, Schneidewin); compare Plato, Phædr. c. 118. “Adrasti pallentis imago” meets the eye of Æneas in the under-world (Æneid, vi. 480).

[663] About Melanippus, see Pindar, Nem. x. 36. His sepulchre was shown near the Prœtid gates of Thêbes (Pausan. ix. 18, 1).

[664] This very carious and illustrative story is contained in Herodot. v. 67. Ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ θεὸς τοῦτο οὐ παρεδίδου, ἀπελθὼν ὀπίσω (Kleisthenês, returning from Delphi) ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν τῇ ~αὐτὸς ὁ Ἀδρήστος ἀπαλλάξεται~. Ὡς δὲ οἱ ἐξευρῆσθαι ἐδόκεε, πέμψας ἐς Θήβας τὰς Βοιωτίας, ἔφη θέλειν ἐπαγαγέσθαι Μελάνιππον τὸν Ἀστακοῦ· οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι ἔδοσαν. Ἐπηγάγετο δὲ τὸν Μελάνιππον ὁ Κλεισθένης, καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο δεῖ ἀπηγήσασθαι, ὡς ἔχθιστον ἐόντα Ἀδρήστῳ· ὃς τόν τε ἀδέλφεον Μηκιστέα ἀπεκτόνεε, καὶ τὸν γαμβρὸν Τυδέα.

The Sikyonians (Herodotus says) τά τε δὴ ἄλλα ἐτίμων τὸν Ἄδρηστον, καὶ πρὸς τὰ πάθεα αὐτοῦ τραγικοῖσι χόροισι ἐγέραιρον· τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον οὐ τιμέωντες, τὸν δὲ Ἄδρηστον.

Adrastus was worshipped as a hero at Megara as well as at Sikyôn: the Megarians affirmed that he had died there on his way back from Thêbes (Pausan. i. 43, 1; Dieuchidas, ap. Schol. ad Pindar. Nem. ix. 31). His house at Argos was still shown when Pausanias visited the town (ii. 23, 2).

Near the Prœtid gate of Thêbes were seen the tombs of two combatants who had hated each other during life even more than Adrastus and Melanippus—the two brothers Eteoklês and Polynikês. Even as heroes and objects of worship, they still continued to manifest their inextinguishable hostility: those who offered sacrifices to them observed that the flame and the smoke from the two adjoining altars abhorred all communion, and flew off in directions exactly opposite. The Thêban exegetes assured Pausanias of this fact. And though he did not himself witness it, yet having seen with his own eyes a miracle not very dissimilar at Pioniæ in Mysia, he had no difficulty in crediting their assertion.[665]

[665] Pausan. ix. 18, 3. Τὰ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς δρώμενα οὐ θεασάμενος πιστὰ ὅμως ὑπείληφα εἶναι. Compare Hygin. f. 68.

“Et nova fraterno veniet concordia fumo, Quem vetus accensâ separat ira pyrâ.” (Ovid, Ibis, 35.)

The tale was copied by Ovid from Kallimachus (Trist. v. 5, 38.)

Amphiaräus when forced into the first attack of Thêbes—against his own foreknowledge and against the warnings of the gods—had enjoined his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochus not only to avenge his death upon the Thêbans, but also to punish the treachery of their mother, “Eriphylê, the destroyer of her husband.”[666] In obedience to this command, and having obtained the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmæôn slew his mother;[667] but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason, and chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphylê.[668] He further intimated to the unhappy sufferer, that though the whole earth was tainted with his crime, and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the matricide was committed, and where therefore Alkmæôn yet might find a tranquil shelter. The promise was realized at the mouth of the river Achelôus, whose turbid stream was perpetually depositing new earth and forming additional islands. Upon one of these, near Œniadæ, Alkmæôn settled, permanently and in peace: he became the primitive hero of Akarnania, to which his son Akarnan gave name.[669] The necklace was found among the treasures of Delphi, together with that which had been given by Aphroditê to Helen, by the Phôkian plunderers who stripped the temple in the time of Philip of Macedôn. The Phôkian women quarrelled about these valuable ornaments: and we are told that the necklace of Eriphylê was allotted to a woman of gloomy and malignant disposition, who ended by putting her husband to death; that of Helen to a beautiful but volatile wife, who abandoned her husband from a preference for a young Epirot.[670]

[666] Ἀνδροδάμαντ᾽ Ἐριφύλην (Pindar, Nem. ix. 16). A poem Eryphilê was included among the mythical compositions of Stesichorus: he mentioned in it that Asklêpius had restored Kapaneus to life, and that he was for that reason struck dead by thunder from Zeus (Stesichor. Fragm. Kleine, 18, p. 74). Two tragedies of Sophoklês once existed, Epigoni and Alkmæôn (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. i. p. 269): a few fragments also remain of the Latin Epigoni and Alphesibæa of Attius: Ennius and Attius both composed or translated from the Greek a Latin Alkmæôn (Poet. Scenic. Latin. ed. Both. pp. 33, 164, 198).

[667] Hyginus gives the fable briefly (f. 73; see also Asclepiadês, ap. Schol. Odyss. xi. 326). In like manner, in the case of the matricide of Orestês, Apollo not only sanctions, but enjoins the deed; but his protection against the avenging Erinnyês is very tardy, not taking effect until after Orestês has been long persecuted and tormented by them (see Æschyl. Eumen. 76, 197 462).

In the Alkmæôn of the later tragic writer Thodektês, a distinction was drawn: the gods had decreed that Eriphylê should die, but not that Alkmæôn should kill her (Aristot. Rhetoric. ii. 24). Astydamas altered the story still more in his tragedy, and introduced Alkmæôn as killing his mother ignorantly and without being aware who she was (Aristot. Poetic. c. 27). The murder of Eriphylê by her son was one of the παρειλήμμενοι μῦθοι which could not be departed from; but interpretations and qualifications were resorted to, in order to prevent it from shocking the softened feelings of the spectators: see the criticism of Aristotle on the Alkmæôn of Euripidês (Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8).

[668] Ephorus ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 232.

[669] Thucyd. ii. 68-102.

[670] Athenæ. l. c.

There were several other legends respecting the distracted Alkmæôn, either appropriated or invented by the Attic tragedians. He went to Phêgeus, king of Psôphis in Arcadia, whose daughter Arsinoê he married, giving as a nuptial present the necklace of Eriphylê. Being however unable to remain there, in consequence of the unremitting persecutions of the maternal Erinnys, he sought shelter at the residence of king Achelôus, whose daughter Kallirhoê he made his wife, and on whose soil he obtained repose.[671] But Kallirhoê would not be satisfied without the possession of the necklace of Eriphylê, and Alkmæôn went back to Psôphis to fetch it, where Phêgeus and his sons slew him. He had left twin sons, infants, with Kallirhoê, who prayed fervently to Zeus that they might be preternaturally invested with immediate manhood, in order to revenge the murder of their father. Her prayer was granted, and her sons Amphoterus and Akarnan, having instantaneously sprung up to manhood, proceeded into Arcadia, slew the murderers of their father, and brought away the necklace of Eriphylê, which they carried to Delphi.[672]

[671] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 5-6; Pausan. viii. 24, 4. These two authors have preserved the story of the Akarnanians and the old form of the legend, representing Alkmæôn as having found shelter at the abode of the person or king Achelôus, and married his daughter: Thucydidês omits the personality of Achelôus, and merely announces the wanderer as having settled on certain new islands deposited by the river.

I may remark that this is a singularly happy adaptation of a legend to an existing topographical fact. Generally speaking, before any such adaptation can be rendered plausible, the legend is of necessity much transformed; here it is taken exactly as it stands, and still fits on with great precision.

Ephorus recounted the whole sequence of events as so much political history, divesting it altogether of the legendary character. Alkmæôn and Diomêdês, after having taken Thêbes with the other Epigoni, jointly undertook an expedition into Ætôlia and Akarnania: they first punished the enemies of the old Œneus, grandfather of Diomêdês, and established the latter as king in Kalydôn: next they conquered Akarnania for Alkmæôn. Alkmæôn, though invited by Agamemnôn to join in the Trojan war, would not consent to do so (Ephor. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 326; x. p. 462).

[672] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 7; Pausan. viii. 24, 3-4. His remarks upon the mischievous longing of Kallirhoê for the necklace are curious: he ushers them in by saying, that “many men, and still more women, are given to fall into absurd desires,” etc. He recounts it with all the bonne foi which belongs to the most assured matter of fact.

A short allusion is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (ix. 412).

Euripidês deviated still more widely from the ancient epic, by making Alkmæôn the husband of Mantô, daughter of Teiresias, and the father of Amphilochus. According to the Cyclic Thêbaïs, Mantô was consigned by the victorious Epigoni as a special offering to the Delphian god; and Amphilochus was son of Amphiaräus, not son of Alkmæôn.[673] He was the eponymous hero of the town called the Amphilochian Argos, in Akarnania, on the shore of the Gulf of Ambrakia. Thucydidês tells us that he went thither on his return from the Trojan war, being dissatisfied with the state of affairs which he found at the Peloponnêsian Argos.[674] The Akarnanians were remarkable for the numerous prophets which they supplied to the rest of Greece: their heroes were naturally drawn from the great prophetic race of the Melampodids.

[673] Thêbaïd, Cy. Reliqu. p. 70, Leutsch; Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. i. 408. The following lines cited in Athenæus (vii. p. 317) are supposed by Boeckh, with probable reason, to be taken from the Cyclic Thêbaïs; a portion of the advice of Amphiaräus to his sons at the time of setting out on his last expedition,—

Πουλύποδός μοι, τέκνον, ἔχων νόον, Ἀμφίλοχ᾽ ἥρως, Τοῖσιν ἐφαρμόζου, τῶν ἂν κατὰ δῆμον ἵκηαι.

There were two tragedies composed by Euripidês, under the title of Ἀλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος, and Ἀλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Κορίνθου (Dindorf, Fragm. Eurip. p. 77).

[674] Apollodôr. iii. 7, 7; Thucyd. ii. 68.

Thus ends the legend of the two sieges of Thêbes; the greatest event, except the siege of Troy, in the ancient epic; the greatest enterprise of war, between Greeks and Greeks, during the time of those who are called the Heroes.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XV. LEGEND OF TROY

We now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian epic,—the two sieges and capture of Troy, with the destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian, after the second and most celebrated capture and destruction of the city.

It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable, first handled by so many poets, epic, lyric and tragic, with their endless additions, transformations and contradictions,—then purged and recast by historical inquirers, who under color of setting aside the exaggerations of the poets, introduced a new vein of prosaic invention,—lastly, moralized and allegorized by philosophers. In the present brief outline of the general field of Grecian legend, or of that which the Greeks believed to be their antiquities, the Trojan war can be regarded as only one among a large number of incidents upon which Hekatæus and Herodotus looked back as constituting their fore-time. Taken as a special legendary event, it is indeed of wider and larger interest than any other, but it is a mistake to single it out from the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy basis. I must therefore confine myself to an abridged narrative of the current and leading facts; and amidst the numerous contradictory statements which are to be found respecting every one of them, I know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity, though even the oldest tales which we possess—those contained in the Iliad—evidently presuppose others of prior date.

The primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dardanus, son of Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania:[675] in the account of later authors, Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by Elektra, daughter of Atlas, and was further said to have come from Samothrace, or from Arcadia, or from Italy;[676] but of this Homer mentions nothing. The first Dardanian town founded by him was in a lofty position on the descent of Mount Ida; for he was not yet strong enough to establish himself on the plain. But his son Erichthonius, by the favor of Zeus, became the wealthiest of mankind. His flocks and herds having multiplied, he had in his pastures three thousand mares, the offspring of some of whom, by Boreas, produced horses of preternatural swiftness. Trôs, the son of Erichthonius, and the eponym of the Trojans, had three sons—Ilus, Assaracus, and the beautiful Ganymêdês, whom Zeus stole away to become his cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his father Trôs, as the price of the youth, a team of immortal horses.[677]

[675] Iliad, xx. 215.

[676] Hellanik. Fragm. 129, Didot; Dionys. Hal. i. 50-61; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 1; Schol. Iliad. xviii. 486; Varro, ap. Servium ad Virgil. Æneid. iii. 167. Kephalôn. Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρίσβη.

[677] Iliad, v. 265; Hellanik. Fr. 146; Apollod. ii. 5, 9.

From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge; the former passing from Ilus to Laomedôn, Priam and Hectôr; the latter from Assaracus to Capys, Anchisês and Æneas. Ilus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of Ilium; Assaracus and his descendants remained sovereigns of Dardania.[678]

[678] Iliad, xx. 236.

It was under the proud Laomedôn, son of Ilus, that Poseidôn and Apollo underwent, by command of Zeus, a temporary servitude; the former building the walls of the town, the latter tending the flocks and herds. When their task was completed and the penal period had expired, they claimed the stipulated reward; but Laomedôn angrily repudiated their demand, and even threatened to cut off their ears, to tie them hand and foot, and to sell them in some distant island as slaves.[679] He was punished for this treachery by a sea-monster, whom Poseidôn sent to ravage his fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomedôn publicly offered the immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Trôs, as a reward to any one who would destroy the monster. But an oracle declared that a virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him, and the lot fell upon Hesionê, daughter of Laomedôn himself. Hêraklês arriving at this critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for him by Athênê and the Trojans,[680] so as to rescue both the exposed maiden and the people; but Laomedôn, by a second act of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless animals which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, Hêraklês equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy and killed Laomedôn,[681] giving Hesionê to his friend and auxiliary Telamôn, to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teukros.[682] A painful sense of this expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of Ilium, who offered no worship to Hêraklês.[683]

[679] Iliad, vii. 451; xxi. 456. Hesiod. ap. Schol. Lycophr. 393.

[680] Iliad, xx. 145; Dionys. Hal. i. 52.

[681] Iliad, v. 640. Meneklês (ap. Schol. Venet. ad loc.) affirmed that this expedition of Hêraklês was a fiction; but Dikæarchus gave, besides, other exploits of the hero in the same neighborhood, at Thêbê Hypoplakiê (Schol. Iliad, vi. 396).

[682] Diodôr. iv. 32-49. Compare Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. viii. 284.

[683] Strabo, xiii. p. 596.

Among all the sons of Laomedôn, Priam[684] was the only one who had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon of Hêraklês; for which the hero recompensed him by placing him on the throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and daughters, as well by his wife Hekabê, daughter of Kisseus, as by other women.[685] Among the sons were Hectôr,[686] Paris, Dêiphobus, Helenus, Trôilus, Politês, Polydôrus; among the daughters Laodikê, Kreüsa, Polyxena, and Kassandra.

[684] As Dardanus, Trôs and Ilus are respectively eponyms of Dardania, Troy and Ilium, so Priam is eponym of the acropolis Pergamum. Πρίαμος is in the Æolic dialect Πέῤῥαμος (Hesychius): upon which Ahrens remarks, “Cæterum ex hac Æolicâ nominis formâ apparet, Priamum non minus arcis Περγάμων eponymum esse, quam Ilum urbis, Troem populi: Πέργαμα enim a Περίαμα natum est, ι in γ mutato.” (Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ, 8, 7. p. 56: compare ibid. 28, 8. p. 150, πεῤῥ᾽ ἁπάλω).

[685] Iliad, vi. 245; xxiv. 495.

[686] Hectôr was affirmed, both by Stesichorus and Ibykus, to be the son of Apollo (Stesichorus, ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad. xxiv. 259; Ibyki Fragm. xiv. ed. Schneidewin): both Euphoriôn (Fr. 125, Meineke) and Alexander Ætôlus follow the same idea. Stesichorus further stated, that after the siege Apollo had carried Hekabê away into Lykia to rescue her from captivity (Pausanias, x. 27, 1): according to Euripidês, Apollo had promised that she should die in Troy (Troad. 427).

By Sapphô, Hectôr was given as a surname of Zeus, Ζεὺς Ἕκτωρ (Hesychius, v. Ἕκτορες); a prince belonging to the regal family of Chios, anterior to the Ionic settlement, as mentioned by the Chian poet Iôn (Pausan. vii. 3, 3), was so called.

The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presages; for Hekabê dreamt that she was delivered of a firebrand, and Priam, on consulting the soothsayers, was informed that the son about to be born would prove fatal to him. Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him, and he grew up amidst the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphroditê.[687]

[687] Iliad, iii. 45-55; Schol. Iliad. iii. 325; Hygin. fab. 91; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 5.

It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd’s walk on Mount Ida, that the three goddesses Hêrê, Athênê, and Aphroditê were conducted, in order that he might determine the dispute respecting their comparative beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Pêleus and Thetis,—a dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in accomplishment of the deep-laid designs, of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race, pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which she was compelled to bear, and determined to lighten it by exciting a destructive and long-continued war.[688] Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphroditê, who promised him in recompense the possession of Helena, wife of the Spartan Menelaus,—the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the instance of Aphroditê, ships were built for him, and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, and the always neglected warnings of Kassandra.[689]

[688] This was the motive assigned to Zeus by the old epic poem, the Cyprian Verses (Frag. 1. Düntz. p. 12; ap. Schol. ad Iliad. i. 4):—

Ἡ δὲ ἱστορία παρὰ Στασίνῳ τῷ τὰ Κύπρια πεποιηκότι εἰπόντι οὕτως·

Ἦν ὅτε μύρια φῦλα κατὰ χθόνα πλαζόμενα ... ... βαρυστέρνου πλάτος αἴης. Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε, καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσι Σύνθετο κουφίσαι ἀνθρώπων παμβώτορα γαῖαν, Ῥιπίσας πολέμου μεγάλην ἔριν Ἰλιακοῖο, Ὄφρα κενώσειεν θάνατῳ βάρος· οἱ δ᾽ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ Ἥρωες κτείνοντο, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή.

The same motive is touched upon by Eurip. Orest, 1635; Helen. 38; and seriously maintained, as it seems, by Chrysippus, ap. Plutarch. Stoic. Rep. p. 1049: but the poets do not commonly go back farther than the passion of Paris for Helen (Theognis, 1232; Simonid. Amorg. Fragm. 6, 118).

The judgment of Paris was one of the scenes represented on the ancient chest of Kypselus at Olympia (Pausan. v. 19, 1).

[689] Argument of the Ἔπη Κύπρια (ap. Düntzer, p. 10). These warnings of Kassandra form the subject of the obscure and affected poem of Lycophrôn.

Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus as well as by Kastôr and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen.[690] Menelaus then departed to Krête, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest—a favorable moment which was employed by Aphroditê to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging to Menelaus—made a prosperous voyage to Troy—and arrived there safely with his prize on the third day.[691]

[690] According to the Cyprian Verses, Helena was daughter of Zeus by Nemesis, who had in vain tried to evade the connection (Athenæ. viii. 334). Hesiod (Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150) represented her as daughter of Oceanus and Têthys, an oceanic nymph: Sapphô (Fragm. 17, Schneidewin), Pausanias (i. 33, 7), Apollodôrus (iii. 10, 7), and Isokratês (Encom. Helen. v. ii. p. 366, Auger) reconcile the pretensions of Lêda and Nemesis to a sort of joint maternity (see Heinrichsen, De Carminibus Cypriis, p. 45-46).

[691] Herodot. ii. 117. He gives distinctly the assertion of the Cyprian Verses, which contradicts the argument of the poem as it appears in Proclus (Fragm. 1, 1), according to which latter, Paris is driven out of his course by a storm and captures the city of Sidôn. Homer (Iliad, vi. 293) seems however to countenance the statement in the argument.

That Paris was guilty of robbery, as well as of the abduction of Helen, is several times mentioned in the Iliad (iii. 144; vii. 350-363), also in the argument of the Cyprian Verses (see Æschyl. Agam. 534).

Menelaus, informed by Iris in Krête of the perfidious return made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnôn, as well as with the venerable Nestôr, on the means of avenging the outrage. They made known the event to the Greek chiefs around them, among whom they found universal sympathy: Nestôr, Palamêdês and others went round to solicit aid in a contemplated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnôn, to whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until Helen should be recovered.[692] Ten years were spent in equipping the expedition. The goddesses Hêrê and Athênê, incensed at the preference given by Paris to Aphroditê, and animated by steady attachment to Argos, Sparta and Mykênæ, took an active part in the cause; and the horses of Hêrê were fatigued with her repeated visits to the different parts of Greece.[693]

[692] The ancient epic (Schol. ad Il. ii. 286-339) does not recognize the story of the numerous suitors of Helen, and the oath by which Tyndareus bound them all before he made the selection among them, that each should swear not only to acquiesce, but even to aid in maintaining undisturbed possession to the husband whom she should choose. This story seems to have been first told by Stesichorus (see Fragm. 20. ed. Kleine; Apollod. iii. 10, 8). Yet it was evidently one of the prominent features of the current legend in the time of Thucydidês (i. 9; Euripid. Iphig. Aul. 51-80; Soph. Ajax, 1100).

The exact spot in which Tyndareus exacted this oath from the suitors, near Sparta, was pointed out even in the time of Pausanias (iii. 20, 9).

[693] Iliad, iv. 27-55; xxiv. 765. Argument. Carm. Cypri. The point is emphatically touched upon by Dio Chrysostom (Orat. xi. p. 335-336) in his assault upon the old legend. Two years’ preparation—in Dictys Cret. i. 16.

By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis[694] in Bœôtia, consisting of 1186 ships and more than 100,000 men,—a force outnumbering by more than ten to one anything that the Trojans themselves could oppose, and superior to the defenders of Troy even with all her allies included.[695] It comprised heroes with their followers from the extreme points of Greece—from the north-western portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus, as well as the western islands of Dulichium and Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Krête and Rhodes. Agamemnôn himself contributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom of Mykênæ, besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians, who possessed none of their own. Menelaus brought with him 60 ships, Nestôr from Pylus 90, Idomeneus from Krête and Diomêdês from Argos 80 each. Forty ships were manned by the Eleians, under four different chiefs; the like number under Megês from Dulichium and the Echinades, and under Thoas from Kalydôn and the other Ætôlian towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Eubœa, under Elephênôr, filled 40 vessels; the Bœôtians, under Peneleôs and Lêitus, 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenos and Aspledôn, 30; the light-armed Locrians, under Ajax son of Oileus,[696] 40; the Phôkians as many. The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships; the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled in 50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylakê and Pyrasus, and Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaôn and Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30; Admêtus, from Pheræ and the lake Bœbêis, with 11; and Philoktêtês from Melibœa with 7: the Lapithæ, under Polypœtês, son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels; the Ænianes and Perrhæbians, under Guneus,[697] 22; and the Magnêtês under Prothous, 40; these last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the mountains Pêlion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlêpolemus, son of Hêraklês, appeared 9 ships; from Symê under the comely but effeminate Nireus, 3; from Kôs, Krapathus and the neighboring islands, 30, under the orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Hêraklês.[698]

[694] The Spartan king Agesilaus, when about to start from Greece on his expedition into Asia Minor (396 B. C.) went to Aulis personally, in order that he too might sacrifice on the spot where Agamemnôn had sacrificed when he sailed for Troy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 4).

Skylax (c. 60) notices the ἱερὸν at Aulis, and nothing else: it seems to have been like the adjoining Delium, a temple with a small village grown up around it.

Aulis is recognized as the port from which the expedition started, in the Hesiodic Works and Days (v. 650).

[695] Iliad, ii. 128. Uschold (Geschichte des Trojanischen Kriegs, p. 9, Stutgart 1836) makes the total 135,000 men.

[696] The Hesiodic Catalogue notices Oileus, or Ileus, with a singular etymology of his name (Fragm. 136, ed. Marktscheffel).

[697] Γουνεὺς is the Heros Eponymus of the town of Gonnus in Thessaly; the duplication of the consonant and shortening of the vowel belong to the Æolic dialect (Ahrens, De Dialect. Æolic. 50, 4. p. 220).

[698] See the Catalogue in the second book of the Iliad. There must probably have been a Catalogue of the Greeks also in the Cyprian Verses; for a Catalogue of the allies of Troy is specially noticed in the Argument of Proclus (p. 12. Düntzer).

Euripidês (Iphig. Aul. 165-300) devotes one of the songs of the Chorus to a partial Catalogue of the chief heroes.

According to Dictys Cretensis, all the principal heroes engaged in the expedition were kinsmen, all Pelopids (i. 14): they take an oath not to lay down their arms until Helen shall have been recovered, and they receive from Agamemnôn a large sum of gold.

Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomêdês, and the sagacious Nestôr; while Agamemnôn himself, scarcely inferior to either of them in prowess, brought with him a high reputation for prudence in command. But the most marked and conspicuous of all were Achilles and Odysseus; the former a beautiful youth born of a divine mother, swift in the race, of fierce temper and irresistible might; the latter not less efficient as an ally from his eloquence, his untiring endurance, his inexhaustible resources under difficulty, and the mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never deserted him:[699] the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through an illicit connection with his mother Antikleia, was said to flow in his veins,[700] and he was especially patronized and protected by the goddess Athênê. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in the expedition, had even simulated insanity; but Palamêdês, sent to Ithaca to invite him, tested the reality of his madness by placing in the furrow where Odysseus was ploughing, his infant son Telemachus. Thus detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achæan host, but the prophet Halithersês predicted to him that twenty years would elapse before he revisited his native land.[701] To Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of heroic glory before the walls of Troy; nor could the place be taken without both his coöperation and that of his son after him. But they had forewarned him that this brilliant career would be rapidly brought to a close; and that if he desired a long life, he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis, he preferred few years with bright renown, and joined the Achæan host.[702] When Nestôr and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call.[703]

[699] For the character of Odysseus, Iliad, iii. 202-220; x. 247. Odyss. xiii. 295.

The Philoktêtês of Sophoklês carries out very justly the character of the Homeric Odysseus (see v. 1035)—more exactly than the Ajax of the same poet depicts it.

[700] Sophokl. Philoktêt. 417, and Schol.—also Schol. ad Soph. Ajac. 190.

[701] Homer, Odyss. xxiv. 115; Æschyl. Agam. 841; Sophokl. Philoktêt. 1011, with the Schol. Argument of the Cypria in Heinrichsen, De Carmin. Cypr. p. 23 (the sentence is left out in Düntzer, p. 11).

A lost tragedy of Sophoklês, Ὀδυσσεὺς Μαινόμενος, handled this subject.

Other Greek chiefs were not less reluctant than Odysseus to take part in the expedition: see the tale of Pœmandrus, forming a part of the temple-legend of the Achilleium at Tanagra in Bœôtia (Plutarch, Quæstion. Græc. p. 299).

[702] Iliad, i. 352; ix. 411.

[703] Iliad, xi. 782.

Agamemnôn and his powerful host set sail from Aulis; but being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Kaïkus, and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the country,[704] opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks now, discovering their mistake, retired; but their fleet was dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and took Skyrus, and there married Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomêdês.[705] Telephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to come to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given: thus restored, he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expedition.[706]

[704] Telephus was the son of Augê, daughter of king Aleus of Tegea in Arcadia, by Hêraklês: respecting her romantic adventures, see the previous chapter on Arcadian legends—Strabo’s faith in the story (xii. p. 572).

The spot called the Harbor of the Achæans, near Gryneium, was stated to be the place where Agamemnôn and the chiefs took counsel whether they should attack Telephus or not (Skylax, c. 97; compare Strabo, xiv. p. 622).

[705] Iliad, xi. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11, Düntzer; Diktys Cret. ii. 3-4.

[706] Euripid. Telephus, Frag. 26, Dindorf; Hygin. f. 101; Diktys, ii. 10. Euripidês had treated the adventure of Telephus in this lost tragedy: he gave the miraculous cure with the dust of the spear, πριστοῖσι λογχῆς θέλγεται ῥινήμασι. Diktys softens down the prodigy: “Achilles cum Machaone et Podalirio adhibeutes curam vulneri,” etc. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the rust of brass or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies.

“Longe omnino a Tiberi ad Caicum: quo in loco etiam Agamemnôn errasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset” (Cicero, Pro L. Flacco, c. 29). The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost epics and the tragedians, seem to have been just as familiar to Cicero as those noticed in the Iliad.

Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the Trojan war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as to give a reason why the Amazons did not come to the aid of Priam: they were at enmity with him, because Priam had aided the Phrygians against them (Iliad, iii. 188: in Strabo, τοῖς Ἰῶσιν must be a mistake for τοῖς Φρυξίν). Strabo can hardly have read, and never alludes to, Arktinus; in whose poem the brave and beautiful Penthesileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a marked epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552).

The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the goddess Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnôn, prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the offending chief was compelled to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia.[707] They then proceeded to Tenedos, from whence Odysseus and Menelaus were despatched as envoys to Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. In spite of the prudent counsels of Antenôr, who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the Trojans rejected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish: Protesilaus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope, and accordingly fell by the hand of Hectôr.

[707] Nothing occurs in Homer respecting the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (see Schol. Ven. ad Il. ix. 145).

Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Dardanians under Æneas, Lykians under Sarpedôn, Mysians, Karians, Mæonians, Alizonians,[708] Phrygians, Thracians, and Pæonians.[709] But vain was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks: the Trojans were routed, and even the invulnerable Cycnus,[710] son of Poseidôn, one of the great bulwarks of the defence, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within their walls, Achilles attacked and stormed Lyrnêssus, Pêdasus, Lesbos and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea-coast and eleven in the interior; he drove off the oxen of Æneas and pursued the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life: he surprised and killed the youthful Trôilus, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the Ægean.[711] He acquired as his captive the fair Brisêis, while Chrysêis was awarded to Agamemnôn: he was moreover eager to see the divine Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable struggle; and Aphroditê and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them.[712]

[708] No portion of the Homeric Catalogue gave more trouble to Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis and the other expositors than these Alizonians (Strabo, xii. p. 549; xiii. p. 603): a fictitious place called Alizonium, in the region of Ida, was got up to meet the difficulty (εἶτ᾽ Ἀλιζώνιον, τοῦτ᾽ ἤδη ~πεπλασμένον~ πρὸς τὴν τῶν Ἀλιζώνων ὑπόθεσιν, etc., Strabo, l. c.).

[709] See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815-877).

[710] Cycnus was said by later writers to be king of Kolônæ in the Troad (Strabo, xiii. p. 589-603; Aristotel. Rhetoric. ii. 23). Æschylus introduced upon the Attic stage both Cycnus and Memnôn in terrific equipments (Aristophan. Ran. 957. Οὐδ᾽ ἐξέπληττον αὐτοὺς Κύκνους ἄγων καὶ Μέμνονας κωδωνοφαλαροπώλους). Compare Welcker, Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 433.

[711] Iliad, xxiv. 752; Argument of the Cypria, pp. 11, 12, Düntzer. These desultory exploits of Achilles furnished much interesting romance to the later Greek poets (see Parthênius, Narrat. 21). See the neat summary of the principal events of the war in Quintus Smyrn. xiv. 125-140; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 338-342.

Trôilus is only once named in the Iliad (xxiv. 253); he was mentioned also in the Cypria; but his youth, beauty, and untimely end made him an object of great interest with the subsequent poets. Sophoklês had a tragedy called Trôilus (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. i. p. 124); Τὸν ἀνδρόπαιδα δεσπότην ἀπώλεσα, one of the Fragm. Even earlier than Sophoklês, his beauty was celebrated by the tragedian Phrynichus (Athenæ, xiii. p. 564; Virgil, Æneid, i. 474; Lycophrôn, 307).

[712] Argument. Cypr. p. 11, Düntz. Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα Ἀχιλλεὺς Ἑλένην ἐπιθυμεῖ θεάσασθαι, καὶ συνήγαγον αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ Ἀφροδίτη καὶ Θέτις. A scene which would have been highly interesting in the hands of Homer.

At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palamêdês, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice by which Palamêdês had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters, of dice for amusement, of night-watches, as well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamêdês was drowned while fishing, by the hands of Odysseus and Diomêdês.[713] Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palamêdês occur: the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those poems—noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar, who described Palamêdês as the wiser man of the two—is sufficient to explain the omission.[714] But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palamêdês, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting personages in the Trojan legend. Æschylus, Sophoklês and Euripidês each consecrated to him a special tragedy; but the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnôn and the Grecian chiefs that Palamêdês had received it from the Trojans.[715] He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion of the leading Greeks. In the last speech made by the philosopher Socratês to his Athenian judges, he alludes with solemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamêdês, as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer, and his companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the comparison. Palamêdês passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius.[716]

[713] Argum. Cypr. 1. 1.; Pausan. x. 31. The concluding portion of the Cypria seems to have passed under the title of Παλαμηδεία (see Fragm. 16 and 18. p. 15, Düntz.; Welcker, Der Episch. Cycl. p. 459; Eustath. ad Hom. Odyss. i. 107).

The allusion of Quintus Smyrnæus (v. 197) seems rather to point to the story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 368) appears not to have read.

[714] Pindar, Nem. vii. 21; Aristidês, Orat. 46. p. 260.

[715] See the Fragments of the three tragedians, Παλαμήδης—Aristeidês, Or. xlvi. p. 260; Philostrat. Heroic. x.; Hygin. fab. 95-105. Discourses for and against Palamêdês, one by Alkidamas, and one under the name of Gorgias, are printed in Reiske’s Orr. Græc. t. viii. pp. 64, 102; Virgil, Æneid, ii. 82, with the ample commentary of Servius—Polyæn. Proœ. p. 6.

Welcker (Griechisch. Tragöd. v. i. p. 130, vol. ii. p. 500) has evolved with ingenuity the remaining fragments of the lost tragedies.

According to Diktys, Odysseus and Diomêdês prevail upon Palamêdês to be let down into a deep well, and then cast stones upon him (ii. 15).

Xenophôn (De Venatione, c. 1) evidently recognizes the story in the Cypria, that Odysseus and Diomêdês caused the death of Palamêdês; but he cannot believe that two such exemplary men were really guilty of so iniquitous an act—κακοὶ δὲ ἔπραξαν τὸ ἔργον.

One of the eminences near Napoli still bears the name of Palamidhi.

[716] Plato, Apolog. Socr. c. 32; Xenoph. Apol. Socr. 26; Memor. iv. 2, 33; Liban. pro Socr. p. 242, ed. Morell.; Lucian, Dial. Mort 20.

In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Kamikus by the Krêtan armament which came to avenge the death of Minôs:[717] ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus, were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satisfied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events. Thucydidês tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being moreover very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant provisions: hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese,—a part in marauding expeditions over the neighborhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more speedily and easily concluded.[718] If the great historian could permit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that the simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations, and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years’ duration was so capital a feature in the ancient tale, that no critic ventured to meddle with it.

[717] Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a proper mythical period for a great war to last: the war between the Olympic gods and the Titan gods lasts ten years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Compare δεκάτῳ ἐνιαυτῷ (Hom. Odyss. xvi. 17).

[718] Thucyd. i. 11.

A period of comparative intermission however was now at hand for the Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused to put on his armor, and kept his Myrmidons in camp. According to the Cypria, this was the behest of Zeus, who had compassion on the Trojans: according to the Iliad, Apollo was the originating cause,[719] from anxiety to avenge the injury which his priest Chrysês had endured from Agamemnôn. For a considerable time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were conducted without their best warrior, and severe indeed was the humiliation which they underwent in consequence. How the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for his absence—how Hectôr and the Trojans defeated and drove them to their ships—how the actual blaze of the destroying flame, applied by Hectôr to the ship of Protesilaus, roused up the anxious and sympathizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluctant consent from Achilles, to allow his friend and his followers to go forth and avert the last extremity of ruin—how Achilles, when Patroclus had been killed by Hectôr, forgetting his anger in grief for the death of his friend, reëntered the fight, drove the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hectôr—all these events have been chronicled, together with those divine dispensations on which most of them are made to depend, in the immortal verse of the Iliad.

[719] Homer, Iliad, i. 21.

Homer breaks off with the burial of Hectôr, whose body has just been ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the lost poem of Arktinus, entitled the Æthiopis, so far as we can judge from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the subsequent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyrnæus, composed about the fourth century of the Christian æra, seems in its first books to coincide with the Æthiopis, in the subsequent books partly with the Ilias Minor of Leschês.[720]

[720] Tychsen, Commentat. de Quinto Smyrnæo, § iii. c. 5-7. The Ἰλίου Πέρσις was treated both by Arktinus and by Leschês: with the latter it formed a part of the Ilias Minor.

The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hectôr, were again animated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful queen of the Amazons, Penthesileia, daughter of Arês, hitherto invincible in the field, who came to their assistance from Thrace at the head of a band of her countrywomen. She again led the besieged without the walls to encounter the Greeks in the open field; and under her auspices the latter were at first driven back, until she too was slain by the invincible arm of Achilles. The victor, on taking off the helmet of his fair enemy as she lay on the ground, was profoundly affected and captivated by her charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by Thersitês: exasperated by this rash insult, he killed Thersitês on the spot with a blow of his fist. A violent dispute among the Grecian chiefs was the result, for Diomêdês, the kinsman of Thersitês, warmly resented the proceeding; and Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbus, where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odysseus.[721]

[721] Argument of the Æthiopis, p. 16, Düntzer; Quint. Smyrn. lib. i.; Diktys Cret. iv. 2-3.

In the Philoktêtês, of Sophoklês, Thersitês survives Achilles (Soph. Phil. 358-445).

Next arrived Memnôn, son of Tithônus and Eôs, the most stately of living men, with a powerful band of black Æthiopians, to the assistance of Troy. Sallying forth against the Greeks, he made great havoc among them: the brave and popular Antilochus perished by his hand, a victim to filial devotion in defence of Nestôr.[722] Achilles at length attacked him, and for a long time the combat was doubtful between them: the prowess of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally prevailed; whilst Eôs obtained for her vanquished son the consoling gift of immortality. His tomb, however,[723] was shown near the Propontis, within a few miles of the mouth of the river Æsêpus, and was visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it and bedewed it with water from the stream. So the traveller Pausanias was told, even in the second century after the Christian æra, by the Hellespontine Greeks.

[722] Odyss. xi. 522. Κεῖνον δὴ κάλλιστον ἴδον, μετὰ Μέμνονα δῖον: see also Odyss. iv. 187; Pindar, Pyth. vi. 31. Æschylus (ap. Strabo. xv. p. 728) conceives Memnôn as a Persian starting from Susa.

Ktêsias gave in his history full details respecting the expedition of Memnôn, sent by the king of Assyria to the relief of his dependent, Priam of Troy; all this was said to be recorded in the royal archives. The Egyptians affirmed that Memnôn had come from Egypt (Diodôr. ii. 22; compare iv. 77): the two stories are blended together in Pausanias, x. 31, 2. The Phrygians pointed out the road along which he had marched.

[723] Argum. Æth. ut sup.; Quint. Smyrn. ii. 396-550; Pausan. x. 31, 1. Pindar, in praising Achilles, dwells much on his triumphs over Hectôr, Têlephus, Memnôn, and Cycnus, but never notices Penthesileia (Olymp. ii. 90; Nem. iii. 60; vi. 52. Isthm. v. 43).

Æschylus, in the Ψυχοστασία, introduced Thetis and Eôs, each in an attitude of supplication for her son, and Zeus weighing in his golden scales the souls of Achilles and Memnôn (Schol. Ven. ad Iliad, viii. 70: Pollux, iv. 130; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 17). In the combat between Achilles and Memnôn, represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia, Thetis and Eôs were given each as aiding her son (Pausan. v. 19, 1).

But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After routing the Trojans and chasing them into the town, he was slain near the Skæan gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo.[724] The greatest efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was however rescued and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valor of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter was the grief of Thetis for the loss of her son: she came into the camp with the Muses and the Nêreids to mourn over him; and when a magnificent funeral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to burn him with every mark of honor, she stole away the body and conveyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of Leukê in the Euxine Sea. According to some accounts he was there blest with the nuptials and company of Helen.[725]

[724] Iliad, xxii. 360; Sophokl. Philokt. 334; Virgil, Æneid, vi. 56.

[725] Argum. Æthiop. ut sup.; Quint. Smyrn. 151-583; Homer, Odyss. v. 310; Ovid, Metam. xiii. 284; Eurip. Androm. 1262; Pausan. iii. 19, 13. According to Diktys (iv. 11), Paris and Deiphobus entrap Achilles by the promise of an interview with Polyxena and kill him.

A minute and curious description of the island Leukê, or Ἀχιλλέως νῆσος, is given in Arrian (Periplus, Pont. Euxin. p. 21; ap. Geogr. Min. t. 1).

The heroic or divine empire of Achilles in Scythia was recognized by Alkæus the poet (Alkæi Fragm. Schneidew. Fr. 46), Ἀχιλλεῦ, ὃς γᾶς Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις. Eustathius (ad Dionys. Periêgêt. 307) gives the story of his having followed Iphigeneia thither: compare Antonin. Liberal. 27.

Ibykus represented Achilles as having espoused Mêdea in the Elysian Field (Idyk. Fragm. 18. Schneidewin). Simonidês followed this story (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 815).

Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in honor of her son, and offered the unrivalled panoply, which Hêphæstos had forged and wrought for him, as a prize to the most distinguished warrior in the Grecian army. Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the distinction, when Athênê, together with some Trojan prisoners, who were asked from which of the two their country had sustained greatest injury, decided in favor of the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and humiliation: in a fit of phrenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own sword.[726]

[726] Argument of Æthiopis and Ilias Minor, and Fragm. 2 of the latter, pp. 17, 18, Düntz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120-482; Hom. Odyss. xi. 550; Pindar, Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophoklês, and the contending speeches between Ajax and Ulysses in the beginning of the thirteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are too well known to need special reference.

The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in the Æthiopis: compare Pindar. Isthm. iii. 51, and the Scholia ad loc., which show the attention paid by Pindar to the minute circumstances of the old epic. See Fragm. 2 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις of Arktinus, in Düntz. p. 22, which would seem more properly to belong to the Æthiopis. Diktys relates the suicide of Ajax, as a consequence of his unsuccessful competition with Odysseus, not about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the taking of the city (v. 14).

There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama of Sophoklês. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad: Æschylus made him invulnerable except under the armpits (see Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833); the Trojans pelted him with mud—εἴ πως βαρηθείῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλου (Schol. Iliad. xiv. 404).

Odysseus now learnt from Helenus son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade,[727] that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoktêtês, and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnus in the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years[728] in misery on that desolate island; but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Hêraklês, which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Diomêdês fetched Philoktêtês from Lemnus to the Grecian camp, where he was healed by the skill of Machaôn,[729] and took an active part against the Trojans—engaging in single combat with Paris, and killing him with one of the Hêrakleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their sufferings; but not until it had been mangled by the hand of Menelaus.[730] Odysseus went to the island of Skyrus to invite Neoptolemus to the army. The untried but impetuous youth gladly obeyed the call, and received from Odysseus his father’s armor, while on the other hand, Eurypylus, son of Têlephus, came from Mysia as auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service—turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their bravest chiefs, amongst whom was numbered Peneleôs, and the unrivalled leech Machaôn.[731] The exploits of Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian warriors: he routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they never again emerged to give battle: nor was he less distinguished for his good sense and persuasive diction, than for forward energy in the field.[732]

[727] Soph. Philokt. 604.

[728] Soph. Philokt. 703. Ὦ μελέα ψυχὰ, Ὃς μηδ᾽ οἰνοχύτου πόματος Ἥσθη δεκετῆ χρόνον, etc.

In the narrative of Diktys (ii. 47), Philoktêtês returns from Lemnus to Troy much earlier in the war before the death of Achilles, and without any assigned cause.

[729] According to Sophoklês, Hêraklês sends Asklêpius to Troy to heal Philoktêtês (Soph. Philokt. 1415).

The subject of Philoktêtês formed the subject of a tragedy both by Æschylus and by Euripidês (both lost) as well as by Sophoklês.

[730] Argument. Iliad. Minor. Düntz. l. c. Καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ Μενελάου καταικισθέντα ἀνελόμενοι θάπτουσιν οἱ Τρῶες. See Quint. Smyrn. x. 240: he differs here in many respects from the arguments of the old poems as given by Proclus, both as to the incidents and as to their order in time (Diktys, iv. 20). The wounded Paris flees to Œnônê, whom he had deserted in order to follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in simples: she refuses, and permits him to die; she is afterwards stung with remorse, and hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285-331; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 6; Conôn. Narrat. 23; see Bachet de Meziriac, Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, t. i. p. 456). The story of Œnônê is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalôn of Gergis (see Hellan. Fragm. 126, Didot).

[731] To mark the way in which these legendary events pervaded and became embodied in the local worship, I may mention the received practice in the great temple of Asklêpius (father of Machaôn) at Pergamus, even in the time of Pausanias. Têlephus, father of Eurypylus, was the local hero and mythical king of Teuthrania, in which Pergamus was situated. In the hymns there sung, the poem and the invocation were addressed to Têlephus; but nothing was said in them about Eurypylus, nor was it permitted even to mention his name in the temple,—“they knew him to be the slayer of Machaôn:” ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπὸ Τηλέφου τῶν ὕμνων, προσᾴδουσι δὲ οὐδὲν ἐς τὸν Εὐρύπυλον, οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ ναῷ θέλουσιν ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν, οἷα ἐπιστάμενοι φονέα ὄντα Μαχάονος (Pausan. iii. 26, 7).

The combination of these qualities in other Homeric chiefs is noted in a subsequent chapter of his work, ch. xx. vol. ii.

[732] Argument. Iliad. Minor. p. 17, Düntzer. Homer, Odyss. xi. 510-520. Pausan. iii. 26, 7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. 553; viii. 201.

Troy however was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the citadel; and great care had been taken by the Trojans not only to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless the enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person with miserable clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth away: Helen alone recognized him; but she was now anxious to return to Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means for the capture of the town.[733]

[733] Argument. Iliad. Minor, p. 18, Düntz.; Arktinus ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 69; Homer, Odyss. iv. 246; Quint. Smyrn. x. 354: Virgil, Æneid, ii. 164, and the 9th Excursus of Heyne on that book.

Compare with this legend about the Palladium, the Roman legend respecting the Ancylia (Ovid, Fasti, III. 381).

To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athênê, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing one hundred men: the élite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus and others, concealed themselves in the inside of it, and the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind: they long doubted what should be done with it; and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their wives.[734] Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliverance; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy’s legacy; and Laocoôn, the priest of Poseidôn, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud; and the unfortunate Laocoôn, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons,—two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Sinon, a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information, the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city.[735]

[734] Odyss. iv. 275; Virgil, Æneid, ii. 14; Heyne, Excurs. 3. ad Æneid. ii. Stesichorus, in his Ἰλίου Πέρσις, gave the number of heroes in the wooden horse as one hundred (Stesichor. Fragm. 26, ed. Kleine; compare Athenæ. xiii. p. 610).

[735] Odyss. viii. 492; xi. 522. Argument of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις of Arktinus, p. 21. Düntz. Hydin. f. 108-135. Bacchylidês and Euphorion ap. Servium ad Virgil. Æneid. ii. 201.

Both Sinon and Laocoôn came originally from the old epic poem of Arktinus, though Virgil may perhaps have immediately borrowed both them, and other matters in his second book, from a poem passing under the name of Pisander (see Macrob. Satur. v. 2; Heyne, Excurs. 1. ad Æn. ii.; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklus, v. 97). We cannot give credit either to Arktinus or Pisander for the masterly specimen of oratory which is put into the mouth of Sinon in the Æneid.

In Quintus Smyrnæus (xii. 366), the Trojans torture and mutilate Sinon to extort from him the truth: his endurance, sustained by the inspiration of Hêrê, is proof against the extremity of suffering, and he adheres to his false tale. This is probably an incident of the old epic, though the delicate taste of Virgil, and his sympathy with the Trojans, has induced him to omit it. Euphorion ascribed the proceedings of Sinon to Odysseus: he also gave a different cause for the death of Laocoôn (Fr. 33-36. p. 55, ed. Düntz., in the Fragments of Epic Poets after Alexander the Great). Sinon is ἐταῖρος Ὀδυσσέως in Pausan. x. 27, 1.

The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and destroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios; but his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter.[736]

[736] Odyss. viii. 515; Argument of Arktinas, ut sup.; Euripid. Hecub. 903; Virg. Æn. vi. 497; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35-229; Leschês ap. Pausan. x. 27, 2; Diktys, v. 12. Ibykus and Simonidês also represented Deiphobus as the ἀντεράστης Ἑλένης (Schol. Hom. Iliad. xiii. 517).

The night-battle in the interior of Troy was described with all its fearful details both by Leschês and Arktinus: the Ἰλίου Πέρσις of the latter seems to have been a separate poem, that of the former constituted a portion of the Ilias Minor (see Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 215): the Ἰλίου Πέρσις by the lyric poets Sakadas and Stesichorus probably added many new incidents. Polygnôtus had painted a succession of the various calamitous scenes, drawn from the poem of Leschês, on the walls of the leschê at Delphi, with the name written over each figure (Pausan. x. 25-26).

Hellanikus fixed the precise day of the month on which the capture took place (Hellan. Fr. 143-144), the twelfth day of Thargeliôn.

Thus was Troy utterly destroyed—the city, the altars and temples,[737] and the population. Æneas and Antenôr were permitted to escape, with their families, having been always more favorably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the city to the Greeks: a panther’s skin had been hung over the door of Antenôr’s house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to spare it in the general plunder.[738] In the distribution of the principal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hectôr, was cast from the top of the wall and killed, by Odysseus or Neoptolemus: Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the shade of the deceased hero to his countrymen;[739] while her sister Kassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnôn. She had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athênê, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon himself and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death.[740] Andromachê and Helenus were both given to Neoptolemus, who, according to the Ilias Minor, carried away also Æneas as his captive.[741]

[737] Æschyl. Agamemn. 527.—

Βωμοὶ δ᾽ ἄϊστοι καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματα, Καὶ σπέρμα πάσης ἐξαπόλλυται χθονός.

[738] This symbol of treachery also figured in the picture of Polygnôtus. A different story appears in Schol. Iliad. iii. 206.

[739] Euripid. Hecub. 38-114, and Troad. 716; Leschês ap. Pausan. x. 25, 9; Virgil, Æneid, iii. 322, and Servius ad loc.

A romantic tale is found in Diktys respecting the passion of Achilles for Polyxena (iii. 2).

[740] Odyss. xi. 422. Arktinus, Argum. p. 21, Düntz. Theognis, 1232. Pausan. i. 15, 2; x. 26, 3; 31, 1. As an expiation of this sin of their national hero, the Lokrians sent to Ilium periodically some of their maidens, to do menial service in the temple of Athênê (Plutarch. Ser. Numin. Vindict. p. 557, with the citation from Euphorion or Kallimachus, Düntzer, Epicc. Vet. p. 118).

[741] Leschês, Fr. 7, Düntz.; ap. Schol. Lycophr. 1263. Compare Schol. ad. 1232, for the respectful recollection of Andromachê, among the traditions of the Molossian kings, as their heroic mother, and Strabo, xiii. p. 594.

Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus: she accompanied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity,[742] passing afterwards to a happy immortality in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as a goddess with her brothers the Dioskuri and her husband, having her temple, statue and altar at Therapnæ and elsewhere, and various examples of her miraculous interventions were cited among the Greeks.[743] The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly with her sister Klytæmnêstra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripidês and Lycophrôn afterwards, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips.[744] He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety; but having repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been to Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or eidôlon.[745] It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest.

[742] Such is the story of the old epic (see Odyss. iv. 260, and the fourth book generally; Argument of Ilias Minor, p. 20. Düntz.). Polygnôtus, in the paintings above alluded to, followed the same tale (Pausan. x. 25, 3).

The anger of the Greeks against Helen, and the statement that Menelaus after the capture of Troy approached her with revengeful purposes, but was so mollified by her surpassing beauty as to cast away his uplifted sword, belongs to the age of the tragedians (Æschyl. Agamem. 685-1455: Eurip. Androm. 600-629; Helen. 75-120; Troad. 890-1057; compare also the fine lines in the Æneid, ii. 567-588).

[743] See the description in Herodot. vi. 61, of the prayers offered to her, and of the miracle which she wrought, to remove the repulsive ugliness of a little Spartan girl of high family. Compare also Pindar, Olymp. iii. 2, and the Scholia at the beginning of the ode; Eurip. Helen. 1662, and Orest. 1652-1706; Isokrat. Encom. Helen. ii. p. 368, Auger; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 311. θεὸς ἐνομίσθη παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι; Theodectês ap. Aristot. Pol. i. 2, 19. Θείων ἀπ᾽ ἀμφοῖν ἔκγονον ῥιζωμάτων.

[744] Euripid. Troad. 982 seq.; Lycophrôn ap. Steph. Byz. v. Αἰγύς; Stesichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239; Fragm. 9 and 10 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις, Schneidewin:—

Οὕνεκα Τυνδάρεως ῥέζων ἁπᾶσι θεοῖς μιᾶς λαθετ᾽ ἠπιοδώρου Κύπριδος· κείνα δὲ Τυνδάρεω κούραισι χολωσαμένα Διγάμους τριγάμους τίθησι Καὶ λιπεσάνορας ...

Further

... Ἑλένη ἑκοῦσ᾽ ἄπηρε, etc.

He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by force.

Stesichorus also affirmed that Iphigeneia was the daughter of Helen, by Thêseus, born at Argos before her marriage with Menelaus and made over to Klytæmnêstra: this tale was perpetuated by the temple of Eileithyia at Argos, which the Argeians affirmed to have been erected by Helen (Pausan. ii. 22, 7). The ages ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographers (Hellan. Fr. 74) to Thêseus and Helen—he fifty years of age and she a child of seven—when he carried her off to Aphidnæ, can never have been the original form of any poetical legend: these ages were probably imagined in order to make the mythical chronology run smoothly; for Thêseus belongs to the generation before the Trojan war. But we ought always to recollect that Helen never grows old (τὴν γὰρ φάτις ἔμμεν᾽ ἀγήρω—Quint. Smyrn. x. 312), and that her chronology consists only with an immortal being. Servius observes (ad Æneid. ii. 601)—“Helenam immortalem fuisse indicat tempus. Nam constat fratres ejus cum Argonautis fuisse. Argonautarum filii cum Thebanis (Thebano Eteoclis et Polynicis bello) dimicaverunt. Item illorum filii contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset.” So Xenophon, after enumerating many heroes of different ages, all pupils of Cheirôn, says that the life of Cheirôn suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus (De Venatione, c. 1).

The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytæmnêstra, Helen, and Timandra, all open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus: see about Timandra, wife of the Tegeate Echemus, the new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Göttling, Pref. Hesiod. p. lxi.).

It is curious to read, in Bayle’s article Hélène, his critical discussion of the adventures ascribed to her—as if they were genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported.

[745] Plato, Republic. ix. p. 587. c. 10. ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς Ἑλένης εἴδωλον Στησίχορός φησι περιμάχητον γενέσθαι ἐν Τροίῃ, ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ἀληθοῦς.

Isokrat. Encom. Helen. t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phædr. c. 44. p. 243-244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conôn, Narr. 18; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 323. Τὸν μὲν Στησίχορον ἐν τῇ ὕστερον ὠδῇ λέγειν, ὡς ~τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ πλεύσειεν ἡ Ἑλένη οὐδάμοσε~. Horace, Od. i. 17, Epod. xvii. 42.—

“Infamis Helenæ Castor offensus vice, Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece, Adempta vati reddidere lumina.”

Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness: Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (Æneid, vi. 511. “scelus exitiale Lacænæ;” compare ii. 567).

Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of compromise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, and the Egyptian king Prôteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he had committed towards Menelaus, had sent him away from the country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly, that she neither was, nor ever had been, in the town; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement, nor did Menelaus recover Helen until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt.[746] Such was the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his historicizing mind. “For if Helen had really been at Troy (he argues) she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her: their misfortune was, that while they did not possess, and therefore could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was the fact.” Assuming the historical character of the war of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we greatly wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen’s Egyptian detention, as a substitute for the “incredible insanity” which the genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pronounces that the Trojan horse must have been in point of fact a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude “for one little woman.”[747] Mr. Knight suggests various political causes as substitutes; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history.

[746] Herodot. ii. 120. οὐ γὰρ δὴ οὕτω γε φρενοβλαβὴς ἦν ὁ Πρίαμος, οὐδ᾽ οἱ ἄλλοι οἱ προσήκοντες αὐτῷ, etc. The passage is too long to cite, but is highly curious: not the least remarkable part is the religious coloring which he gives to the new version of the story which he is adopting,—“the Trojans, though they had not got Helen, yet could not persuade the Greeks that this was the fact; for it was the divine will that they should be destroyed root and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that upon great crimes the gods inflict great punishments.”

Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 333) reasons in the same way as Herodotus against the credibility of the received narrative. On the other hand, Isokratês, in extolling Helen, dwells on the calamities of the Trojan war as a test of the peerless value of the prize (Encom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.): in the view of Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 56), as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165), Helen is the one prize contended for.

Euripidês, in his tragedy of Helen, recognizes the detention of Helen in Egypt and the presence of her εἴδωλον at Troy, but he follows Stesichorus in denying her elopement altogether,—Hermês had carried her to Egypt in a cloud (Helen. 35-45, 706): compare Von Hoff, De Mytho Helenæ Euripideæ, cap. 2. p. 35 (Leyden, 1843).

[747] Pausan. i. 23, 8; Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. c. 53. Euphorion construed the wooden horse into a Grecian ship called Ἵππος, “The Horse” (Euphorion, Fragm. 34. ap. Düntzer, Fragm. Epicc. Græc. p. 55).

See Thucyd. i. 12; vi. 2.

The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and isolated. Moreover the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfortunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic “Returns,” that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse of Homer. The hero, after a series of long-protracted suffering and expatriation, inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidôn, at last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance plundered, by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athênê coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and analogous matter.[748]

[748] Suidas, v. Νόστος. Wüllner, De Cyclo Epico, p. 93. Also a poem Ἀτρειδῶν κάθοδος (Athenæ. vii. p. 281).

As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back-voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory purchased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even[749] spared the altars of the gods in Troy; and Athênê, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oïleus, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves; their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnôn and Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution.[750] Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nestôr, Diomêdês, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktêtês reached home speedily and safely: Agamemnôn also arrived in Peloponnêsus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but Menelaus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest privations in Egypt, Cyprus and elsewhere, before he could set foot in his native land. The Lokrian Ajax perished on the Gyræan rock.[751] Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods: no sooner did Poseidôn hear this language, than he struck with his trident the rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both into the sea.[752] Kalchas the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and Polypœtês, proceeded by land from Troy to Kolophôn.[753]

[749] Upon this the turn of fortune in Grecian affairs depends (Æschyl. Agamemn. 338; Odyss. iii. 130; Eurip. Troad. 69-95).

[750] Odyss. iii. 130-161; Æschyl. Agamemn. 650-662.

[751] Odyss. iii. 188-196; iv. 5-87. The Egyptian city of Kanopus, at the mouth of the Nile, was believed to have taken its name from the pilot of Menelaus, who had died and was buried there (Strabo, xvii. p. 801; Tacit. Ann. ii. 60). Μενελάϊος νόμος, so called after Menelaus (Dio Chrysost. xi p. 361).

[752] Odyss. iv. 500. The epic Νόστοι of Hagias placed this adventure of Ajax on the rocks of Kaphareus, a southern promontory of Eubœa (Argum. Νόστοι, p. 23, Düntzer). Deceptive lights were kindled on the dangerous rocks by Nauplius, the father of Palamêdês, in revenge for the death of his son (Sophoklês, Ναύπιος Πυρκαεὺς, a lost tragedy; Hygin. f. 116; Senec. Agamemn. 567).

[753] Argument. Νόστοι ut sup. There were monuments of Kalchas near Sipontum in Italy also (Strabo, vi. p. 284), as well as at Selgê in Pisidia (Strabo, xii. p. 570).

In respect however to these and other Grecian heroes, tales were told different from those in the Odyssey, assigning to them a long expatriation and a distant home. Nestôr went to Italy, where he founded Metapontum, Pisa and Hêrakleia:[754] Philoktêtês[755] also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Krimisa, and sent settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemus, under the advice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Odysseus, who had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his journey to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians.[756] Idomeneus came to Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Diomêdês, after wandering far and wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic gulf, and finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of Argyrippa, Beneventum, Atria and Diomêdeia: by the favor of Athênê he became immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many different places.[757] The Lokrian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Lokri on the southernmost corner of Italy,[758] besides another settlement in Libya. I have spoken in another place of the compulsory exile of Teukros, who, besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula.[759] Menestheus the Athenian did the like, and also founded both Elæa in Mysia and Skylletium in Italy.[760] The Arcadian chief Agapenôr founded Paphus in Cyprus.[761] Epeius, of Panopeus in Phôkis, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athênê, settled at Lagaria near Sybaris on the coast of Italy; and the very tools which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown down to a late date in the temple of Athênê at Metapontum.[762] Temples, altars and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos and in Krête, the foundation of Agamemnôn or of his followers.[763] The inhabitants of the Grecian town of Skionê, in the Thracian peninsula called Pallênê or Pellênê, accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellênians from Achæa in Peloponnêsus, who had served under Agamemnôn before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled.[764] The Pamphylians, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their origin from the wanderings of Amphilochus and Kalchas after the siege of Troy: the inhabitants of the Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Ambrakia revered the same Amphilochus as their founder.[765] The Orchomenians under Ialmenus, on quitting the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea; and the barbarous Achæans under Mount Caucasus were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this source.[766] Merionês with his Krêtan followers settled at Engyion in Sicily, along with the preceding Krêtans who had remained there after the invasion of Minôs. The Elyminians in Sicily also were composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta.[767] We hear of Podaleirius both in Italy and on the coast of Karia;[768] of Akamas son of Thêseus, at Amphipolis in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, and at Synnada in Phrygia;[769] of Guneus, Prothous and Eurypylus, in Krête as well as in Libya.[770] The obscure poem of Lycophrôn enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished.[771] It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed.[772]

[754] Strabo, v. p. 222; vi. p. 264. Vellei. Paterc. i. 1; Servius ad Æn. x. 179. He had built a temple to Athênê in the island of Keôs (Strabo, x. p. 487).

[755] Strabo, vi. pp. 254, 272; Virgil, Æn. iii. 401, and Servius ad loc.; Lycophrôn, 912.

Both the tomb of Philoktêtês and the arrows of Hêraklês which he had used against Troy, were for a long time shown at Thurium (Justin, xx. 1).

[756] Argument. Νόστοι, p. 23, Düntz.; Pindar, Nem. iv. 51. According to Pindar, however, Neoptolemus comes from Troy by sea, misses the island of Skyrus, and sails round to the Epeirotic Ephyra (Nem. vii. 37).

[757] Pindar, Nem. x. 7, with the Scholia. Strabo, iii. p. 150; v. p. 214-215; vi, p. 284. Stephan. Byz. Ἀργύριππα, Διομηδεία. Aristotle recognizes him as buried in the Diomedean islands in the Adriatic (Anthol. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 178).

The identical tripod which had been gained by Diomêdês, as victor in the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patroclus, was shown at Delphi in the time of Phanias, attested by an inscription, as well as the dagger which had been worn by Helikaôn, son of Antenôr (Athenæ. vi. p. 232).

[758] Virgil, Æneid, iii. 399.; xi. 265; and Servius, ibid. Ajax, the son of Oïleus, was worshipped there as a hero (Conôn, Narr. 18).

[759] Strabo, iii. p. 257; Isokratês, Evagor. Encom. p. 192; Justin, xliv. 3. Ajax, the son of Teukros, established a temple of Zeus, and an hereditary priesthood always held by his descendants (who mostly bore the name of Ajax or Teukros), at Olbê in Kilikia (Strabo, xiv. p. 672). Teukros carried with him his Trojan captives to Cyprus (Athenæ. vi. p. 256).

[760] Strabo, iii. p. 140-150; vi. p. 261; xiii. p. 622. See the epitaphs on Teukros and Agapenôr by Aristotle (Antholog. Gr. ed. Brunck. i. p. 179-180).

[761] Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Pausan. viii. 5, 2.

[762] Strabo, vi. p. 263; Justin, xx. 2; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 108. Also the epigram of the Rhodian Simmias called Πελεκύς (Antholog. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 210).

[763] Vellei. Patercul. i. 1. Stephan. Byz. v. Λάμπη. Strabo, xiii. p. 605; xiv p. 639. Theopompus (Fragm. III, Didot) recounted that Agamemnôn and his followers had possessed themselves of the larger portion of Cyprus.

[764] Thucydid. iv. 120.

[765] Herodot. vii. 91; Thucyd. ii. 68. According to the old elegiac poet Kallinos, Kalchas himself had died at Klarus near Kolophôn after his march from Troy, but Mopsus, his rival in the prophetic function, had conducted his followers into Pamphylia and Kilikia (Strabo, xii. p. 570; xiv.p. 668). The oracle of Amphilochus at Mallus in Kilikia bore the highest character for exactness and truth-telling in the time of Pausanias, μαντεῖον ἀψευδέστατον τῶν ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ. (Paus. i. 34, 2). Another story recognized Leonteus and Polypætês as the founders of Aspendus in Kilikia (Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 138).

[766] Strabo, ix. p. 416.

[767] Diodôr. iv. 79; Thucyd. vi. 2.

[768] Stephan, Byz. v. Σύρνα; Lycophrôn, 1047.

[769] Æschines, De Falsâ Legat. c. 14; Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Stephan. Byz. v. Σύνναδα.

[770] Lycophrôn, 877-902, with Scholia; Apollodôr. Fragm. p. 386, Heyne. There is also a long enumeration of these returning wanderers and founders of new settlements in Solinus (Polyhist. c. 2).

[771] Strabo, iii. p. 150.

[772] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. 79, 106, 107, 109, 111.

I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as well as that of the Argonauts,—one of the most striking features in the Hellenic legendary world.[773] Amongst them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose romantic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by Homer. The goddesses Kalypso and Circê; the semi-divine mariners of Phæacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclôpes, the gigantic Læstrygones, and the wind-ruler Æolus; the Sirens who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food—all these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reëstablished in his house and family; but so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life: the epic poem called the Telegonia ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures. After the suitors had been buried by their relatives, he offered sacrifice to the Nymphs, and then went to Elis to inspect his herds of cattle there pasturing: the Eleian Polyxenus welcomed him hospitably, and made him a present of a bowl: Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, and fulfilled the rites and sacrifices prescribed to him by Teiresias in his visit to the under-world. This obligation discharged, he went to the country of the Thesprotians, and there married the queen Kallidikê: he headed the Thesprotians in a war against the Brygians, the latter being conducted by Arês himself, who fiercely assailed Odysseus; but the goddess Athênê stood by him, and he was enabled to make head against Arês until Apollo came and parted them. Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, leaving the Thesprotian kingdom to Polypœtês, his son by Kallidikê. Telegonus, his son by Circê, coming to Ithaka in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for his undesigned parricide: at his prayer and by the intervention of his mother Circê, both Penelopê and Têlemachus were made immortal: Telegonus married Penelopê, and Têlemachus married Circê.[774]

[773] Strabo, i. p. 48. After dwelling emphatically on the long voyages of Dionysus, Hêraklês, Jasôn, Odysseus, and Menelaus, he says, Αἰνείαν δὲ καὶ Ἀντήνορα καὶ Ἐνετοὺς, καὶ ἁπλῶς τοὺς ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέμου πλανηθέντας εἰς ~πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην~, ἄξιον μὴ τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνθρώπων νομίσαι; Συνέβη γὰρ δὴ τοῖς τότε Ἕλλησιν, ὁμοίως καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις, διὰ τὸν τῆς στρατείας χρόνον, ἀποβαλεῖν τά τε ἐν οἴκῳ καὶ τῇ στρατείᾳ πορισθέντα· ὥστε μετὰ τὴν τοῦ Ἰλίου καταστροφὴν τούς τε νικήσαντας ἐπὶ λῄστειαν τραπέσθαι διὰ τὰς ἀπορίας, καὶ πολλῷ μᾶλλον τοὺς ἡττηθέντας καὶ περιγενομένους ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου. Καὶ δὴ καὶ πόλεις ὑπὸ ~τούτων κτισθῆναι~ λέγονται ~κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ἔξω τῆς Ἑλλάδος παραλίαν~, ἔστι δ᾽ ὅπου καὶ τὴν μεσόγαιαν.

[774] The Telegonia, composed by Eugammôn of Kyrênê, is lost, but the Argument of it has been preserved by Proclus (p. 25, Düntzer; Dictys, vi. 15).

Pausanias quotes a statement from the poem called Thesprôtis, respecting a son of Odysseus and Penelopê, called Ptoliporthus, born after his return from Troy (viii. 12, 3). Nitzsch (Hist. Homer. p. 97) as well as Lobeck seem to imagine that this is the same poem as the Telegonia, under another title.

Aristotle notices an oracle of Odysseus among the Eurytanes, a branch of the Ætôlian nation: there were also places in Epirus which boasted of Odysseus as their founder (Schol. ad Lycophrôn. 800; Stephan. Byz. v. Βούνειμα; Etymolog. Mag. Ἀρκείσιος; Plutarch, Quæst. Gr. c. 14).

We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the Molossian.

It has already been mentioned that Antenôr and Æneas stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophoklês and others construed as treacherous collusion,[775]—a suspicion indirectly glanced, though emphatically repelled, by the Æneas of Virgil.[776] In the old epic of Arktinus, next in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, Æneas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous death of Laocoôn, before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night-battle: yet Leschês, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptolemus.[777] In a remarkable passage of the Iliad, Poseidôn describes the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus, and predicts that Æneas and his descendants shall reign over the Trojans: the race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other sons, would thus be preserved, since Æneas belonged to it. Accordingly, when Æneas is in imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, Poseidôn specially interferes to rescue him, and even the implacable miso-Trojan goddess Hêrê assents to the proceeding.[778] These passages have been construed by various able critics to refer to a family of philo-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic Æneadæ, known even in the time of the early singers of the Iliad as masters of some territory in or near the Troad, and professing to be descended from, as well as worshipping, Æneas. In the town of Skêpsis, situated in the mountainous range of Ida, about thirty miles eastward of Ilium, there existed two noble and priestly families who professed to be descended, the one from Hectôr, the other from Æneas. The Skêpsian critic Dêmêtrius (in whose time both these families were still to be found) informs us that Skamandrius son of Hectôr, and Ascanius son of Æneas, were the archegets or heroic founders of his native city, which had been originally situated on one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time.[779] In Arisbê and Gentinus there seem to have been families professing the same descent, since the same archegets were acknowledged.[780] In Ophrynium, Hectôr had his consecrated edifice, and in Ilium both he and Æneas were worshipped as gods:[781] and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian Menekratês, that Æneas, “having been wronged by Paris and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks.”[782]

[775] Dionys. Hal. i. 46-48; Sophokl. ap. Strab. xiii. p. 608; Livy, i. 1; Xenophon, Venat. i. 15.

[776] Æn. ii. 433.

[777] Argument of Ἰλίου Πέρσις; Fragm. 7. of Leschês, in Düntzer’s Collection, p. 19-21.

Hellanikus seems to have adopted this retirement of Æneas to the strongest parts of Mount Ida, but to have reconciled it with the stories of the migration of Æneas, by saying that he only remained in Ida a little time, and then quitted the country altogether by virtue of a convention concluded with the Greeks (Dionys. Hal. i. 47-48). Among the infinite variety of stories respecting this hero, one was, that after having effected his settlement in Italy, he had returned to Troy and resumed the sceptre, bequeathing it at his death to Ascanius (Dionys. Hal. i. 53): this was a comprehensive scheme for apparently reconciling all the legends.

[778] Iliad, xx. 300. Poseidôn speaks, respecting Æneas—

Ἀλλ᾽ ἄγεθ᾽ ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπ᾽ ἐκ θανάτου ἀγάγωμεν, Μήπως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴκεν Ἀχιλλεὺς Τόνδε κατακτείνῃ· μόριμον δέ οἱ ἐστ᾽ ἀλέασθαι, Ὄφρα μὴ ἄσπερμος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται Δαρδάνου, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων, Οἱ ἕθεν ἐξεγένοντο, γυναικῶν τε θνητάων. Ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμου γενεὴν ἤχθῃρε Κρονίων· Νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει, Καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται.

Again, v. 339, Poseidôn tells Æneas that he has nothing to dread from any other Greek than Achilles.

[779] See O. Müller, on the causes of the mythe of Æneas and his voyage to Italy, in Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308; Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, vol. i. p. 43-52.

Dêmêtrius Skêps. ab. Strab. xiii. p. 607; Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀσκανία. Dêmêtrius conjectured that Skêpsis had been the regal seat of Æneas: there was a village called Æneia near to it (Strabo, xiii. p. 603).

[780] Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρίσβη, Γεντῖνος. Ascanius is king of Ida after the departure of the Greeks (Conôn, Narr. 41; Mela, i. 18). Ascanius portus between Phokæ and Kymê.

[781] Strabo, xiii. p. 595; Lycophrôn, 1208, and Sch.; Athenagoras, Legat. 1. Inscription in Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 86, Οἱ Ἰλιεῖς τὸν πάτριον θεὸν Αἰνείαν. Lucian, Deor. Concil. c. 12. i. 111. p. 534, Hemst.

[782] Menekrat. ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 48. Ἀχαιοὺς δὲ ἀνίη εἶχε (after the burial) καὶ ἐδόκεον τῆς στρατιῆς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπηράχθαι. Ὅμως δὲ τάφον αὐτῷ δαίσαντες, ἐπολέμεον γῇ πάσῃ, ἄχρις Ἴλιος ἑάλω Αἰνείεω ἐνδόντος. Αἰνείης γὰρ ἄτιτος ἐὼν ὑπὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ ἀπὸ γερέων ἱερῶν ἐξειργόμενος, ἀνέτρεψε Πρίαμον, ἐργασάμενος δὲ ταῦτα, εἷς Ἀχαιῶν ἐγεγόνει.

Abas, in his Troica, gave a narrative different from any other preserved: “Quidam ab Abante, qui Troica scripsit, relatum ferunt, post discessum a Trojâ Græcorum Astyanacti ibi datum regnum, hunc ab Antenore expulsum sociatis sibi finitimis civitatibus, inter quas et Arisba fuit: Ænean hoc ægre tulisse, et pro Astyanacte arma cepisse ac prospere gestâ re Astyanact restituisse regnum” (Servius ad Virg. Æneid. ix. 264). According to Diktys, Antenôr remains king and Æneas goes away (Dikt. v. 17): Antenôr brings the Palladium to the Greeks (Dikt. v. 8). Syncellus, on the contrary, tells us that the sons of Hectôr recovered Ilium by the suggestions of Helenus, expelling the Atenorids (Syncell. p. 322, ed. Bonn).

One tale thus among many respecting Æneas, and that too the most ancient of all, preserved among the natives of the Troad, who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was, that after the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcilable: the hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer (fato profugus), and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of Odysseus. We hear of him at Ænus in Thrace, in Pallênê, at Æneia in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delus, at Orchomenos and Mantineia in Arcadia, in the islands of Kythêra and Zakynthus, in Leukas and Ambrakia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the Salentine peninsula and various other places in the southern region of Italy; at Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape Palinurus, Cumæ, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in Latium, where he lays the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her empire.[783] And the reason why his wanderings were not continued still further was, that the oracles and the pronounced will of the gods directed him to settle in Latium.[784] In each of these numerous places his visit was commemorated and certified by local monuments or special legends, particularly by temples and permanent ceremonies in honor of his mother Aphroditê, whose worship accompanied him everywhere: there were also many temples and many different tombs of Æneas himself.[785] The vast ascendency acquired by Rome, the ardor with which all the literary Romans espoused the idea of a Trojan origin, and the fact that the Julian family recognized Æneas as their gentile primary ancestor,—all contributed to give to the Roman version of his legend the preponderance over every other. The various other places in which monuments of Æneas were found came thus to be represented as places where he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not extinguished: they claimed the hero as their permanent property, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died among them.

[783] Dionys. Halic. A. R. i. 48-54; Heyne, Excurs. 1 ad Æneid. iii.; De Æneæ Erroribus, and Excurs. 1 ad Æn. v.; Conôn. Narr. 46; Livy, xl. 4; Stephan. Byz. Αἴνεια. The inhabitants of Æneia in the Thermaic Gulf worshipped him with great solemnity as their heroic founder (Pausan. iii. 22, 4; viii. 12, 4). The tomb of Anchisês was shown on the confines of the Arcadian Orchomenus and Mantineia (compare Steph. Byz. v. Κάφυαι), under the mountain called Anchisia, near a temple of Aphroditê: on the discrepancies respecting the death of Anchisês (Heyne. Excurs. 17 ad Æn. iii.): Segesta in Sicily founded by Æneas (Cicero, Verr. iv. 33).

[784] Τοῦ δὲ μηκέτι προσωτέρω τῆς Εὐρώπης πλεῦσαι τὸν Τρωϊκὸν στόλον, οἵ τε χρησμοὶ ἐγένοντο αἴτιοι, etc. (Dionys. Hal. i. 55).

[785] Dionys. Hal. i. 54. Among other places, his tomb was shown at Berecynthia, in Phrygia (Festus, v. Romam, p. 224, ed. Müller): a curious article, which contains an assemblage of the most contradictory statements respecting both Æneas and Latinus.

Antenôr, who shares with Æneas the favorable sympathy of the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with Menelaus and Helen into the region of Kyrênê in Libya.[786] But according to the more current narrative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring barbarians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua); the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his immigration.[787] We learn further from Strabo, that Opsikellas, one of the companions of Antenôr, had continued his wanderings even into Ibêria, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his name.[788]

[786] Pindar, Pyth. v., and the citation from the Νόστοι of Lysimachus in the Scholia; given still more fully in the Scholia ad Lycophrôn. 875. There was a λόφος Ἀντηνορίδων at Kyrênê.

[787] Livy, i. 1. Servius ad Æneid. i. 242. Strabo, i. 48; v. 212. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 75.

[788] Strabo, iii. p. 157.

Thus endeth the Trojan war; together with its sequel, the dispersion of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. The account here given of it has been unavoidably brief and imperfect; for in a work intended to follow consecutively the real history of the Greeks, no greater space can be allotted even to the most splendid gem of their legendary period. Indeed, although it would be easy to fill a large volume with the separate incidents which have been introduced into the “Trojan cycle,” the misfortune is that they are for the most part so contradictory as to exclude all possibility of weaving them into one connected narrative. We are compelled to select one out of the number, generally without any solid ground of preference, and then to note the variations of the rest. No one who has not studied the original documents can imagine the extent to which this discrepancy proceeds; it covers almost every portion and fragment of the tale.[789]

[789] These diversities are well set forth in the useful Dissertation of Fuchs De Varietate Fabularum Troicarum (Cologne, 1830).

Of the number of romantic statements put forth respecting Helen and Achilles especially, some idea may be formed from the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of Ptolemy Hêphæstion (apud Westermann, Scriptt. Mythograph. p. 188, etc.).

But though much may have been thus omitted of what the reader might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its genuine character has been studiously preserved, without either exaggeration or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which was recounted by Homer and the old epic poets, and continued by all the lyric and tragic composers. For the latter, though they took great liberties with the particular incidents, and introduced to some extent a new moral tone, yet worked more or less faithfully on the Homeric scale: and even Euripidês, who departed the most widely from the feeling of the old legend, never lowered down his matter to the analogy of contemporary life. They preserved its well-defined object, at once righteous and romantic, the recovery of the daughter of Zeus and sister of the Dioskuri—its mixed agencies, divine, heroic and human—the colossal force and deeds of its chief actors—its vast magnitude and long duration, as well as the toils which the conquerors underwent, and the Nemesis which followed upon their success. And these were the circumstances which, set forth in the full blaze of epic and tragic poetry, bestowed upon the legend its powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic mind. The enterprise was one comprehending all the members of the Hellenic body, of which each individually might be proud, and in which, nevertheless, those feelings of jealous and narrow patriotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of the towns, were as much as possible excluded. It supplied them with a grand and inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith, and common admiration; and when occasions arose for bringing together a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the precedent of the Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated minds of Greece could dwell with the certainty of rousing an unanimous impulse, if not always of counterworking sinister by-motives, among their audience. And the incidents comprised in the Trojan cycle were familiarized, not only to the public mind but also to the public eye, by innumerable representations both of the sculptor and the painter,—those which were romantic and chivalrous being better adapted for this purpose, and therefore more constantly employed, than any other.

Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was for the most part composed. Though literally believed, reverentially cherished, and numbered among the gigantic phænomena of the past, by the Grecian public, it is in the eyes of modern inquiry essentially a legend and nothing more. If we are asked whether it be not a legend embodying portions of historical matter, and raised upon a basis of truth,—whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely human and political, without gods, without heroes, without Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of Eôs, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and expressive features of the old epical war,—like the mutilated trunk of Deïphobus in the under-world; if we are asked whether there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our answer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be affirmed. We possess nothing but the ancient epic itself without any independent evidence: had it been an age of records indeed, the Homeric epic in its exquisite and unsuspecting simplicity would probably never have come into existence. Whoever therefore ventures to dissect Homer, Arktinus and Leschês, and to pick out certain portions as matters of fact, while he sets aside the rest as fiction, must do so in full reliance on his own powers of historical divination, without any means either of proving or verifying his conclusions. Among many attempts, ancient as well as modern, to identify real objects in this historical darkness, that of Dio Chrysostom deserves attention for its extraordinary boldness. In his oration addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium, and intended to demonstrate that the Trojans were not only blameless as to the origin of the war, but victorious in its issue—he overthrows all the leading points of the Homeric narrative, and re-writes nearly the whole from beginning to end: Paris is the lawful husband of Helen, Achilles is slain by Hectôr, and the Greeks retire without taking Troy, disgraced as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that the Iliad, if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongruities and absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible narrative of his own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter of fact. The most important point, however, which his Oration brings to view is, the literal and confiding belief with which the Homeric narrative was regarded, as if it were actual history, not only by the inhabitants of Ilium, but also by the general Grecian public.[790]

[790] Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 310-322.

The small town of Ilium, inhabited by Æolic Greeks,[791] and raised into importance only by the legendary reverence attached to it, stood upon an elevated ridge forming a spur from Mount Ida, rather more than three miles from the town and promontory of Sigeium, and about twelve stadia, or less than two miles, from the sea at its nearest point. From Sigeium and the neighboring town of Achilleium (with its monument and temple of Achilles), to the town of Rhœteium on a hill higher up the Hellespont (with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the Aianteium[792]), was a distance of sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half in the straight course by sea: in the intermediate space was a bay and an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Scamander, and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium stood. This plain was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which the great Homeric battles were believed to have taken place: the portion of the bay near to Sigeium went by the name of the Naustathmon of the Achæans (i. e. the spot where they dragged their ships ashore), and was accounted to have been the camp of Agamemnôn and his vast army.[793]

[791] Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8, 3: viii. 12, 4. Αἰολεὺς ἐκ πόλεως Τρῴαδος, the title proclaimed at the Olympic games; like Αἰολεὺς ἀπὸ Μουρίνας, from Myrina in the more southerly region of Æolis, as we find in the list of visitors at the Charitêsia, at Orchomenos in Bœôtia (Corp. Inscrip. Boeckh. No. 1583).

[792] See Pausanias, i. 35, 3, for the legends current at Ilium respecting the vast size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The inhabitants affirmed that after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the arms of Achilles, which he was carrying away with him, were washed up by the sea against the tomb of Ajax. Pliny gives the distance at thirty stadia: modern travellers make it some thing more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo.

[793] Strabo, xiii. p. 596-598. Strabo distinguishes the Ἀχαιῶν Ναύσταθμον, which was near to Sigeium, from the Ἀχαιῶν λιμήν, which was more towards the middle of the bay between Sigeium and Rhœteium; but we gather from his language that this distinction was not universally recognized. Alexander landed at the Ἀχαιῶν λιμήν (Arrian, i. 11).

Historical Ilium was founded, according to the questionable statement of Strabo, during the last dynasty of the Lydian kings,[794] that is, at some period later than 720 B. C. Until after the days of Alexander the Great—indeed until the period of Roman preponderance—it always remained a place of inconsiderable power and importance, as we learn not only from the assertion of the geographer, but also from the fact that Achilleium, Sigeium and Rhœteium were all independent of it.[795] But inconsiderable as it might be, it was the only place which ever bore the venerable name immortalized by Homer. Like the Homeric Ilium, it had its temple of Athênê,[796] wherein she was worshipped as the presiding goddess of the town: the inhabitants affirmed that Agamemnôn had not altogether destroyed the town, but that it had been reoccupied after his departure, and had never ceased to exist.[797] Their acropolis was called Pergamum, and in it was shown the house of Priam and the altar of Zeus Herkeius where that unhappy old man had been slain: moreover there were exhibited, in the temples, panoplies which had been worn by the Homeric heroes,[798] and doubtless many other relics appreciated by admirers of the Iliad.

[794] Strabo, xiii. p. 593.

[795] Herodot. v. 95 (his account of the war between the Athenians and Mitylenæans about Sigeium and Achilleium); Strabo, xiii. p. 593. Τὴν δὲ τῶν Ἰλιέων πόλιν τὴν νῦν τέως μὲν κωμόπολιν εἶναί φασι, τὸ ἱερὸν ἔχουσαν τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς μικρὸν καὶ εὐτελές. Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ ἀναβάντα μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Γρανίκῳ νίκην, ἀναθήμασι τε κοσμῆσαι τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι πόλιν, etc.

Again, Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον, ὃ νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν.

[796] Besides Athênê, the Inscriptions authenticate Ζεὺς Πολιεὺς at Ilium (Corp. Inscrip. Bœckh. No. 3599).

[797] Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Λέγουσι δ᾽ οἱ νῦν Ἰλιεῖς καὶ τοῦτο, ὡς οὐδὲ τέλεως συνέβαινεν ἠφανίσθαι τὴν πόλιν κατὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν ὑπὸ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, οὐδ᾽ ἐξηλείφθη οὐδέποτε.

The situation of Ilium (or as it is commonly, but erroneously, termed, New Ilium) appears to be pretty well ascertained, about two miles from the sea (Rennell, On the Topography of Troy, p. 41-71; Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 102).

[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.

These were testimonies which few persons in those ages were inclined to question, when combined with the identity of name and general locality; nor does it seem that any one did question them until the time of Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis. Hellanikus expressly described this Ilium as being the Ilium of Homer, for which assertion Strabo (or probably Dêmêtrius, from whom the narrative seems to be copied) imputes to him very gratuitously an undue partiality towards the inhabitants of the town.[799] Herodotus relates, that Xerxês in his march into Greece visited the place, went up to the Pergamum of Priam, inquired with much interest into the details of the Homeric siege, made libations to the fallen heroes, and offered to the Athênê of Ilium his magnificent sacrifice of a thousand oxen: he probably represented and believed himself to be attacking Greece as the avenger of the Priamid family. The Lacedæmonian admiral Mindarus, while his fleet lay at Abydus, went personally to Ilium to offer sacrifice to Athênê, and saw from that elevated spot the battle fought between the squadron of Dorieus and the Athenians, on the shore near Rhœteium.[800] During the interval between the Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia, Ilium was always garrisoned as a strong position; but its domain was still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so near to it.[801] Alexander, on crossing the Hellespont, sent his army from Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed personally from Elæeus in the Chersonese, after having solemnly sacrificed at the Elæuntian shrine of Prôtesilaus, to the harbor of the Achæans between Sigeium and Rhœteium. He then ascended to Ilium, sacrificed to the Iliean Athênê, and consecrated in her temple his own panoply, in exchange for which he took some of the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to have been preserved from the time of the Trojan war. These arms were carried before him when he went to battle by his armor-bearers. It is a fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong working of the old legend on an impressible and eminently religious mind, that he also sacrificed to Priam himself, on the very altar of Zeus Herkeius from which the old king was believed to have been torn by Neoptolemus. As that fierce warrior was his heroic ancestor by the maternal side, he desired to avert from himself the anger of Priam against the Achilleid race.[802]

[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).

Alexander made to the inhabitants of Ilium many munificent promises, which he probably would have executed, had he not been prevented by untimely death: for the Trojan war was amongst all the Grecian legends the most thoroughly Pan-Hellenic, and the young king of Macedôn, besides his own sincere legendary faith, was anxious to merge the local patriotism of the separate Greek towns in one general Hellenic sentiment under himself as chief. One of his successors, Antigonus,[803] founded the city of Alexandreia in the Trôad, between Sigeium and the more southerly promontory of Lektum; compressing into it the inhabitants of many of the neighboring Æolic towns in the region of Ida,—Skêpsis, Kebrên, Hamaxitus, Kolônæ, and Neandria, though the inhabitants of Skêpsis were subsequently permitted by Lysimachus to resume their own city and autonomous government. Ilium however remained without any special mark of favor until the arrival of the Romans in Asia and their triumph over Antiochus (about 190 B. C.). Though it retained its walls and its defensible position, Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis, who visited it shortly before that event, described it as being then in a state of neglect and poverty, many of the houses not even having tiled roofs.[804] In this dilapidated condition, however, it was still mythically recognized both by Antiochus and by the Roman consul Livius, who went up thither to sacrifice to the Iliean Athênê. The Romans, proud of their origin from Troy and Æneas, treated Ilium with signal munificence; not only granting to it immunity from tribute, but also adding to its domain the neighboring territories of Gergis, Rhœteium and Sigeium—and making the Ilieans masters of the whole coast[805] from the Peræa (or continental possessions) of Tenedos (southward of Sigeium) to the boundaries of Dardanus, which had its own title to legendary reverence as the special sovereignty of Æneas. The inhabitants of Sigeium could not peaceably acquiesce in this loss of their autonomy, and their city was destroyed by the Ilieans.

[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.

The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced, we cannot doubt that the inhabitants assumed to themselves exaggerated importance as the recognized parents of all-conquering Rome. Partly, we may naturally suppose, from the jealousies thus aroused on the part of their neighbors at Skêpsis and Alexandreia Trôas—partly from the pronounced tendency of the age (in which Kratês at Pergamus and Aristarchus at Alexandria divided between them the palm of literary celebrity) towards criticism and illustration of the old poets—a blow was now aimed at the mythical legitimacy of Ilium. Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis, one of the most laborious of the Homeric critics, had composed thirty books of comment upon the Catalogue in the Iliad: Hestiæa, an authoress of Alexandreia Trôas, had written on the same subject: both of them, well-acquainted with the locality, remarked that the vast battles described in the Iliad could not be packed into the narrow space between Ilium and the Naustathmon of the Greeks; the more so, as that space, too small even as it then stood, had been considerably enlarged since the date of the Iliad by deposits at the mouth of the Skamander.[806] They found no difficulty in pointing out topographical incongruities and impossibilities as to the incidents in the Iliad, which they professed to remove by the startling theory that the Homeric Ilium had not occupied the site of the city so called. There was a village, called the village of the Ilieans, situated rather less than four miles from the city in the direction of Mount Ida, and further removed from the sea; here, they affirmed the “holy Troy” had stood.

[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).

No positive proof was produced to sustain the conclusion, for Strabo expressly states that not a vestige of the ancient city remained at the Village of the Ilieans:[807] but the fundamental supposition was backed by a second accessory supposition, to explain how it happened that all such vestiges had disappeared. Nevertheless Strabo adopts the unsupported hypothesis of Dêmêtrius as if it were an authenticated fact—distinguishing pointedly between Old and New Ilium, and even censuring Hellanikus for having maintained the received local faith. But I cannot find that Dêmêtrius and Hestiæa have been followed in this respect by any other writer of ancient times excepting Strabo. Ilium still continued to be talked of and treated by every one as the genuine Homeric Troy: the cruel jests of the Roman rebel Fimbria, when he sacked the town and massacred the inhabitants—the compensation made by Sylla, and the pronounced favor of Julius Cæsar and Augustus,—all prove this continued recognition of identity.[808] Arrian, though a native of Nicomedia, holding a high appointment in Asia Minor, and remarkable for the exactness of his topographical notices, describes the visit of Alexander to Ilium, without any suspicion that the place with all its relics was a mere counterfeit: Aristidês, Dio Chrysostom, Pausanias, Appian, and Plutarch hold the same language.[809] But modern writers seem for the most part to have taken up the supposition from Strabo as implicitly as he took it from Dêmêtrius. They call Ilium by the disrespectful appellation of New Ilium—while the traveller in the Trôad looks for Old Ilium as if it were the unquestionable spot where Priam had lived and moved; the name is even formally enrolled on the best maps recently prepared of the ancient Trôad.[810]

[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.

Strabo has here converted into geographical matter of fact an hypothesis purely gratuitous, with a view of saving the accuracy of the Homeric topography; though in all probability the locality of the pretended Old Ilium would have been found open to difficulties not less serious than those which it was introduced to obviate.[811] It may be true that Dêmêtrius and he were justified in their negative argument, so as to show that the battles described in the Iliad could not possibly have taken place if the city of Priam had stood on the hill inhabited by the Ilieans. But the legendary faith subsisted before, and continued without abatement afterwards, notwithstanding such topographical impossibilities. Hellanikus, Herodotus, Mindarus, the guides of Xerxês, and Alexander, had not been shocked by them: the case of the latter is the strongest of all, because he had received the best education of his time under Aristotle—he was a passionate admirer and constant reader of the Iliad—he was moreover personally familiar with the movements of armies, and lived at a time when maps, which began with Anaximander, the disciple of Thalês, were at least known to all who sought instruction. Now if, notwithstanding such advantages, Alexander fully believed in the identity of Ilium, unconscious of these many and glaring topographical difficulties, much less would Homer himself, or the Homeric auditors, be likely to pay attention to them, at a period, five centuries earlier, of comparative rudeness and ignorance, when prose records as well as geographical maps were totally unknown.[812] The inspired poet might describe, and his hearers would listen with delight to the tale, how Hectôr, pursued by Achilles, ran thrice round the city of Troy, while the trembling Trojans were all huddled into the city, not one daring to come out even at this last extremity of their beloved prince—and while the Grecian army looked on, restraining unwillingly their uplifted spears at the nod of Achilles, in order that Hectôr might perish by no other hand than his; nor were they, while absorbed by this impressive recital, disposed to measure distances or calculate topographical possibilities with reference to the site of the real Ilium.[813] The mistake consists in applying to Homer and to the Homeric siege of Troy, criticisms which would be perfectly just if brought to bear on the Athenian siege of Syracuse, as described by Thucydidês;[814] in the Peloponnesian war[815]—but which are not more applicable to the epic narrative than they would be to the exploits of Amadis or Orlando.

[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.

There is every reason for presuming that the Ilium visited by Xerxês and Alexander was really the “holy Ilium” present to the mind of Homer; and if so, it must have been inhabited, either by Greeks or by some anterior population, at a period earlier than that which Strabo assigns. History recognizes neither Troy the city, nor Trojans, as actually existing; but the extensive region called Trôas, or the Trôad (more properly Trôïas), is known both to Herodotus and to Thucydidês: it seems to include the territory westward of an imaginary line drawn from the north-east corner of the Adramyttian gulf to the Propontis at Parium, since both Antandrus, Kolônæ, and the district immediately round Ilium, are regarded as belonging to the Trôad.[816] Herodotus further notices the Teukrians of Gergis[817] (a township conterminous with Ilium, and lying to the eastward of the road from Ilium to Abydus), considering them as the remnant of a larger Teukrian population which once resided in the country, and which had in very early times undertaken a vast migration from Asia into Europe.[818] To that Teukrian population he thinks that the Homeric Trojans belonged:[819] and by later writers, especially by Virgil and the other Romans, the names Teukrians and Trojans are employed as equivalents. As the name Trojans is not mentioned in any contemporary historical monument, so the name Teukrians never once occurs in the old epic. It appears to have been first noticed by the elegiac poet Kallinus, about 660 B. C., who connected it by an alleged immigration of Teukrians from Krête into the region round about Ida. Others again denied this, asserting that the primitive ancestor, Teukrus, had come into the country from Attica,[820] or that he was of indigenous origin, born from Skamander and the nymph Idæa—all various manifestations of that eager thirst after an eponymous hero which never deserted the Greeks. Gergithians occur in more than one spot in Æolis, even so far southward as the neighborhood of Kymê:[821] the name has no place in Homer, but he mentions Gorgythion and Kebriones as illegitimate sons of Priam, thus giving a sort of epical recognition both to Gergis and Kebrên. As Herodotus calls the old epical Trojans by the name Teukrians, so the Attic Tragedians call them Phrygians; though the Homeric hymn to Aphroditê represents Phrygians and Trojans as completely distinct, specially noting the diversity of language;[822] and in the Iliad the Phrygians are simply numbered among the allies of Troy from the far Ascania, without indication of any more intimate relationship.[823] Nor do the tales which connect Dardanus with Samothrace and Arcadia find countenance in the Homeric poems, wherein Dardanus is the son of Zeus, having no root anywhere except in Dardania.[824] The mysterious solemnities of Samothrace, afterwards so highly venerated throughout the Grecian world, date from a period much later than Homer; and the religious affinities of that island as well as of Krête with the territories of Phrygia and Æolis, were certain, according to the established tendency of the Grecian mind, to beget stories of a common genealogy.

[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.

To pass from this legendary world,—an aggregate of streams distinct and heterogeneous, which do not willingly come into confluence, and cannot be forced to intermix,—into the clearer vision afforded by Herodotus, we learn from him that in the year 500 B. C. the whole coast-region from Dardanus southward to the promontory of Lektum (including the town of Ilium), and from Lektum eastward to Adramyttium, had been Æolized, or was occupied by Æolic Greeks—likewise the inland towns of Skêpsis[825] and Krebên. So that if we draw a line northward from Adramyttium to Kyzikus on the Propontis, throughout the whole territory westward from that line, to the Hellespont and the Ægean Sea, all the considerable towns would be Hellenic, with the exception of Gergis and the Teukrian population around it,—all the towns worthy of note were either Ionic or Æolic. A century earlier, the Teukrian population would have embraced a wider range—perhaps Skêpsis and Krebên, the latter of which places was colonized by Greeks from Kymê:[826] a century afterwards, during the satrapy of Pharnabazus, it appears that Gergis had become Hellenized as well as the rest. The four towns, Ilium, Gergis, Kebrên and Skêpsis, all in lofty and strong positions, were distinguished each by a solemn worship and temple of Athênê, and by the recognition of that goddess as their special patroness.[827]

[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).

The author of the Iliad conceived the whole of this region as occupied by people not Greek,—Trojans, Dardanians, Lykians, Lelegians, Pelasgians, and Kilikians. He recognizes a temple and worship of Athênê in Ilium, though the goddess is bitterly hostile to the Trojans: and Arktinus described the Palladium as the capital protection of the city. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of identity between the Homeric and the historical Æolis, is, the solemn and diffused worship of the Sminthian Apollo. Chrysê, Killa and Tenedos, and more than one place called Sminthium, maintain the surname and invoke the protection of that god during later times, just as they are emphatically described to do by Homer.[828]

[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.

When it is said that the Post-Homeric Greeks gradually Hellenized this entire region, we are not to understand that the whole previous population either retired or was destroyed. The Greeks settled in the leading and considerable towns, which enabled them both to protect one another and to gratify their predominant tastes. Partly by force—but greatly also by that superior activity, and power of assimilating foreign ways of thought to their own, which distinguished them from the beginning—they invested all the public features and management of the town with an Hellenic air, distributed all about it their gods, their heroes and their legends, and rendered their language the medium of public administration, religious songs and addresses to the gods, and generally for communications wherein any number of persons were concerned. But two remarks are here to be made: first, in doing this they could not avoid taking to themselves more or less of that which belonged to the parties with whom they fraternized, so that the result was not pure Hellenism; next, that even this was done only in the towns, without being fully extended to the territorial domain around, or to those smaller townships which stood to the town in a dependent relation. The Æolic and Ionic Greeks borrowed from the Asiatics whom they had Hellenized, musical instruments and new laws of rhythm and melody, which they knew how to turn to account: they further adopted more or less of those violent and maddening religious rites, manifested occasionally in self-inflicted suffering and mutilation, which were indigenous in Asia Minor in the worship of the Great Mother. The religion of the Greeks in the region of Ida as well as at Kyzikus was more orgiastic than the native worship of Greece Proper, just as that of Lampsacus, Priapus and Parium was more licentious. From the Teukrian region of Gergis, and from the Gergithes near Kymê, sprang the original Sibylline prophecies, and the legendary Sibyll who plays so important a part in the tale of Æneas: the mythe of the Sibyll, whose prophecies are supposed to be heard in the hollow blast bursting out from obscure caverns and apertures in the rocks,[829] was indigenous among the Gergithian Teukrians, and passed from the Kymæans in Æolis, along with the other circumstances of the tale of Æneas, to their brethren the inhabitants of Cumæ in Italy. The date of the Gergithian Sibyll, or rather of the circulation of her supposed prophecies, is placed during the reign of Crœsus, a period when Gergis was thoroughly Teukrian. Her prophecies, though embodied in Greek verses, had their root in a Teukrian soil and feelings; and the promises of future empire which they so liberally make to the fugitive hero escaping from the flames of Troy into Italy, become interesting from the remarkable way in which they were realized by Rome.[830]

[829] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 42:—

Excisum Euboicæ latus ingens rupis in antrum, Quo lati ducunt aditus centum, ostia centum; Unde ruunt totidem voces, responsa Sibyllæ.

[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.

At what time Ilium and Dardanus became Æolized we have no information. We find the Mitylenæans in possession of Sigeium in the time of the poet Alkæus, about 600 B. C.; and the Athenians during the reign of Peisistratus, having wrested it from them and trying to maintain their possession, vindicate the proceeding by saying that they had as much right to it as the Mitylenæans, “for the latter had no more claim to it than any of the other Greeks who had aided Menelaus in avenging the abduction of Helen.”[831] This is a very remarkable incident, as attesting the celebrity of the legend of Troy, and the value of a mythical title in international disputes—yet seemingly implying that the establishment of the Mitylenæans on that spot must have been sufficiently recent. The country near the junction of the Hellespont and the Propontis is represented as originally held[832] by Bebrykian Thracians, while Abydus was first occupied by Milesian colonists in the reign and by the permission of the Lydian king Gygês[833]—to whom the whole Trôad and the neighboring territory belonged, and upon whom therefore the Teukrians of Ida must have been dependent. This must have been about 700 B. C., a period considerably earlier than the Mitylenæan occupation of Sigeium. Lampsacus and Pæsus, on the neighboring shores of the Propontis, were also Milesian colonies, though we do not know their date: Parium was jointly settled from Miletus, Erythræ and Parus.

[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:—

Ἀπὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφθατουμένη, Ἣν δὴ τ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι Τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα, Ἔνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοὶ, Ἐξαιρετὸν δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις.

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.

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XIV. LEGENDS OF THEBES

XV. LEGEND OF TROY