at I suppose to be mere cant; for
how many princes were present in the field that never could have been
suitors to Helen, nor parties to the oath? Do we suppose old Nestor to
have been one? A young gentleman 'rising' 99, as the horse-jockeys say;
or by some reckonings, 113! No, plunder was the object.

The truth was this--the plain historic truth for any man not wilfully
blind--Greece was miserably poor; that we know by what we find five
centuries after, when she must, like other people who find little else
to do, have somewhat bettered her condition. Troy and the Troad were
redundantly rich; it was their great crime to be so. Already the western
coast of Asia Minor was probably studded with Greek colonies, standing
in close connection with the great capitals on the Euphrates or the
Tigris, and sharing in the luxurious wealth of the great capitals on the
Euphrates or the Tigris. Mitford most justly explained the secret
history of Caesar's expedition to England out of his wish to find a new
slave country.[25] And after all the romantic views of the Grecian
expedition to the Troad, I am satisfied we should look for its true
solution in the Greek poverty and the wealth--both _locally
concentrated_ and _portable_--of the Trojans. Land or cities were things
too much diffused: and even the son of Peleus or of Telamon could not
put them into his pocket. But golden tripods, purple hangings or robes,
fine horses, and beautiful female slaves could be found over the
Hellespont. Helen, the _materia litis_, the subject of quarrel on its
earliest pretence, could not be much improved by a ten years' blockade.
But thousands of more youthful Helens were doubtless carried back to
Greece. And in this prospect of booty most assuredly lay the unromantic
motive of the sole romantic expedition amongst the Greeks.

III. _Oriental History._--We here set aside the earlier tangle of legend
and fact which is called Oriental History, and for these reasons: (1)
instead of promoting the solution of chronological problems, Oriental
history is itself the most perplexing of those problems; (2) the
perpetual straining after a high fabulous antiquity amongst the nations
of the east, vitiates all the records; (3) the vast empires into which
the plains of Asia moulded the eastern nations, allowed of no such
rivalship as could serve to check their legends by collateral
statements; and (4) were all this otherwise, still the great permanent
schism of religion