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." 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.

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 historic "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 Poseidon, 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 Athene 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.

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