ms of Homer
with great beauty and power, that had chiefly interested the mind of
Alexander. The subjects interested him; the accounts of the
contentions, the rivalries, the exploits of these warriors, the
delineations of their character and springs of action, and the
narrations of the various incidents and events to which such a war
gave rise, were all calculated to captivate the imagination of a young
martial hero.

Alexander accordingly resolved that his first landing in Asia should
be at Troy. He left his army under the charge of Parmenio, to cross
from Sestos to Abydos, while he himself set forth in a single galley
to proceed to the southward. There was a port on the Trojan shore
where the Greeks had been accustomed to disembark, and he steered his
course for it. He had a bull on board his galley which he was going to
offer as a sacrifice to Neptune when half way from shore to shore.

Neptune was the god of the sea. It is true that the Hellespont is not
the open ocean, but it is an arm of the sea, and thus belonged
properly to the dominions which the ancients assigned to the divinity
of the waters. Neptune was conceived of by the ancients as a monarch
dwelling on the seas or upon the coasts, and riding over the waves
seated in a great shell, or sometimes in a chariot, drawn by dolphins
or sea-horses. In these excursions he was attended by a train of
sea-gods and nymphs, who, half floating, half swimming, followed him
over the billows. Instead of a scepter Neptune carried a trident. A
trident was a sort of three-pronged harpoon, such as was used in those
days by the fishermen of the Mediterranean. It was from this
circumstance, probably, that it was chosen as the badge of authority
for the god of the sea.

Alexander took the helm, and steered the galley with his own hands
toward the Asiatic shore. Just before he reached the land, he took his
place upon the prow, and threw a javelin at the shore as he approached
it, a symbol of the spirit of defiance and hostility with which he
advanced to the frontiers of the eastern world. He was also the first
to land. After disembarking his company, he offered sacrifices to the
gods, and then proceeded to visit the places which had been the scenes
of the events which Homer had described.

Homer had written five hundred years before the time of Alexander, and
there is some doubt whether the ruins and the remains of cities which
our hero found there were really the scenes of th