erse their army, and to employ a part
of it in cultivating the Chersonese, and a part in marauding expeditions
over the neighbourhood. Could the whole army have been employed against
Troy at once, the siege would have been much more speedily and easily
concluded." As Mr Grote justly observes, the critical historian might,
with equal authority, have proceeded by a shorter method, and at once
abridged the length of the siege.

"Though literally believed," he continues, speaking of the Trojan war,
"though reverentially cherished, and numbered among the gigantic
phenomena 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
if 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 Eos, without the wooden
horse, without the characteristic and expressive features of the old
epical war--like the mutilated trunk of Deiphobus 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, Arctinus, and Lesches,
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."[4]

Take Helen from Troy, and Achilles son of Thetis from the camp, and say
there was _a_ siege--this is a result which few, perhaps, would care to
contend about. It is the only result for which Dr Thirlwall contends,
who on this subject approximates as nearly as possible to the opinion of
Mr Grote. That there was a siege, however, Dr Thirlwall maintains with
considerable pertinacity; but it happens, curiously enough, that his
argument precisely supplies the last link that was wanting to complete
the sceptical view of the subject. Most per