lace, necessarily presumes its author's
acquaintance with a previously existing Iliad. It were impossible
otherwise to account for the harmony observable in the recurrence of
so vast a number of proper names, most of them historically
unimportant, and not a few altogether fictitious: or of so many
geographical and genealogical details as are condensed in these few
hundred lines, and incidentally scattered over the thousands which
follow: equally inexplicable were the pointed allusions occurring in
this episode to events narrated in the previous and subsequent text,
several of which could hardly be of traditional notoriety, but
through the medium of the Iliad."--Mure, "Language and Literature of
Greece," vol. i. p. 263.
102 --_Twice Sixty:_ "Thucydides observes that the Boeotian vessels,
which carried one hundred and twenty men each, were probably meant
to be the largest in the fleet, and those of Philoctetes, carrying
fifty each, the smallest. The average would be eighty-five, and
Thucydides supposes the troops to have rowed and navigated
themselves; and that very few, besides the chiefs, went as mere
passengers or landsmen. In short, we have in the Homeric
descriptions the complete picture of an Indian or African war canoe,
many of which are considerably larger than the largest scale
assigned to those of the Greeks. If the total number of the Greek
ships be taken at twelve hundred, according to Thucydides, although
in point of fact there are only eleven hundred and eighty-six in the
Catalogue, the amount of the army, upon the foregoing average, will
be about a hundred and two thousand men. The historian considers
this a small force as representing all Greece. Bryant, comparing it
with the allied army at Platae, thinks it so large as to prove the
entire falsehood of the whole story; and his reasonings and
calculations are, for their curiosity, well worth a careful
perusal."--Coleridge, p. 211, sq.
103 The mention of Corinth is an anachronism, as that city was called
Ephyre before its capture by the Dorians. But Velleius, vol. i. p.
3, well observes, that the poet would naturally speak of various
towns and cities by the names by which they were known in his own
time.
104 "Adam, the goodliest man of men since
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