s unreal as Agamemnon.

History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German in
race, name, and language, who was one of the two or three greatest men
of action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth century
ruled over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl corresponds in many
particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact,
which without the information supplied by history we might perhaps set
down as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy,
and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman has well
observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are good evidence that
there were crusades, although the real Karl had nothing whatever to do
with one.

Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne, except
that we no longer have history to help us in rectifying the legend.
The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large portion of
the islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially subject to a
common suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly suggested,
the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or Sparta
or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence of the
trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the legend was
constrained by some remembered fact, instead of being guided by general
probability. Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred in
romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Paris, says Mr.
Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it to Aachen.
Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by historic
records, is here at least supported by archaeologic remains, which prove
Mykenai to have been at some time or other a place of great consequence.
Then, as to the Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several times
crossed the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of Asia
Minor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their homes
many warlike communities of Lydians and Bithynians, and we may be
sure that this was not done without prolonged fighting. There may very
probably have been now and then a levy en masse in prehistoric Greece,
as there was in mediaeval Europe; and whether the great suzerain at
Mykenai ever attended one or not, legend would be sure to send him on
such an expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade.

It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos