t portions of the country. Peloponnesus was the seat of
power, and its chiefs acquired a prominent position in the Iliad by
what on the grounds we may deem a skilful arrangement. But most
skilful of all is the fine adjustment of the balance as between Greek
and Trojan warriors. It will be found on close inspection of details
that the Achaian chieftains have in truth a vast military superiority;
yet by the use of infinite art, Homer has contrived that the Trojans
shall play the part of serious and considerable antagonists, so far
that with divine aid and connivance they reduce the foe to the point
at which the intervention of Achilles becomes necessary for their
deliverance, and his supremacy as an exhibition of colossal manhood is
thoroughly maintained.

The plot of the Odyssey is admitted to be consecutive and regular in
structure. There are certain differences in the mythology which have
been made a ground for supposing a separate authorship. But, in the
first place, this would do nothing to explain them; in the second,
they find their natural explanation in observing that the scene of the
wanderings is laid in other lands, beyond the circle of Achaian
knowledge and tradition, and that Homer modifies his scheme to meet
the ethnical variations as he gathered them from the trading
navigators of Phoenicia, who alone could have supplied him with the
information required for his purpose.

That information was probably colored more or less by ignorance and by
fraud. But we can trace in it the sketch of an imaginary voyage to the
northern regions of Europe, and it has some remarkable features of
internal evidence, supported by the facts, and thus pointing to its
genuineness. In latitudes not described as separate we have reports of
the solar day apparently contradictory. In one case there is hardly
any night, so that the shepherd might earn double wages. In the other,
cloud and darkness almost shut out the day. But we now know both of
these statements to have a basis of solid truth on the Norwegian coast
to the northward, at the different seasons of the midnight sun in
summer, and of Christmas, when it is not easy to read at noon.

[Illustration: Homer reciting the Iliad.]

The value of Homer as a recorder of antiquity, as opening a large and
distinct chapter of primitive knowledge, is only now coming by degrees
into view, as the text is more carefully examined and its parts
compared, and as other branches of ancient stu