like Priam; for circumstances seem to show that the river was fordable at many points, if not generally along the lower part of its course. Thus the armies fought over the ground between the camp and the city many times, without appearing to have changed their order of battle, as they must have done had the river only admitted of being crossed at one point. And from the words used in speaking of the pursuit of the first bands of Trojans by Patroclus, who must then have been towards the eastern extremity of the camp, about c, we might conclude that the route to the town was directly across the river, at or below I. (B. xvi. v. 394.) On the other hand, the nature of the ground would lead us to suppose, that the banks near the junction of the Simois were marshy as at present; and we have something like a proof that this was an unfrequented spot; for while the battle was raging before Troy, a little to the eastward, Juno and Minerva, coming to assist the Greeks, alighted at the confluence of the rivers; and leaving the celestial chariot and horses on the banks of Simois, with a cloud thrown over them to conceal them, they mixed among the warriors. (B. v. v. 773.) Perhaps, on these grounds, we may consider the river as generally fordable from a short distance above the junction, though not equally so everywhere. The fighting seems to have been chiefly about the Scamander, as the Greeks had always to cross that stream on their approach to the town, but it also extended to the Simois. (B. xii. v. 22.) The field, then, on the east side of the river gh, where the ground is level, must have been the scene of most of the battles. Taking its extent from the supposed ancient bed of the Simois, near Koum Keu U, to the point Q on the Scamander, it has a breadth of three miles and three quarters in Mr Hobhouse's map, about two miles and three quarters in Mr Foster's, and about five miles in Dr Clarke's. Its true breadth is probably about three miles and a half, a space more than sufficient to receive 50,000 men ranged in order for close combat, as the Greeks and Trojans generally were. (B. viii. v. 60. B. xiii. v. 130, 145.) The lines usually occupied by the armies would, most probably, be confined within the space from the

VOL. VI.

*

ancient bed of the Simois, to the present bed of the Califat, a breadth of three miles on Mr Hobhouse's map. The Greeks seem generally to have been drawn up in three lines, the chariots and cavalry forming the first, and the firmest infantry the last; the less trusty infantry being placed in the, middle, where their situation compelled them to fight. (B. iv. v. 297.) Sometimes, however, a part of the troops skirmished in detached bodies or platoons, using their darts only. (B. xvii. v. 370.) The lines of infantry must have been pretty deep, as they were calculated for close combat; but the number of ranks is not mentioned. The armies may be estimated at 50,000 men each, on the authority of that passage where Homer mentions that there were a thousand fires in the Trojan camp, and 50 men round each. (B. viii. v. 558.) He tells us elsewhere that the Greeks were rather more numerous, even without Achilles's troops. (B. ii. v. 121. B. viii. v. 55) The ground, then, we have reason to think, would admit of two armies of this magnitude drawing up in such an order as the poet assigns to them, between the rivers. That the armies occupied a space to which a much narrower field would not correspond, appears not only from their numbers, and from the epithet sugus, "broad," applied to both, (B. iv. v. 209, 436,) but also from the circumstance of Ulysses and Diomed being ignorant for some time that the battle had commenced at the other wing of the army after the duel between Paris and Menelaus; and from Hector's ignorance, in a similar instance, that a part of his army was repulsed. (B. xi. v. 497.) The armies would, of course, fight in a narrower field when it was unavoidable, as

The whole number of men that

embarked in the Grecian expedition has been estimated at 100,000, on a principle suggested by Thucydides, who considers the two sizes of ships mentioned by Homer as the largest and smallest rates in the fleet. The one carried 120, the other 50 men. The mean between these is 85, ships, gives 100,810. which, multiplied by 1186, the number of But a great number must have died during the ten years the war had lasted; and, according to Thucydides, & considerable part was always absent collecting provisions.

when they were near the entrenchments; but this will not apply to Chevalier's plain, for they would not have fought there when they could have had a much wider field on the other side of his Simois.

Site of the City.-The labours of man have no such durable existence as the works of Nature. Not a vestige of Troy was supposed to exist in Strabo's time; (p. 895;) and as it would, therefore, be in vain to look for its ruins now, or to attempt to distinguish them from those of other cities of posterior date, its situation can only be ascertained by its relation to natural objects more permanent than itself. We think there are a sufficient number of local allusions in Homer's poems to serve this purpose, providing we had an accurate delineation of that part of the country where the site must be sought. This, how ever, is far from being the case, for, on comparing the maps of Hobhouse, Foster, and Clarke, we are scarcely able to fix, with certainty, either the position, shape, or magnitude of any single object among those low eminences between the Simois and water of Califat, near or among which Troy undoubtedly stood. Besides, some of the objects alluded to by Homer are rather minute in their nature, and can only be identified by a minute and detailed survey of the face of the country; yet, even at present, we think, the facts in our possession go very near to set the question at rest.

We find two opinions prevailing in ancient times upon this subject. The inhabitants of Ilium (which, for distinction's sake, we have called New Ilium) believed that their city occupied the very site of Troy, and in this opinion they were supported by a writer named Hellanicus. (Strabo, pp. 886, 898.) But Demetrius of Scepsis, who is followed by Strabo, held that Troy stood 30 stadia farther east than New Ilium, a situation corresponding nearly with the modern village of Chiblak. (Strabo, p. 886.) After a pretty careful consideration of the passages in Homer, referring to the position of the town, we are convinced that the first opinion is most consistent with the truth, and that Troy stood either upon the same ground as New Ilium ($), or, if the eminence there is considered as artificial, upon the hill immediately behind it (R),

but most probably on the former. Strabo's arguments in favour of a more easterly position are chiefly these: That a hill five stadia round, called then Callicolone, was 40 stadia eastward from New Ilium, whereas it should have been near the town;that Hector could not have run round New Ilium, as he did round Troy, on account of the contiguous ridge of a hill;-that what was then called the tomb of Esyetes, (apparently the tumulus K,) was only five stadia from the modern town, and so situated as to afford no better view of the enemy's camp than the town itself;—that the soil between the city and the sea had been chiefly formed by the rivers since Homer's time;-and, lastly, that, had Troy been so near the station of the Greeks as the new city was, it would have been madness in them to suffer their camp to remain unfortified till the tenth year of the war, and pusillanimous in the Trojans not to have attacked them sooner. But these arguments, when investigated, are scarcely of any weight; because the first and third assume the accuracy of traditional names, upon which little dependence can be placed, as shown in the instance of the Portus Acheorum; the second supposes, unnecessarily, that the walls of both cities followed the same exact line; the fourth supposes a greater increase of firm land than subsequent facts justify; and the general reasoning in the last is of no force, opposed, as we think it is, by the testimony of Homer. Let us compare both opinions with the facts mentioned by the poet, recollecting that, on a mean of the different maps, the ruins of New Ilium (S) are above three miles and a half in a direct line from the ships, and Chiblak (T) rather more than seven.

That Troy stood within a very limited distance of the Greek camp, and was separated from it by a plain with few or no inequalities of surface, is shown by a number of circumstances. 1. The two armies traversed the ground between the camp and the city four times on the day when Patroclus was killed, fighting obstinately all the while. (B. xi. to xvii.) This fact is most consistent with the sup position of a distance not exceeding four or five miles, and cannot be reconciled with a distance of seven

"Ilium beat by the winds," so often used, (B. iii. v. 305.) It occupied the whole or nearly the whole of the eminence on which it stood. Hector, chased by Achilles round Troy, is described as flying near the city, under the walls, and yet in the plain, "for as often as he made an attempt to reach the gates, Achilles turned him back into the plain,” (B. xxii. v. 143, 197;) and it is also stated, that the walls could not be easily scaled, except at the wild fig-tree, which seems to show, that every where else they stood upon high ground, (B. vi. v. 433.) The place S is mentioned by Mr Hobhouse as an "eminence," or a" hill," (p. 750;) and Dr Clarke describes it as an elevated spot surrounded on all sides by a level plain," (Vol. III. p. 131.) It not only agrees, therefore, in the most essential of these particulars with Homer's account of the site of Troy, but it is the only spot in that quarter to which the poet's description will apply. It is not indispensable, perhaps, that the ground should descend from the walls on all sides; but it is necessary that the plain should extend round those sides nearest the Greeks, and that if there be any rising ground behind, it should not be such as to obstruct the course round the city. The description, therefore, though most suitable to the position S, may apply to the position R, but it is evidently altogether unsuitable to any spot placed entirely in the line of eminences, like T.

Supposing Troy to be on the rising ground S, and the Greek army drawn up in a line slightly curved round the western part of the city, it is perfectly credible that Helen, sitting on the wall, might be able to distinguish the persons of the Grecian captains in the plain below, (B. iii. v. 235;) but in the uneven ground round Chiblak, it is not intelligible how the army could either be all visible at once, or how it could be said to be in the plain, (B. iii. v. 253.) Apparently Troy should be nearer Simois than Scamander, at least in one direction, as the position S is; for when the armies were preparing for battle near the Grecian camp, Mars went from the citadel to the Simois shouting to encourage the Trojans (loitering in or near the city, we may suppose) to hasten to the field, (B. xx. v.

51.)

On the other hand, we find that Achilles, when allured away by Apollo under the figure of Agenor, near to the Scamander, was for some time out of the sight of persons on the walls, (B. xxii. v. 25 ;) and while he was absent the Trojan army had time to enter the town. If we suppose the flight of Apollo to have been towards P, the circumstances of the story agree sufficiently with the assumed position of the town. When Agenor himself standing near the town proposes to fly "through the Ilian plain" to the woods of Ida, (B. xxi. 558,) and to return at night after bathing himself in the river, we cannot reconcile this with the supposition of Troy being at T; for his nearest route to Mount Ida from that point should have been-not through the plain, but along the heights eastward to the outer branch of Ida, marked in the map "first chain of high mountains," and in no part of his route would he have been near the Scamander. But from S or R, we may suppose his course to have been up the plain to the rocky hills opposite Bournabashi, and consequently near the river, agreeably to the poet's description. In short, we venture to affirm, that the more the poet's local details are investigated, the more exact and exclusive will the coincidence be found between the position S and the situation of his Troy.

Troy had "before it a high hill standing by itself in the plain, and accessible on all sides, called Batieia by men, but by the gods the sepulchre of Myrinna, there the Trojans and their auxiliaries drew up in battle array." (B. ii. v. 811.) It is obvious, that this could be nothing but a tumulus, and that the army was not posted on it, but that it merely served to mark their position, or rather their distance from the walls. It

The passage may be otherwise understood to mean, that the country along the banks of Simois generally, being least exposed to the observation and incursions of the Trojans, and where numbers of them the Greeks, was the only part fully open to would of course be occupied in rural labour, or bringing in supplies from the neighbouring country. This construction is equally consistent with the site we have assigned to Troy.