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to these their kinsmen the like immunity; and that Claudius remitted their tribute to the Iliéans for ever as authors of the Roman race 1.

Nero, having, while a youth, sailed from Scyros to Rome, is contrasted in a complimentary Greek epigram with Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, who went from that island to Troy. After he was Emperor, he set fire to Rome, that, under its image, he might behold the burning of Troy. During the conflagration, he chanted, in the habit of an actor, a play called The Destruction'; and was filled with extasy at the terrible grandeur and beauty of the spectacle.

The poisoning of Agrippina was the occasion of a sarcastic epigram, which appeared at Rome, alluding to the story of Eneas, who was said to have borne away Anchises on his shoulders, from Troy, when the city was sacked.

Quis neget Æneæ magna de stirpe Neronem?

Sustulit hic matrem, sustulit ille patrem *.

Who will deny that from the hero,

Eneas, is descended Nero?

One took his father off; and th' other,

Nero, has taken off his mother.

* Suetonius in his Life.

• Tacitus. Eusebius. Eutropius.

Tn Aλwow, probably that of Sophocles, entitled 'H 'Aos To Ie, mentioned by Strabo, p. 608.

• Suetonius in Nero, c. 39.

VI. The Cæsars, it may well be imagined, had possessed an anxious desire of children. It behoved them, and it was a matter of no trivial importance, to provide heirs to support a most antient prediction by receiving in their turns the empire of the Universe. But they were unable, with all their solicitude, to maintain the series required, and it met with frequent interruption. They so generally failed of offspring from their marriages, that the throne was never filled by three following generations; and thrice only did a son succeed to his father'. The worthless, as well as fictitious, line, after continuing an hundred years from Julius Cæsar, upheld with difficulty by the supplementary aid of adoptions and divorces, had a fit ending in the detestable tyrant Nero.

VII. The Iliéans, when no longer distinguished and upheld by imperial favour and partiality, experienced a rapid decline; though they still retained the recommendation of antient fame and of acknowleged consanguinity with the Roman people. A lodgement of soil on the coast before their city, which was continually removing them farther from the sea, and which, by gradually choking up their port, threatened them with its entire loss, may, together with another circumstance of situation, the vicinity of stagnant waters, which could not fail of producing epidemical diseases by their insalubrious exhalations at certain seasons, be considered as accounting sufficiently for the decay of a place ever of far greater celebrity than real consequence.

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VIII. We are delivered, after the extinction of the Julian line, from the nausea of flattery to the emperors as the progeny of Ancas; and the people of Rome recovered from the paroxism, though they were not perfectly cured, of their Trojan folly. Juvenal, at no great distance of time, sneered at the vanity of this race of tyrants, and derided their mock ancestry; as well as the far-fetched progenitors of the thievish rabble of Romulus. The present existence of any genuine descendants from the old citizens of Rome may be called in question; but it deserves to be mentioned here, that, among their successors, though Ilium be no more, the antient tradition of their origin either has continued without interruption or been long ago revived; and that a tumultuous assembly of the Roman populace lately stiled themselves, Sangue di Troja.

CHAPTER XXV.

OF ILIUM AND THE TRÖIA IN THE TIME OF STRABO.

STRABO is supposed not to have ceased writing before the eleventh or twelfth year of the Emperor Tiberius'. He has related the arrival of Æneas in Italy', and announced, as we have seen, a greater notoriety in the descent of the God [Julius]

Casaubon, de Strabone. See Comment.

2 P. 1c8.

Cæsar

Cæsar from him than in the affinity of Alexander the Great to the Iliéans; but, on the other hand, he has observed that the common reports about Æneas did not agree with the account given of the founders of New Scepsis by Demetrius; and that Homer accorded neither with the current stories concerning Æneas, nor with Demetrius; but signified that Æneas had remained in the Troas, succeeded to the kingdom, and transmitted it to the sons of his sons, the family of Priam being extinct; so that the succession of Scamandrius, son of Hector, could not be supported; and much more did he differ from others, who said that Æneas had wandered as far as Italy and ended his life in that country.

The Iliéans, Strabo informs us, continued then to enjoy the benefits conferred on them by the God Cæsar; and possessed the sea-coast as far as Dardanus, which, reckoning with him sixty or seventy stadia from Sigéum to Rhotéum, and with Pliny seventy stadia from Rhotéum to Dardanus, was an extent of about two hundred stadia3. But Sigéum is not mentioned as their boundary on that side. The identity of the city of the Iliéans with Troy was disputed, as we have shown, soon after they had received the kisses and embraces of Roman consanguinity. They still not only continued their old claim, but, fond of glory, urged it so arrogantly, eagerly, and with so much perseverance, as to have

1 P. 594, 595. Twenty five miles.

2 Seven miles and a half, or eight miles and three quarters.

rendered

rendered it then a common topic of conversation and discussion ; and they were not without a party on their side'. The barrows mentioned by Homer, those of Ilus and Esyetes, the Batieia, and Callicolone were still extant. The Grove of Hector was conspicuous. Achilléum by the Sigéan Cape was a small place, at which remained the temple of Achilles, and the monuments of that hero and Patroclus, and of Antilochus son of Nestor. At Fantéum on the opposite side of the bay, near the Rhoetéan Cape, was the barrow and temple of Ajax Telamon, as also his statue, which had been transported into Egypt by Marc Antony, who, to gratify Cleopatra, removed the offerings of greatest beauty from the most celebrated temples; but which Augustus, who returned his other pillage to the gods, had restored to the people of Rhotéum *.

The Iliéans continued to perform the customary rites to the Greek heroes, but did not honour Hercules, because, as they alleged, he had laid Troy waste. Strabo observes3, "One might say that he so laid it waste as to leave it to future destroyers in a bad condition, it is true, but yet a city; deprived of inhabitants, but not made to disappear; while they, to whom the Iliéans think it fitting to perform rites and to do honour as to gods, made it entirely disappear; unless they give as the reason, that these waged a just war, he an unjust one, for the horses of Laomedon;

■ P. 593.

• P. 604, 600, 595.

3 P. 596.

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