All rude, all waste and desolate is laid, Here saw the rock, where, Neptune to obey, Here in the covert of a secret grove The blest Anchises clasp'd the Queen of love : The Phrygian guide forbids to press the grass; For here the sacred bones of Hector sleep. Then warns him to observe, where, rudely cast, Disjointed stones lay broken and defac'd: Here his last fate, he cries, did Priam prove; Here on this altar of Hercéan Jove. Oh Poesie divine! When long the Chief his wondering eyes had cast, On antient monuments of ages past, Of living turf an altar strait he made, Then on the fire rich gums and incense laid, And thus, successful in his vows, he pray'd. Ye Shades divine! who keep this sacred place, And thou, Æneas, author of my race, Ye Pow'rs, whoe'er from burning Troy did come, Who EXTRACTS FROM PLINY THE ELDER. PLINY the Elder, who lived under Vespasian, has given an abstract of the geography of the Troia and Chersonesus; which, under the following Emperor, was abridged and rendered yet more jejune by Julius Solinus. After remarking, that of certain rivers, which descended from Mount Ida and are named in Homer, there were then no vestiges, he adds, "There is, however, even now, a small Scamandrian people, and-an Ilium, a free city, whence all their renown.' But this once fa mous place seems to have become now neglected and forlorn. The Emperor Vespasian crossed the Hellespont to Abydos; and I find no mention of his having, though so near, vouchsafed to visit it. "The oaks on the tomb of Ilus near the eity of the Iliensians, it is Pliny who relates this, are said to have been then sown when it began to be called Ilium." Theophrastus, whom we have before cited as mentioning these trees, calls them beeches', a species of the oak'; and has alluded to the tradition of their antiquity. The reader here will observe, that they were not reputed to be co-æval with Troy, but with the barrow, the Ilion; a Latin termination being substituted in Pliny for the Greek, as in various other names of places, in which it is not liable, as in the instance before us, to mislead. Trees of so long standing might not unaptly be described by a poet as having their root weary. No notice is taken of this barrow after Pliny. Several of the places, which we have mentioned in the Tröia, were become extinct. "There has been, says Pliny, Achilléum, a town near the tomb of Achilles built by the Mitylenéans, and afterwards by the Athenians, where his fleet had stood by Sigéum. There has been antium too, built by the Rhodians at the corner [of the bay], Ajax being there buried-and there having been the station of his ficet." Palæscepsis, Gergithos, Neandros. Lucan, 1. ix. v. 968. Perhaps for robore we should read robora, Oaks, v. 966. and and Colone had perished. Dardanus was still a small town. There had been a Larissa and a Chrysa. The Sminthéan temple and Hamaxitus remained. He mentions Troas Alexandria, a Roman colony; but this city too was on the decline; as, in another place, he says, "Very many mice come forth at Troas, insomuch that now they have driven the inhabitants away from thence." The folly of the devotees of Apollo Smintheus, who held this noxious little quadruped in veneration; and the plenty of salt near Lectos, if the females became, as Pliny tells us they were thought to do, pregnant on tasting that mineral, will sufficiently account for the multitudes, which, from prevailing about Chrysa, finally overran the adjacent country. 2 I shall take another opportunity to consider the brief account of the Hellespontic coast of the Chersonesus of Thrace given by this author; but one article may be noticed here. "There are, overagainst the city of the Iliensians, near the Hellespont, on the sepulchre of Protesilaus, trees, which, from early ages, after growing so high as to behold Ilium, wither and shoot up again "." The author, it has been observed on this passage, does not say that the trees on the barrow died entirely, but only their tops; an incident common to all, especially large, trees; which, getting old, begin to decay above, and last a considerable time with their branches there dry and naked of leaves. After Pliny we have but scanty materials for continuing our subject. 1 L. X. § 85. 2 L. 16. §. 88. CHAPTER CHAPTER XXVIII. 1. Notices from DiChrysostom.-II. Lucian.-III. Pausanias.IV. Elian.-V. Maximus Tyrius.-VI. Flavius Philostratus. I. DIO Chrysostom maintained, under Trajan, that Troy was not taken by the Greeks, but that they were vanquished; also, as Mr. Bryant has lately done, that the story of the siege was a mere fable. He did not spare, he reprobated, the whole of the divine poetry of Homer. But he was not serious, and his decla mation', addressed to the Iliéans, is regarded only as a jeu d'esprit ; the author having, it has been remarked, contradicted his own arguments, and, in some other of his Orations, bestowed the highest encomiums on the poet. II. Lucian, in one of his Dialogues introduces Charon as visiting this upper region in company with Mercury; who, on his quoting Homer, undertakes to show him the barrow of Achilles. "There, says he, you see it by the sca. That is the Sigéum. But Ajax has been buried opposite to him by the Rhotéum." Charon, not finding the barrows such as from the renown of the heroes he had been led to expect, remarks, “they are not large;" and desires to be shown certain illustrious cities, about which they heard a great deal below, and especially Ilium; for he remembered to have ferried many over from thence, so as neither to have drawn ashore or thoroughly dried his wherry for ten • Orat. XI. 3 Χάρων, C. 23. 2 See Fabretti ad Tabellam Iliadis, p. 379 whole |