in age, and mien, and habiliments. Achilles, and the same account was given at Ilium of other heroes, both talked with some persons, and went with them, and hunted the wild beasts. They conjectured that it was he, from the beauty of his form, and from his magnitude, and from the effulgence of his armour. Behind him rolled a whirlwind, the companion of his apparition. "My voice, says the Vine-dresser, would fail me in recounting stories of this kind; for they sing too something about Antilochus, how an Ilićan girl, in going to the Scamander, met and became enamoured of his phantom; and how some young herdsmen playing with dibs near the altar of Achilles, one would have killed the other with a blow of his crook, had not Patroclus interposed; but these are matters known both from the herdsmen and from the people of Ilium; for we mix together, dwelling on the banks of the mouth of the Hellespont, and having, as you see, made the sea a river '.'

V. For Hector, by whose spear Protesilaus was now said to have fallen, the Vine-dresser, it may be supposed, entertains no partiality. He relates, however, that his image, set up in a conspicuous place at Ilium, was remarkable for expression and beauty, secming to breathe, and conveying to the beholder the idea of a demi-god or some more than human being; that it possessed a miraculous power, and conferred many benefits both on individuals and on the people; the reason why they offered up

• P. 659.

prayers

prayers and sacrificed to it at their Games; when it was observed to wax warm, and to be so agitated with emulation that sweat bedewed the body. The following is among the stories told by the Vine-dresser. A young Assyrian, who came to Ilium, upbraided Hector with the chariot of Achilles, which had dragged him by the heels; with the stone cast by Ajax, which had occasioned his fainting; and with his flying before Patroclus; asserting, moreover, that it was not he, who had killed this hero; and that the image called his at Ilium, having the head bare, was not his, but one of Achilles, who made an offering of his hair at the funeral pile of Patroclus. On his leaving Ilium, before he had got ten stadia, a brook so inconsiderable as to be without a name swelled on a sudden; and, as his attendants, who escaped, affirmed, a huge man in armour was seen preceding, and calling loudly on, the torrent to turn into the road where the blasphemer was driving four, not tall, horses; which, with his chariot, were carried away by its violence; and he perished, calling out and promising never to offend Hector again; nor could his body afterwards be found.

VI. Two strangers belonging to a vessel which had touched at Æantéum were amusing themselves at pebbles" by the barrow of Ajax; when the hero appeared, and, standing near, desired them to leave off; for they put him in mind of Palamedes, (the reputed inventor of that play) whom he had greatly esteemed, and who

2 IT?005, p. 656.

A mile and a quarter.

U

fell,

Ulysses. The game, whatever it

fell, as he had done, by the machinations of their common enemy whatever it was, for the Hon. Daines Barrington' has shown it not to have been Chess, is characterised as no idle diversion, but as requiring an active mind and close attention.

Ajax, having in his delirium mistaken and slaughtered some sheep for Greeks, and a ram for Ulysses, the peasants of Ilium ascribed the diseases of their cattle to his malignant agency; and would not suffer their flocks to feed near his barrow at Æantéum, fearing the herbage as of a noxious quality 2.

Some Trojan shepherds abused the hero, standing round his barrow, and calling him their enemy and the foe of Hector and of Troy; telling him, that he had been, and that he continued, out of his senses; and that he was a coward; one of them citing, an hemistic of Homer,

Αίας δ' εκ εμιμνε

Ajax no longer staid—

but, not suffering them to proceed, he cried in a loud and terrible voice from beneath the barrow,

Αλλα μιμνονα

But I did stay

and, it was said, rattled with his spear on his shield, so that they were dismayed, and fell to the ground; stood shivering with ap

See Archæologia, v. IX.

2 P. 653.

prehension;

prehension; or ran away; when he spared their lives, as suited with his magnanimity, and was content with letting them know that he had heard them'. A Greek epigram on this subject is extant in the Anthologia.

Another story related by the Vine-dresser, who professes to have received it from his grandfather, is apparently founded on the tale of the Mysian in Pausanias; that the barrow of Ajax, having suffered from the sea, near which it stood, had disclosed the bones of a man eleven cubits in stature; and that the Emperor Hadrian, when he visited the Troas, embraced and kissed these relics, had them arranged, and repaired the monument. The body, he tells us, was interred; the prophet Chalchas having declared that to burn it was not allowable on account of his suicide. But enough, if not too much, of the Heroics.

VII. It remains that we conclude this Chapter by citing Plutarch; from whom we learn, that a plant grew in the Scamander, which, when one saw a phantom or a god, preserved him from fear, if he had it about him; a property which is likely to have produced a great demand for it in a country where visionary beings were believed so frequently to occur. It is described as resembling a species of Vetch *; and, from its bearing grains which could be shaken, was called Sistrus. The botanical traveller will not neglect to look for it in or by the bed of the river.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE EMPEROR CARACALLA.

I. He visits Ilium.-II. His extravagances there.-III. Of a statue of Achilles at Sigéum.

I.

THE writings of Philostratus seem to have affected and

turned the head of the Emperor Caracalla son and husband of Julia. He was much addicted to the practice of arts then in vogue for raising Ghosts. He was terrified by frequent Visions, and repaired to Pergamum, hoping to obtain relief in his disorder from Esculapius. From thence he proceeded to Ilium', where he viewed all the reliques of the city. He afterwards visited the barrow of Achilles, and adorned it sumptuously with crowns and garlands of flowers.

II. At Ilium, Caracalla was seized with a passion to imitate Achilles, as he had before done Alexander the Great in Macedonia. He wanted a Patroclus, whose funeral he might solemnize; when, during his stay there, Festus, his Remembrancer and favourite freedman, died; as some affirmed, of a distemper; but so opportunely, that others said he was taken off by poison for the purpose. Caracalla ordered, after the example of Achilles, a

Herodian, 1. 4. c. 8.

large