acquaintance with Egypt is flight ground for fuch an inference; of the writers who treated the fubject, only one (Phantafia) is said to be an Egyptian, and her name confutes the story. Not one is mentioned as placing Troy out of Phrygia either before or fince, fo that if it belonged to Egypt, fuch a concurrence in favour of one particular spot is wholly incredible. Therefore we must

either suppose Phantasia wrote on a Greek story, or that Homer, Syagrius, Dictys, Dares, and other Greeks, wrote on an Egyptian one, and both ideas are equally abfurd. The ancient traditions for ever are in contradiction with refpect to the particulars, many different accounts are tranfmitted, but most of them are fubfequent to Homer, whofe confiftency bears great internal marks of truth, and not one tradition or story, either ancient or modern, ever removed Homer's Ilium to Egypt, till the attempt of Mr. Bryant. If I have accounted for the difficulties which he finds in respect to the Greek names and Grecian worship introduced by Homer into Phrygia; if the names faid to be borrowed by Homer from the deities, were, in his time, probably the common names of his country; if the Egyptian derivation of Agamemnon is without proof; and if his own authorities, fo far from assisting him when they are fairly quoted, really disprove his arguments; if the memorials found in the different parts of the world, and the deification of Homer's heroes are really confirmations of the received opinion, the confequence follows that we have no fort of ground, from any argument Mr. Bryant has used, to fuppofe that the scenes of the Iliad were originally foreign to Phrygia, but we have many unanfwerable reafons to believe the reverfe. Having fhewn therefore, as I truft, that Ilium did notexift in Egypt; having before fhewn that there is no reafon to doubt the ancient story concerning the war in Phrygia, it fhall be my effort to convince

the reader that it did exist, and in the very fituation where Homer has placed it.

Introduction.

PART THE SECOND.

Of all the arguments which have been used in support of ancient hiftorians there is none fo conclufive as that which is drawn from the exact concurrence of their topography, with what we find to be the prefent ftate of the country. Their accuracy, in points of which we are able to judge, is a rational ground of belief in those for which we have only their uncontradicted affertion. But there is no hiftorian, however exact, who can compare in this respect with Homer.. The ingenious publication of Monfieur Chevalier, had shown that many more circumstances illustrative of the Iliad might still be traced in the Plain than were generally imagined to be there. His work had to combat with incredulity, which will ever attend a discovery of this fort unsupported by concurrent testimony. That teftimony I am happy to be able to give, for though I may perhaps fometimes differ with him in his conjectures, yet I found him every where a faithful relater of facts. Affifted by his book, I examined the whole country with some degree of attention, and before I proceed any further I beg to refer the reader, through the whole of this treatise, to the fubjoined Map, of which the chief part exactly agrees with that of M. Chevalier; fince I found it (except fome trifling overfights which are here corrected) as accurate as that of Mr. Bryant's is erroneous and defective. To make these arguments more conclufive, I previously inform the reader, that confidering, a priori, the fituations, and remains which Homer's writings would lead us to expect, I will show that

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