Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/252

 XVII. 2.34 THE DECLINE AND FALL C Fl A p. dus. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved tlie passage of the flood for the possession of his mis- tress''. It was here hkewise, in a place where the distance between the opposite banks cannot exceed five hundred paces, that Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats, for the purpose of transporting into Europe an hundred and seventy myriads of barba- rians ^ A sea contracted within such narrow Hmits, may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of broad, which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has fre- quently bestowed on the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative nature : the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed along the Hellespont, who ])ursued the windings of the stream, and con- templated the rural scenery which appeared on every side to terminate the prospect, insensibly lost the re- membrance of the sea ; and his fancy pai)ited those celebrated straits, with all the attributes of a mighty river flowing with a swift current, in the midst of a w^oody and inland country, and at length, through a wide mouth, discharging itself into the i^gean or Archipelago ^ Ancient TroyS seated on an eminence at the foot of mount Ida, overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely received an accession of waters from the tribute of those immortal rivulets, the Simois and Scamander. The Grecian camp had 1 The oblique distance between Sestus and Abydus was thirty stadia. The improbable tale of Hero and Leander is exposed by M. Mahudel, but is defended on the authority of poets and medals by Rl. de la JSauze. See the Academie des Inscriptions, torn. vii. Hist. p. 74. Mem. p. 240. ■■ See the seventh book of Herodotus, who has erected an elegant trophy to his own fame and to that of his country. The review appears to have been made with tolerable accuracy: but the vanity, first of the Persians, and afterwards of the Greeks, was interested to magnify the armament and the victory, I should much doubt whether the invaders have ever out- numbered the men of any country which they attacked. selected this remark from an author who in general seems to have disap- pointed the expectation of the public as a critic, and still more as a travel- ler. He had visited the banks of the Hellespont; he had read Strabo ; lie ought to have consulted the Roman itineraries : how was it jiossible for him to confound Ilium and Alexandria Troas, (Observations, p. 340, 341.) two cities which were sixteen miles distant from each other 1 ' Demetrius of Scepsis wrote sixty books on thirty lines of Homer's cata- logue. The thirteenth book of Strabo is sufficient for ma- curiosity.
 * See Wood's Observations on Homer, p. 320. 1 have with pleasure