Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/262

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS What historical bearing, then, has the news thus far received from Dr. Schliemann upon the tradition whose literary significance we have been examining? In the least hopeful view—should no unmistakable symbols, or other record, come to light—the discoveries already made, taken in connection with the results attained in the Troad, will greatly strengthen our faith in the historic value of enduring song. In those who have always thought of Agamemnon as a hero of pure fiction, it will breed a disposition to consider him a veritable personage, who ruled and died in Argos, and the catastrophe of whose death was somewhat as stated in the Odyssey.

Little in classic story goes behind the fall of Troy. Agamemnon and Helena are of the celestial breed. Another generation and you come to the demigods; one more, and to the Gods themselves. All this is precisely on a level with the tradition of other peoples, as they have reached the Homeric plane of enlightenment. The same in Assyria, the same in Phœnicia, in Egypt, in Peru and Mexico of the Western World. Less than four centuries ago an Homeric civilization was found and overwhelmed by Cortez and Pizarro. Allow for the inferior quality of the darker races, scarcely capable, if time had been given, of a much higher development, and how closely analogous the civilization of the Aztecs to that of the Homeric chiefs! Colossal architecture, wealth of silver and gold and the products of the loom, superstition, priests and soothsayers, royal demigods, altars for human sacrifices, the latter more frequent and more sanguinary in the New World than [248]