Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/328

 296 HISTORY OF GREECE. of the leading Greeks. In the last speech made by the philoso- pher Socrates to his Athenian judges, he alludes with sclemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamedes, as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer, and hia companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the compari- son. Palamedes passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius. 1 In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Kamikus by the Kretan armament which came to avenge the death of Minos : 2 ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus, were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satis- fied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of co- herence between the separate events. Thucydides tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being moreover very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant provisions : hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese, a part in marauding expeditions over the neigh- borhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more speedily and easily concluded. 3 If the great historian could per- mit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that the simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical ex- aggerations, and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one 1 Plato, Apolog. Socr. c. 32 ; Xenoph. Apol. Socr. 26 ; Mcmor. ir. 3, 33 ; Liban. pro Socr. p. 242, ed. Morell. ; Lucian, Dial. Mort. 20. 2 Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a proper mythical period for a grest war to last : the war between the Olympic gods and the Titan gods la**** ten years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Compare <Je/cur^ fatavriji (Hom. xvi. 17).
 * Thucyd. i. 11.