Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/341

 RETURN OP THE GRECIAN HEROES. 3Q9 genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pansanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pro- nounces that the Trojan horse must have been in point of fact a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it ; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magni- tude " for one little woman." 1 Mr. Knight suggests various po- litical causes as substitutes ; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history. The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and iso- lated. Moreover the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfor- tunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic '* Returns," that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse )f Homer. The hero, after a series of long-protracted suffering and expatriation, inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidon, at last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youth- ful son insulted, and his substance plundered, by a troop of inso- lent suitors ; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athene coming in aid of his own courage Pansan. i. 23, 8 ; Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer, c. 53. Euphorion construed the wooden horse into a Grecian ship called "Imrof, " The Herte (Euphorion, Fragm. 34. ap. Diintzer, Fragm. Epicc. Graec. p. 55). See Thucyd. i 12; vi. 2.