Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/357

 RELICS AND MEMORIALS AT ILIUM. 326 Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia. Ilium was always garrisoned as a strong position ; but its domain wag still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so near to it. 1 Alexander, or. crossing the Hellespont, sent his army from Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed person- ally from Elaseus in the Chersonese, after having solemnly sac- rificed at the Elseuntian shrine of Protesilaus, to the harbor of the Achasans between Sigeium and Rhoeteium. He then ascended to Ilium, sacrificed to the Iliean Athene, and consecrated in her temple his own panoply, in exchange for which he took some of the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to have been preserved from tho time of the Trojan war. These arms were carried before him when he went to battle by his armor-bearers. It is a fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong work- ing of the old legend on an impressible and eminently religious mind, that he also sacrificed to Priam himself, on the very altar of Zeus Herkeius from which the old king was believed to have been torn by Neoptolemus. As that fierce warrior was his heroic ancestor by the maternal side, he desired to avert from himself the anger of Priam against the Achilleid race. 2 about three miles, from the sea (c. 94). But I do not understand how he can call Skepsis and Kebren Trofate tiri da'h.daai). 1 See Xenoph. Hell en. iii. i. 16; and the description of the seizure of Ilium, along with Skepsis and Kebren, by the chief of mercenaries, Chari demus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat, c. 38. p. 671 : compare jEneas Poliorcetic. c. 24, and Polysen. iii. 14. sacrifice of Alexander, nepl r^f iv 'lUu dvalas (Athenae. xiii. p. 603; Dikaearch. Fragm. p. 114, ed. Fuhr). Theophrastus, in noticing old and venerable trees, mentions the 7jyol (Quercus cesculus) on the tomb of Ilus at Ilium, without any doubt of the authenticity of the place (De Plant, iv. 14) ; and his contemporary, the harper Stratonikos, intimates the same feeling, in his jest on the visit of a bad sophist to Ilium during the festival of the Ilieia (Athenae. viii. p. 351 ). The same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator JEschines (p. 737), in which his visit of curiosity to Ilium is described as well as about Apollonius of Tyana, or the writer who describes his life and his visit to the Troad ; it is evident that he did not dis- trust the upxaio'/.oyia of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real Troy (Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. Tyan. iv. 11). The god Jess Athene of Ilium was reported to have rendered valnnLU
 * Arrian, 1 . c. Dikasarchus composed a separate work respecting this