Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/220

 204 HISTORY 01- GREECE. of (lie unpromising results of such a proceeding, we may fiiid it in the confusion which darkens so much of the work of Strabo, who perpetually turns aside from the actual and ascertainable condition of the countries which he is describing, to conjectures on Homeric antiquity, often announced as if they were unques- tionable facts. Where the Homeric geography is confirmed by other evidence, we note the fact with satisfaction ; where it stands unsupported or difficult to reconcile with other statements, we cannot venture to reason upon it as in itself a substantial testi- mony. The author of the Iliad, as he has congregated together a vast body of the different sections of Greeks for the attack of the consecrated hill of Ilium, so he has also summoned all the various inhabitants of Asia Minor to cooperate in its defence, and he has planted portions of the Kilikians and Lykians, whose his- torical existence is on the southern coast, in the immediate vicinity of the Troad. Those only will complain of this who have accus- tomed themselves to regard him as an historian or geographer : if we are content to read him only as the first of poets, we shall no more quarrel with him for a geographical misplacement, than with his successor Arktinus for bringing on the battle-field of Ilium the Amazons or the ^Ethiopians. The geography of Asia Minor is even now very imperfectly known, 1 and the matters ascertained respecting its ancient divis- ions and boundaries relate almost entirely either to the later periods of the Persian empire, or to times after the Macedonian and even after the Roman conquest. To state them as they stood in the time of Croesus king of Lydia, before the arrival of the conquer- ing Cyrus, is a task in which we find little evidence to sustain us. The great mountain chain of Taurus, which begins from the Che- lidonian promontory on the southern coast of Lykia, and strikes 1 For the general geography of Asia Minor, see Albert Forbiger, Hand- buch dcr Alt. Geogr. part ii, sect. 61, and an instructive little treatise, Fiinf Inschriften und filnf Stadte in Klein Asien, by Franz and Kicpert, Berlin, 1840, with a map of Phrygia annexed. The latter is particularly valuable as showing us how much yet remains to be made out : it is too often the practice with the compilers of geographical manuals to make a show of full knowledge, and to disguise the imperfection of their data. Nor do they always keep in view the necessity of distinguishing between the territorial names and divisions of one ngc and those of another.