Page:Homer The Iliad.djvu/22

8 another direction. In the eyes of some ingenious theorists, this siege of Troy is but “a repetition of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers that every evening are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West;” and the Homeric heroes and their exploits all represent allegorically, in one form or another, the great conflict between Light and Darkness. But such questions are beyond the scope of these pages; we are content here to take the tale of Troy as the poet tells it.

The supposed date of the story may be taken as some fifteen centuries before the Christian era. The great City of Troy, or Ilium, lay on the coast of Asia Minor—its reputed site still bearing the name of the Troad, a broad well-watered champaign, with a height still recognised as the citadel towering above it. “No royal seat of the ancient world,” says a modern visitor to the spot, “could boast a grander situation than the Trojan citadel.” As to its actual locality and existence, there is little ground for scepticism. The tradition of the name and place was unbroken in the early historical ages of Greece. Xerxes, king of Persia, in his expedition, is said to have visited the citadel, and to have offered there a thousand oxen to the tutelary goddess; possibly, it has been suggested, claiming to be the avenger of the Asiatic kings on their European enemies. Mindarus, the Lacedæmonian admiral, seventy years later, sacrificed there also: and Alexander, when he crossed the Hellespont, not only did the same, but took from the temple some of the sacred arms which