Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/364

 356 STRABO. CASATJB. 595 improvement. It was again injured by the Romans under the command of Fimbrias. They took it by siege in the Mithri- datic war. Fimbrias was sent as quaastor, with the consul Valerius Flaccus, who was appointed to carry on the war against Mithridates. But having excited a sedition, and put the consul to death in Bithynia, he placed himself at the head of the army and advanced towards Ilium, where the inhabit- ants refused to admit him into the city, as they regarded him as a robber. He had recourse to force, and took the city on the eleventh day. When he was boasting that he had taken a city on the eleventh day, which Agamemnon had reduced with difficulty in the tenth year of the siege with a fleet of a thou- sand vessels, and with the aid of the whole of Greece, one of the Ilienses replied, " We had no Hector to defend the city." Sylla afterwards came, defeated Fimbrias, and dismissed Mithridates, according to treaty, into his own territory. Sylla conciliated the Ilienses by extensive repairs of their city. In our time divus Caesar showed them still more favour, in imita- tion of Alexander. He was inclined to favour them, for the purpose of renewing his family connexion with the Ilienses, and as an admirer of Homer. There exists a corrected copy of the poems of Homer, called " the casket-copy." Alexander perused it in company with Callisthenes and Anaxarchus, and having made some marks and observations deposited it in a casket J of costly workmanship which he found among the Persian treasures. On account then of his admiration of the poet and his descent from the j3acida3, (who were kings of the Molossi, whose queen they say was Andromache, afterwards the wife of Hector,) Alexander treated the Ilienses with kindness. But Caesar, who admired the character of Alexander, and had strong proofs of his affinity to the Ilienses, had the great- est possible desire* to be their benefactor. The proofs of his affinity to the Ilienses were strong, first as being a Roman, for the Romans consider ^Eneas to be the founder of their race, next he had the name of Julius, from lulus, one of his 1 According to Pliny, b. vii. 29, this casket contained the perfumes of Darius, unguentorum scrinium. According to Plutarch, (Life of Alexan- der,) the poem of Homer was the Iliad revised and corrected by Aristo- tle. From what Strabo here says of Callisthenes and Anaxarchus, we may probably understand a second revision made by them under the in- spection of Alexander.