LEGEND OF TROY. 331 Strabo has heie converted into geographical matter of fact an hypothesis purely gratuitous, with a view of saving the accuracy of the Homeric topography ; though in all probability the locali- ty of the pretended Old Ilium would have been found open to difficulties not less serious than those which it was introduced to obviate. 1 It may be true that Demetrius and he were justified in historical probability ; difficulties being occasionally eliminated by the plea of our ignorance of the time and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7-21 ). Gilbert Wake- field, who maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost inten- sity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Paine (W. p. 17), is still more displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells us that " grave dispu- tation in the midst of such . darkness and uncertainty is a conflict with chi- mairas " (W. p. 14). The most plausible line of argument taken by Morritt and Wakefield is, where they enforce the positions taken by Strabo and so many other authors, ancient as well as modem, that a superstructure of fiction is to be distin guishcd from a basis of truth, and that the latter is to be amintaincd while the former is rejected (Morritt, p. 5 ; Wake. p. 7-8). To this Bryant replies, that " if we leave out every absurdity, we can make anything plau- sible ; that a fable may be made consistent, and we have many romances that are very regular in the assortment of characters and circumstances : this may be seen in plays, memoirs, and novels. But this regularity and corres- pondence alone will not ascertain the truth" (Expostulation, pp. 8, 12, 13) " That there are a great many other fables besides that of Troy, regular and consistent among themselves, believed and chronologized by the Greeks, and even looked up to by them in a religious view (p. 13), which yet no one now thinks of admitting as history." Morritt, having urged the universal belief of antiquity as evidence that the Trojan war was historically real, is met by Bryant, who reminds him that the same persons believed in centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, augury, aruspicy ; Homer maintaining that horses could speak, etc. To which Morritt replies, " What has religious belief to do with historical facts ? Is not the evidence on which our faith rests in matters of religion totally different in all its parts from that on which we ground our belief in history?" (Addit. Re- marks, p. 47). The separation between the grounds of religious and historical belief is by no means so complete as Mr. Morritt supposes, even in regard to modern times ; and when we apply his position to the ancient Greeks, it will ba found completely the reverse of the truth. The contemporaries of Herodo- tus and Thucydides conceived their early history in the most intimate con- junction with their religion. 1 For example, adopting his own line of argument (not to mention those battles in which the pursuit and the flight reaches from the city to the ships and hack again), it might have been urged to him, that by supposing the
