Section 9 of The Great Events, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Dion Giants, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 1, edited by Charles F. Horn, Rosseter Johnson, and John Rudd. The Formation of the Cass in India, B.C. 1200 by W. W. Hunter. At a very early period, we catch sight of a nobler race from the Northwest, forcing its way in among the primitive peoples of India. This race belonged to the Splendid Arian, or Indo-Germanic stock, from which the Brahmin, the Rajput, and the Englishmen alike descend. Its earliest home seems to have been in Western Asia. From that common camping-ground, certain branches of the race started for the East, others for the Farther West. One of the Western offshoots built Athens and Sparta, and became the Greek nation. Another went on to Italy, and reared the city on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant colony of the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain, and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Arian settlement fishing in waddle canoes and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile, other branches of the Arian stock had gone forth from the primitive Asiatic home to the East. Powerful bands found their way through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread themselves chiefly as Brahmins and Rajputs over India. The Arian offshoots, alike to the East and to the West, asserted their superiority over the earlier peoples whom they found in possession of the soil. The history of ancient Europe is the story of the Arian settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean, and that wide term modern civilization merely means the civilization of the Western branches of the same race. The history of India consists in like manner of the history of the Eastern offshoots of the Arian stock who settled in that land. We know little regarding these noble Arian tribes in their early camping ground in Western Asia. From words preserved in the languages of their long separated descendants in Europe and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy steps with their cattle, making long halts to raise crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals, were acquainted with iron, understood the arts of weaving and sewing, wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hearty life of the comparatively temperate zone, and the feeling of cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of the Eastern and the Western branches of the race. The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the Hindu, dwelt together in Western Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped the same gods. The languages of Europe and India, although at first sight they seem wide apart, are merely different growths from the original Arian speech. This is especially true of the common words of family life. The names for father, mother, brother, sister, and widow are the same in most of the Arian languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word daughter, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from the Arian root, du, which in Sanskrit has the form of da, to milk, and perhaps preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Arian household. The ancient religions of Europe and India had a common origin. They were to some extent made up of the sacred stories or myths which our joint ancestors had learned. While dwelling together in Asia, several of the Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome, and to this day the divinity is adored by names derived from the same old Arian word, Deva, the shining one, by Brahmins in Calcutta, by the Protestant clergy of England, and the Roman Catholic priests in Peru. The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Arians on their march to the southeast and in their new homes. The earliest songs disclose the race still to the north of the Khyber Pass in Kabul. The later ones bring them as far as the Ganges. Their victorious advance eastward through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings almost step by step. The steady supply of water among the five rivers of the Punjab led the Arians to settle down from their old state of wandering half-pastoral tribes into regular communities of husbandmen. The Vedic poets praised the rivers which enabled them to make this great change, perhaps the most important step in the progress of a race. May the Hindus, they sang, the far-famed giver of wealth hear us, fertilizing our broad fields with water. The Himalayas, through whose southwestern passes they had reached India, and at whose southern bays they long dwelt, made a lasting impression on their memory. The Vedic singer praised him whose greatness the snowy ranges and the sea and the aerial river declare. The Aryan race in India never forgot its northern home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers, and their eloquence descended from heaven among men. While high amid the Himalayan mountains lay the paradise of deities and heroes, where the kind and the brave forever repose. The Rig Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown. Orthodox Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed from before all time, or at least from 3001 BC. European scholars have inferred from astronomical data that its composition was going on about 1400 BC, but the evidence might have been calculated backward and inserted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion had been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the 6th century BC. The Rig Veda is a very old collection of one thousand seventeen short poems, chiefly addressed to the gods, and containing ten thousand five hundred eighty verses. Its hymns show us the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the black-skinned Aborigines. Cast in its later sense is unknown. Each father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe, but at the greater festivals he chooses someone specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people. The king himself seems to have been elected, and his title of Vispat, literally Lord of the Settlers, survives in the Old Persian Vispati and as the Lithuanian Vispatis in Eastern Central Europe at this day, women enjoyed a high position, and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both rulers of the house, Dampati, and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their husbands funeral pile was unknown, and the verses in the Veda, which the Brahmins afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning. Rise, woman, says the Vedic text to the mourner, come to the world of life, come to us, thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband. The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans. They fight from chariots and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant in war. They have settled down as husbandmen till their fields with the plow and live in villages or towns, but they also cling to their old wandering life with their herds and cattle-pens. Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth. The coin in which payment of fines is made, reminding us of the Latin word for money, pecunia, from pecas, a herd. One of the Vedic words for war literally means a desire for cows. Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef, used a fermented liquor or beer made from the soma plant and offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastward through northern India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier black-skinned races. They marched in whole communities from one river valley to another, each housefather a warrior, husbandman, and priest, with his wife and his little ones and his cattle. These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their gods. Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land and to their poor, rude objects of worship. Indeed, this noble self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation. Their divinities, Devas, literally the shining ones, from the Sanskrit root, Div, to Shine, were the great powers of nature. They adored the Father Heaven, Diyush Pitar in Sanskrit, the Diaz Peter, or Jupiter of Rome, the Zeus of Greece, and the encompassing sky Varuna in Sanskrit, Uranus in Latin, Oranus in Greek, Indra or the aqueous vapor that brings the precious rain on which plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more keenly the importance of the periodical reigns to their new life as husbandmen, he became the chief of the Vedic gods. The gods do not reach unto thee, O Indra, nor men. Thou overcomest all creatures in strength. Agni, the god of fire, Latin, Ignis, ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number of hymns addressed to him. He is the youngest of the gods, the lord and giver of wealth. The Maruits are the storm gods who make the rock to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest. Yushas, the high-born don, Greek Eos, shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go forth to his work. The asphans, the horsemen, or fleet outriders of the don, are the first rays of sunrise, lords of luster. The solar orb himself, Surya, the wind, Vayu, the sunshine, or friendly day, Mitra, the intoxicating fermented juice of the sacrificial plant, Soma, and many other deities are invoked in the Veda, in all about thirty-three gods who are eleven in heaven, eleven on earth, and eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air. The Arian settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be granted. At the same time he was deeply stirred by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind that when he praises any one of his shining gods he can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater deities to be the one supreme. Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O Indra. Another hymn speaks of Soma as king of heaven and earth, the conqueror of all. To Varuna also it is said, Thou art lord of all, of heaven and earth, thou art king of all those who are gods, and of all those who are men. The more spiritual of the Vedic singers, therefore, may be said to have worshiped one god, though not one alone. In the beginning there arose the golden child. He was the one born lord of all, that is, he established the earth and this sky. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?  He who, through his power, is the one king of the breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast, who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom the heaven was established, nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the light and the air. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He who, by his might, looked even over the water clouds. He who alone is god above all gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or under rude stone monuments, the Aryan, alike in India, in Greece, and in Italy, made use of the funeral pile. Several exquisite Sanskrit hymns bid farewell to the dead. Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient paths to the place where our fathers have departed. Meet with the ancient ones, meet with the lord of death, throwing off thine imperfections, go to thy home, become united with a body, clothe thyself in a shining form. Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of nectar. Let him depart to those who, through meditation, have obtained the victory, who, by fixing their thoughts on the unseen, have gone to heaven. Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor. The doctrine of trans-migration was at first unknown. The circle round the funeral pile, saying with a firm assurance that their friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved ones who had gone before. Do thou conduct us to heaven? says a hymn of the later Atharvaveda. Let us be with our wives and children. In heaven where our friends dwell in bliss, having left behind the infirmities of the body, free from lameness, free from crookedness of limb. There let us behold our parents and our children. May the water-shedding spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee with their swift motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with dew. Bear him, carry him. Let him, with all his faculties complete, go to the world of the righteous, crossing the dark valley which spreadeth boundless around him. Let the unborn soul ascend to heaven. Wash the feet of him who is stained with sin. Let him go upward with cleansed feet, crossing the gloom, gazing with wonder in many directions. Let the unborn soul go up to heaven. By degrees the old collection of hymns, or the Rig Veda, no longer suffice. Three other collections, or service books, were therefore added, making the four Vedas. The word Veda is from this same root as the Latin Vedera, to see. The early Greek fide ine, infinitive of oida, I know, and the English wisdom, or I wit. The Brahmins taught that the Veda was divinely inspired, and that it was literally the wisdom of God. There was first the Rig Veda, or the hymns in their simplest form. Second, the Sama Veda made up hymns of the Rig Veda to be used at the Sama Sacrifice. Third, the Yajur Veda, consisting not only of Rig Veda hymns, but also of prose sentences to be used at the great sacrifices, and divided into two additions, the black and white Yajur. The fourth, or Atharva Veda, was compiled from the least ancient hymns at the end of the Rig Veda, very old religious spells, and later sources. Some of its spells have a similarity to the ancient German and Lithuanian charms, and appear to have come down from the most primitive times before the Indian and European branches of the Aryan race struck out from their common home. To each of the four Vedas were attached prose works called Brahmanas in order to explain the sacrifices and the duties of the priests. Like the four Vedas, the Brahmanas were held to be the very word of God. The Vedas and the Brahmanas formed the revealed scriptures of the Hindus, the Sruti, literally things heard from God. The Vedas supplied their divinely inspired Psalms, and the Brahmanas, their divinely inspired theology, or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the sutras, literally strings of pithy sentences regarding laws and ceremonies. Still later, the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul, the Aranyakas, or tracts for the forest recluse, and after a very long interval, the Puranas, or traditions from of old. All these ranked, however, not as divinely inspired knowledge or things heard from God. Sruti, like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred traditions. Smriti, literally the things remembered. Meanwhile, the four castes had been formed in the old Aryan colonies. Among the five rivers of the Punjab, each housefather was a husbandman, warrior, and priest. But by degrees, certain gifted families, who composed the Vedic hymns, or learned them off by heart, were always chosen by the king to perform the great sacrifices. In this way, probably, the priestly castes bring up. As the Aryans conquered more territory, fortunate soldiers received a larger share of the lands than others, and cultivated it, not with their own hands, but by means of the vanquished non-Aryan tribes. In this way, the four castes arose. First, the priests, or Brahmins. Second, the warriors, or fighting companions of the king, called Rajputs, or Chatriyas, literally of the royal stock. Third, the Aryan agricultural settlers, who kept the old name of Vaceus from the root Vis, which in the primitive Vedic period had included the whole Aryan people. Fourth, the Sudras, or conquered non-Aryan tribes, who became serfs. The three first castes were of Aryan descent, and were honored by the name of the twice-born castes. They could all be present at the sacrifices, and they worshipped the same bright gods. The Sudras were the slave bands of Black descent of the Veda. They were distinguished from their twice-born Aryan conquerors, as being only once-born, and by many contemptuous appetites. They were not allowed to be present at the great national sacrifices, or at the feasts which followed them. They could never rise out of their servile condition, and to them was assigned the severest toil in the fields and all the hard and dirty work of the village community. The Brahmins, or priests, claimed the highest rank, but they seemed to have had a long struggle with the Chatriyas, or warrior caste, before they won their proud position at the head of the Indian people. They afterward secured themselves in that position by teaching that it had been given to them by God. At the beginning of the world, they said, the Brahmin proceeded from the mouth of the creator, the Chatriyas, or Rajput, from his arms, the Vesya, from his thighs or belly, and the Sudra from his feet. This legend is true so far that the Brahmins were really the brainpower of the Indian people. The Chatriyas, its armed hands, the Vesyas, the food growers, and the Sudras, the downtrodden serfs. When the Brahmins had established their power, they made a wise use of it. From the ancient Vedic times, they recognized that if they were to exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly pomp. In irrigating the priestly function, they gave up all claim to the royal office. They were divinely appointed to be the guides of nations and the counselors of kings, but they could not be kings themselves. As the duty of the Sudra was to serve of the Vesya to till the ground and follow middle-class trades or crafts, so the business of the Chatriyas was to fight the public enemy and of the Brahmin to propitiate the national gods. Each day brought to the Brahmins its routine of ceremonies, studies, and duties. Their whole life was mapped out into four clearly defined stages of discipline. For their existence in its full religious significance commenced not at birth, but on being invested at the close of childhood with the sacred thread of the twice-born. Their youth and early manhood were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from an older Brahmin, tending the sacred fire and serving their preceptor. Having completed his long studies, the young Brahmin entered on the second stage of his life as a householder. He married and commenced a course of family duties. When he had reared a family and gained a practical knowledge of the world, he retired into the forest as a recluse for the third period of his life, feeding on roots or fruits, practicing his religious duties with increased devotion. The fourth stage was that of the ascetic or religious mendicant wholly withdrawn from earthly affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind which, heedless of the joys or pains or wants of the body, is intent only on its final absorption into the deity. The Brahmin in this fourth stage of his life ate nothing but what was given to him unasked and abode not more than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find entrance into his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a Brahmin, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large extent practically carried out.  What is this world, says a Brahmin sage, it is even as the bow of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night, and in the morning flies away. The Brahmins therefore were a body of men who in an early stage of this world's history bound themselves by a rule of life, the essential precepts of which were self-culture and self-restraint. The Brahmins of the present India are the result of three thousand years of hereditary education and temperance, and they have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct from the surrounding population. Even the passing traveler in India marks them out, alike from the bronze-cheeked, large-limbed, leisure-loving Rajput, or Chetrius, the warrior caste of Aryan descent, and from the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick lip, low cast of non-Aryan origin with their short bodies and bullet heads. The Brahmin stands apart from both tall and slim, with finely-modeled lips and nose, fair complexion, high forehead, and slightly coconut-shaped skull, the man of self-centered refinement. He is an example of a class becoming the ruling power in a country, not by force of arms, but by the vigor of hereditary culture and temperance. One race has swept across India after another, dynasties have risen and fallen, religions have spread themselves over the land and disappeared, but since the dawn of history the Brahmin has calmly ruled, swaying the minds and receiving the homage of the people, and accepted by foreign nations as the highest type of Indian mankind. The position which the Brahmins won resulted in no small measure from the benefits which they bestowed. For their own Aryan countrymen they developed a noble language and literature. The Brahmins were not only the priests and philosophers but also the law-givers, the men of science and the poets of their race. Their influence on the Aboriginal peoples, the hill and forest races of India, was even more important. To these rude remnants of the flint and stone ages they brought in ancient times a knowledge of the metals and the gods. As a social league, Hinduism arranged the people into the old division of the twice-born Aryan castes, namely the Brahmins, Chatriyas, Vassyas, and the once-born castes consisting of the non-Aryan Sudras and the classes of mixed descent. This arrangement of the Indian races remains to the present day. The twice-born castes still wear the sacred thread and claim a joint, although an unequal inheritance in the holy books of the Veda. The once-born castes are still denied the sacred thread and they are not allowed to study the holy books until the English set up schools in India for all classes of the people. But while caste is thus founded on the distinctions of race, it has been influenced by two other systems of division, namely the employments of the people and the localities in which they live. Even in the oldest times the castes had separate occupations assigned to them. They could be divided either into Brahmins, Chatriyas, Vassyas, and Sudras, or into priests, warriors, husbandmen, and serfs. They are also divided according to the parts of India in which they live. Even the Brahmins have among themselves ten distinct classes, or rather, nations. Five of these classes, or Brahmin nations, live to the north of the Vindhya Mountains. Five of them live to the south. Each of the ten fills itself to be quite apart from the rest, and they have among themselves no fewer than 1,886 subdivisions or separate brahminical tribes, in like manner the Chatriyas, or Rajputs, number 590 separate tribes in different parts of India. While, therefore, Indian caste seems at first a very simple arrangement of the people into four classes, it is in reality a very complex one, for it rests upon three distinct systems of division, namely upon race, occupation, and geographical position. It is very difficult even to guess at the number of the Indian castes, but there are not fewer than 3,000 of them which have separate names and which regard themselves as separate classes. The different castes cannot intermarry with each other and most of them cannot eat together. The ordinary rule is that no Hindu of good caste can touch food cooked by a man of inferior caste, by rights to each caste should keep to its own occupation. Indeed, there has been a tendency to erect every separate kind of employment or handicraft in each separate province into a distinct caste, but as a matter of practice the castes often change their occupation, and the lower ones sometimes raise themselves in the social scale. Thus the Vasya caste were in ancient times the tillers of the soil, they have in most provinces given up this toilsome occupation, and the Vasyas are now the great merchants and bankers of India. Their fair skins, intelligent faces, and polite bearing must have altered since the days when their forefathers plowed, sowed, and reaped under the hot sun. Such changes of employment still occur on a smaller scale throughout India. The system of caste exercises a great influence upon the industries of the people. Each caste is, in the first place, a trade guild. It ensures the proper training of the youth of its own special craft. It makes rules for the conduct of the caste trade. It promotes good feeling by feasts or social gatherings. The famous manufacturers of medieval India, its muslin, silks, cloth of gold, inlaid weapons, and exquisite work in precious stones, were brought to perfection under the care of the castes or trade guilds. Such guilds may still be found in full work in many parts of India. Thus in the northwestern districts of Bombay, all heads of artisan families are ranged under their proper trade guild. The trade guild or caste prevents undue competition among the members and upholds the interest of its own body in any dispute arising with other craftsmen. In 1873, for example, a number of the bricklayers in Ahmadabad could not find work. Men of this class sometimes added to their daily wages by rising very early in the morning and working overtime. But when several families complained that they could not get employment, the bricklayers' guild met and decided that as there was not enough work for all, no member should be allowed to work in extra hours. In the same city, the cloth dealers in 1872 tried to cut down the wages of the sizers or men who dressed the cotton cloth. The sizers' guild refused to work at lower rates and remained six weeks on strike. At length, they arranged their dispute, and both the trade guilds signed a stamped agreement fixing the rates for the future. Each of the higher castes or trade guilds in Ahmadabad receives a fee from young men on entering their business. The revenue derived from these fees and from fines upon members who break caste rules is spent in fees to the brethren of the guild and in helping the poorer craftsmen or their orphans. A favorite plan of raising money in Sirat is for the members of the trade to keep a certain day as a holiday and to shut up all their shops except one. The right to keep open this one shop is put up to auction, and the amount bid is expended on a feast. The trade guild or caste allows none of its members to starve. It thus acts as a mutual assurance society and takes the place of a poor law in India. The severest social penalty which can be inflicted upon a Hindu is to be put out of his caste. Hinduism is, however, not only a social league resting upon caste, it is also a religious alliance based upon worship. As the various race elements of the Indian people have been welded into caste, so the simple old beliefs of the Veda, the mild doctrines of Buddha, and the fierce rites of the non-Aryan tribes have been thrown into the melting pot and poured out fence as a mixture of precious metal and dross to be worked up into the complex worship of the Hindu gods. of the great events volume one this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Blake Butler the great events by famous historians volume one edited by Charles F. Horn Roseter Johnson and John Rudd fall of Troy BC 1184 by George Grote part one the siege of Troy is an event not to be reckoned as history although Herodotus the father of history speaks of it as such and it would be quite impossible to understand the history and character of the Greek people without a study of the Iliad and Odyssey poems attributed to a blind bard of Syos Isle immortal Homer the campaign of the Greek heroes in Asia is to be referred to a hazy point in the past when Europe was just beginning to have an eastern question a vast circle of tales and poems has gathered round this mythical event in the Iliad song of Iliam or Troy is still a poem of unfailing interest and fascination Iliam or Troy was a city of Asia Minor a little south of the hell's font it was the center of a powerful state Grecian and race and language and when Paris son of King Priam visited Sparta and carried off the beautiful wife of Menelus king of Sparta all the heroes of Greece banded together and invaded Priam's dominions the 1200 ships that sailed for Troy transported 100,000 warriors to the valley of Samoi and Scamander among them was Agamemnon king of men brother of Menelus he was the leader and in his train were Achilles swift of foot godlike wise Ulysses king of Ithaca the two age axes and the aged nester the narrative of their adventures is told in the Homeric poems with a power of musical expression a charm of language and a vividness of imagery unsurpassed in poetry for 10 years the besiegers encircled the city of Priam after many engagements and single combats on the windy plain of Troy the great hero of the Greeks the Achilles of Thessaly is wronged by Agamemnon who carries away Bersailles a fair captive girl allotted as the spoils of war to the swift footed the hero of Thessaly thanks force refuses to join in the war and sullenly shuts himself up in his tent it is only when his dear friend Patriclus has been slain by the valiant Hector eldest son of Priam that he sallies forth meets Hector in single combat and finally slays him Achilles then attaches the body of Hector to his chariot and insultingly trails it in the dust as he drives three times around the walls of Troy the Iliad closes with the funeral rites celebrated over the corpse of Hector we now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian epic the two sieges and captures of Troy with the destinies of the dispersed heroes Trojan as well as Grecian after the second and most celebrated capture and destruction of the city it would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea of the vast extent and expansion of this interesting fable first handled by so many poets epic lyric and tragic with their endless additions transformations and contradictions then purged and recast by historical inquirers who under color of setting aside the exaggerations of the poets introduced a new vein of prosaic invention lastly moralized and allegorized by philosophers in the present brief outline of the general field of Grecian legend or of that which the Greeks believed to be their antiquities the Trojan war can be regarded as only one among a large number of incidents upon which Hikadius and Herodotus looked back as constituting their foretime taken as a special legendary event it is indeed of wider and larger interest than any other but it is a mistake to single it out from the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy bias I must therefore confine myself to an abridged narrative of the current and leading facts and amid the numerous contradictory statements which are to be found respecting every one of them I know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity though even the oldest tales which we possess those contained in the Iliad evidently presuppose others of a prior date the primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dardanus son of Zeus founder and eponymous of Dardania in the account of later authors Dardanus was called the son of Zeus by a lecturer daughter of atlas and was further said to have come from Samothrace or from Arcadia or from Italy but of this Homer mentions nothing the first Dardanian town founded by him was in a lofty position on the descent of Mount Ida for he was not yet strong enough to establish himself on the plane but soon his son Eric Thonius by the favor of Zeus became the wealthiest of all mankind his flocks and herds having multiplied he had in his pastures three thousand mayors the offspring of some of whom by Baraeus produced horses of preternatural swiftness Trose the son of Eric Thonius and the eponym of the Trojans had three sons illus aceracus and the beautiful Ganymedes whom Zeus stole away to become his cup bearer in Olympus giving his father Trose as the price of the youth a team of immortal horses from illus and aceracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge the former passing from illus to Leomidon pream and Hector the latter from aceracus to capoeus and chaisis and aneus illus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of Ilium aceracus and his descendants remain sovereigns of Dardania it was under the proud Leomidon son of illus that Poizodon and Apollo underwent by command of Zeus a temporary servitude the former building the walls of the town the latter tending the flocks and herds when their task was completed and the penal period had expired they claimed the stipulated reward but Leomidon angrily repudiated their demand and even threatened to cut off their ears to tie them hand and foot and to sell them in some distant island as slaves he was punished for this treachery by a sea monster whom Poizodon sent to ravage his fields and destroy his subjects Leomidon publicly offered the immortal horses given by Zeus to his father Trose as a reward to anyone who would destroy the monster but an oracle declared that a virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him and the lot fell upon Hezzawin daughter of Leomidon himself Heracles arriving at this critical moment killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for him by Athene and the Trojans so as to rescue both the exposed maiden and the people but Leomidon by a second act of perfidy gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless animals which had been promised thus defrauded of his due Heracles equipped six ships attacked and captured Troy and killed Leomidon giving Hezzawin to his friend and auxiliary Telemond to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teacross a painful sense of this expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of Ilium who offered no warship to Heracles among all the sons of Leomidon Priam was the only one who had remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned girdon of Heracles for which the hero recompensed him by placing him on the throne many and distinguished were his sons and daughters as well by his wife Hicuba daughter of Sissius as by other women among the sons were Hector Paris Diaphobus Hellenus Trialus Pallides Polydorus among the daughters Leodus Creusa Polyzina and Cassandra the birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage for Hicuba dreamed that she was delivered of a fire brand and Priam on consulting the soothsayers was informed that the son about to be born would prove fatal to him accordingly he directed the child to be exposed to Mount Ida but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him and he grew up amid the flocks and herds active and beautiful fair of hair and symmetrical in person and the special favorite of Aphrodite it was to this youth in his solitary shepherd's walk on Mount Ida that the three goddesses Hiri Athene and Aphrodite were conducted in order that he might determine the dispute respecting their comparative beauty which had arisen at the nuptials of Palaeus and Thetis a dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement and in accomplishment of the deep laid designs of Zeus for Zeus remarking with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which he was compelled to bear and determined to lighten it by exciting a destructive and long continued war Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodite who promised him and recompense the possession of Helen wife of the Spartan menalus the daughters of Zeus and the fairest of living women at the instance of Aphrodite ships were built for him and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with the eventual disaster to his native city in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Hellenus and the always neglected warnings of Cassandra Paris on arriving at Sparta was hospitably entertained by menalus as well as by castor and Pollux and was enabled to present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen menalus then departed to Crete leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest a favorable moment which was employed by Aphrodite to bring about the intrigue and the elopement Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging to menalus made a prosperous voyage to Troy and arrived there safely with his prize on the third day menalus informed by iris and Crete of the perfidious return made by Paris for his hospitality hastened home in grief and indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnon as well as with the venerable Nestor on the means of avenging the outrage they made known the event to the Greek chiefs around them among whom they found universal sympathy Nestor Palamades and others went round to solicit aid in a contemplated attack of Troy under the command of Agamemnon to whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until Helen should be recovered 10 years were spent in equipping the expedition the goddess Hiri and Athenae and sensed that the preference given by Paris to Aphrodite and animated by steady attachment to Argos Sparta and Mycenae took an active part in the cause and the horses of Hiri were fatigued with the repeated visits to different parts of Greece by such efforts a force was at length assembled at Eilis in Boatia consisting of 1186 ships and more than 100,000 men a force outnumbering by more than 10 to 1 anything that the Trojans themselves could oppose and superior to the defenders of Troy even with all her allies included it comprised heroes with their followers from the extreme points of Greece from the northwestern portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus as well as the western islands of Diluciam and Ithaca and the eastern islands of Crete and Rhodes Agamemnon himself contributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom Mycenae besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians who possessed none of their own menalists brought with him 60 ships Nestor from Pylis 90 item many is from Crete and Diomedes from Argos 80 each 40 ships were manned by the aliens under four different chiefs the like number under Mijis from Diluciam and the Echinades and under Thaus from Caledon and the other Etolian towns a desis from Ithaca and Ajax from Salamis brought 12 ships each the Abantes from Uboa under Elfenor filled 40 vessels the Boetians under Penelos and Leitis the inhabitants of Orca menace and Asplodon 30 the light armed locrations under Ajax son of Oilis 40 the Phoenicians as many the Athenians under Menaceus a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army mustered 50 ships the Mirmidans from Thea and Helus under Achilles assembled in 50 ships Protossilius from Flace and Pyrosis and Europlius from Orminium each came with 40 ships Macaeon and Potillarius from Trica with 30 Emulus from Ferry in the Lake Boeibus with 11 and Phylloctetes from Melabauea with 7 the Lipite under Polypodes son of Pyrethos filled 40 vessels the Aenes and Parabians under Genius 22 and the Magnetus under Protoss 40 these last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly near the mountains Pelion and Olympus see me under the comely but effeminate Nereus 3 from Caes Crapithus in the neighboring islands 30 under the orders of Phaedipus and Antiphas sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Heracles among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomedes and the sagacious Nestor while Agamemnon himself scarcely inferior to either of them in prowess brought with him a high reputation for prudence and command but the most marked and conspicuous of all were Achilles and Odysseus the former a beautiful youth born of a divine mother swift in the race of fierce temper and irresistible might the latter not less efficient as an ally from his eloquence his untiring endurance his inexhaustible resources under difficulty and the mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never deserted him the blood of the arch deceiver Sisyphus through an illicit connection with his mother was said to flow in his veins and he was especially patronized and protected by the goddess Athenae Odysseus unwilling at first to take part in the expedition had even simulated insanity but Palamedes sent to Ithaca to invite him tested the reality of his madness by placing in the furrow where Odysseus was plowing his infant son Telemachus thus detected Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achaean host but the prophet Halathurces predicted to him that 20 years would elapse before he revisited his native land to Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of heroic glory before the walls of Troy nor could the place be taken without both his cooperation and that of his son after him but they had forewarned him that this brilliant career would be rapidly brought to a close and that if he desired a long life he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land in spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis he preferred few years with the bright renown and join the Achaean host when Nestor and Odysseus came to Thethea to invite him both he and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call Agamemnon and his powerful host set sail from Iolus but being ignorant of the locality and the direction they landed by mistake into Thrania a part of Mycia near the river Caicus and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the country, opposed and repelled them but he was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles the Greeks now discovering their mistake retired but their fleet was dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece Achilles attacked and took Scyrus and there married Didamia the daughter of Lycomides. Telephus suffering from his wounds was directed by the oracle to come to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed by applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given thus restored he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expedition the armament was again assembled at Iolus but the goddess Artemis displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnon prolonged the duration of adverse winds and the offending chief was compelled to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. They then proceeded to Tenedas from whence Odysseus and Menelis were dispatched as envoys to Troy to redemand Helen and the stolen property in spite of the prudent councils of Antinor who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality the Trojans rejected the demand and the attack was resolved upon it was for doomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish. Proteselus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope and accordingly fell by the hand of Hector. Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace Dardanians under Aeneas Lycians under Sarpedon, Mycians, Caryans, Maonians, Alizonians, Pharyngeans, Thracians, and Paonians. But vain was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks. The Trojans were routed and even the invulnerable Synchus, son of Poizodon, one of the great bulwarks of the defense, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within their walls Achilles attacked and stormed Lyonesis, Pidesis, Lesbos, and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea coast and eleven in the interior.  He surprised and killed the youthful trialless, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the Aegean. He acquired as his captive the Fair Bersailles while Bersailles was awarded to Agamemnon. He was, moreover, eager to see the Divine Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable struggle, and Aphrodite and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them. At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palomedes, one of its ablest chiefs. Odessius had not forgiven the artifice by which Palomedes had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning, in a degree equal, if not superior to himself. One who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters of dice for amusement of night watches as well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palomedes was drowned while fishing by the hands of Odessius and Diomedes. Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palomedes occur. The lofty position which Odessius occupies in both these poems, noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar, who described Palomedes as the wiser man of the two, is sufficient to explain the omission. But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superior came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palomedes, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting personages in the Trojan legend. Ischialis, Sophocles, and Euripides each consecrated to him a special tragedy. But the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odessius, who caused gold to be buried in his tent and persuaded Agamemnon and the Grecian chiefs that Palomedes had received it from the Trojans. He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calamity of Odessius and to the delusion of the leading Greeks. The philosopher Socrates, in the last speech made to his Athenian judges, alludes with solemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palomedes as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer, and his companions seemed to have dwelt with satisfaction on the comparison. Palomedes passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often weighed upon superior genius. In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the Siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the Siege of Cometius by the Cretan armament which came to avenge the death of Minas. Ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odessius were period-suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the hysterizing Greeks who could not be satisfied with either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events. Thucydides tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being, moreover, very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant provisions. Hence, they were compelled to disperse their army and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersenees, a part in marauding expeditions over the neighborhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once, he says? The siege would have been much more speedily and easily concluded. If the great historian could permit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that a simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years duration was so capital a feature in the ancient tale that no critic ventured to meddle with it. A period of comparative intermission, however, was now at hand for the Trojans. The gods brought out the memorable fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused to put on his armor and kept his mermidans in camp. According to the Cypria, this was the behest of Zeus, who had compassion on the Trojans. According to the Iliad, Apollo was the originating cause, from anxiety to avenge the injury which his priest Chrysys had endured from Agamemnon. For a considerable time, the combats of the Greeks against Troy were conducted without their best warrior, and severe, indeed, was the humiliation which they underwent in consequence. How the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for his absence, how Hector and the Trojans defeated and drove them to their ships, how the actual blaze of the destroying flame applied by Hector to the ship of Prteselus, roused up the anxious and sympathizing Patroclus, and extorted a reluctant consent from Achilles to allow his friend and his followers to go forth and avert the last extremity of ruin. How Achilles, when Patroclus had been killed by Hector, forgetting his anger in grief for the death of his friend, reentered the fight, drove the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hector. All of these events have been chronicled, together with those divine dispensations on which most of them are made to depend in the immortal verse of the Iliad. Homer breaks off with the burial of Hector, whose body had just been ransomed by the Disconsolate Priam, while the lost poem of Arctinus, entitled The Ethiopias, so far as we can judge from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the subsequent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyrnius, composed about the fourth century of the Christian era, seems in its first books to coincide with the Ethiopias in the subsequent books partly with the Ilias Minor of Leshies. The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hector, were again animated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful queen of the Amazons, Penthosilia, daughter of Ares, hitherto invincible in the field, who came to their assistance from Thrace at the head of a band of her countrywomen. She again led the besieged without the walls to encounter the Greeks in the open field, and under her auspices the latter were at first driven back until she, too, was slain by the invincible arm of Achilles. The victor, on taking off the helmet of his fair enemy as she lay on the ground, was profoundly affected and captivated by her charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by Thersides.  A violent dispute among the Grecian chiefs was the result, for Diomedes, the kinsmen of Thersides, warmly resented the proceeding, and Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbos, where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odysseus. Next arrived Memnon, son of Tithonus and Eos, the most stately of living men, with a powerful band of black Ethiopians to the assistance of Troy. Sallying forth against the Greeks, he made great havoc among them. The brave and popular, Antelochus, perished by his hand. A victim to filial devotion in defense of Nestor. Achilles at length attacked him, and for a long time the combat was doubtful between them. The prowess of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally prevailed, while Eos obtained for her vanquished son the consoling gift of immortality. His tomb, however, was shown near the propontus, within a few miles of the mouth of the river Isopis, and was visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it and bedooted it with water from the stream. So the traveler Pausanius was told, even in the second century after the Christian era, by the hell-spontine Greeks. But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After routing the Trojans and chasing them into town, he was slain near the skein gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo. The greatest efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was, however, rescued and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valour of Ajax and Odessius. Bitter was the grief of Thetis for the loss of her son. She came into the camp with the muses and the myriads to mourn over him, and when a magnificent funeral pyre had been prepared by the Greeks to burn him with every mark of honour, she stole away the body and conveyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of Lyus in the Euzine Sea. According to some accounts he was there blessed with the nuptials and company of Helen. Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in the honour of her son and offered the unrivaled panoply, which Hephaestus had forged and wrought for him as a prize to the most distinguished warrior in the Grecian army. Odessius and Ajax became rivals for the distinction when Athene, together with some Trojan prisoners who were asked from which of their two country had sustained greatest injury, decided in favour of the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and humiliation. In a fit of frenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for men who had wronged him and then fell upon his own sword. End of Section 10. Section 11 of The Great Events, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Blake Butler. The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 1. Edited by Charles F. Horne, Rosetta Johnson, and John Rudd. Fall of Troy, B.C. 1184, by George Groot, Part 2. Odessius now learned from Hellenus, son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoctetes and Neoptolomnes, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnos in the commencement of the expedition and had spent ten years in misery on that desolate island, but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Heracles, which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Diomedes fetched Philoctetes from Lemnos to the Grecian camp, where he was healed by the skill of a macaion and took an active part against the Trojans, engaging in single combat with Paris and killing him with one of the Heraclean arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their sufferings, but not until it had been mangled by the hand of Menelis. Odessius went to the island of Skyros to invite Neoptolomnes to the army. The untried but impetuous youth, gladly obeying the call, received from Odessius his father's armor, while, on the other hand, Europlius, son of Telophus, came from Myesia as auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them the valuable service, turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their bravest chiefs, among whom were numbered Penelios and the unrivaled Leech Macaion. The exploits of Neoptolomnes were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Europlius, together with numbers of the Myasian warriors. He routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they never again emerged to give battle. And he was not less distinguished for good sense and persuasive than for forward energy in the field. Troy, however, was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the Citadel, and great care had been taken by the Trojans not only to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless, the enterprising Odessius, having disguised his person with miserable clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth way. Helen alone recognized him, but she was now anxious to return to Greece and even assisted Odessius in concerning means for the capture of the town. To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By the hands of Epius and Penopius, and at the suggestion of Athenae, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing 100 men. In the inside of this horse, the elite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptalamus, Odessius, Menelis, and others concealed themselves while the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind. They long doubted what should be done with it, and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced the names and counterfeited the accents of their wives. Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliverance, but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy's legacy. Leicun, the priest of Poizodon, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud. The unfortunate Leicun, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons, two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious councils of Simon, a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information, the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city. The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Simon kindled the fire signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and destroyed with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam, perished by the hand of Neoptalamus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herceus, but his son Diaphobus, who since the death of Prius had become the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelis and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter. Thus was Troy utterly destroyed. The city, the altars and temples and the population. Aeneas and Antinor were permitted to escape, with their families having been always more favorably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the city to the Greeks. A panther's skin had been hung over the door of Antinor's house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to spare it in general plunder. In the distribution of the principal captives, Asteanax, the infant son of Hector, was cast from the top of the wall and killed by Odysseus or Neoptalamus. Polizina, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles, in compliance with the requisition made by the shade of the deceased hero to his countrymen, while her sister Cassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnon. She had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athene, where Ajax, the son of Oilis, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon himself and upon the army, the serious wrath of the goddess, in so much that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death. Andromache and Hellenus were both given to Neoptalamus, who, according to the Ilius Minor, carried away also Aeneas as his captive. Hellen gladly resumed her union with Menelis. She accompanied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity, passing afterward to a happy immortality in the Elysian fields. She was worshiped as a goddess, with her brothers, the Dioscori, and her husband, having her temple statue and altar at Therapne and elsewhere. Various examples of her miraculous intervention were cited among the Greeks. The lyric poet Stysochorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly with her sister, Clytemnestra, in a tone of rude and plain spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips. He was smitten with blindness and made sensible of his impiety, but having repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the Calumny was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation, the famous Polinity now unfortunately lost, he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Hellen had never been at Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried tither, nothing but her image or idolon. It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stysochorus, that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest. Other versions were afterward started, forming a sort of compromise between Homer and Stysochorus, admitting that Hellen had never really been at Troy without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had been driven tither by storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he had committed toward Menelus, had sent him away from the country with severe menaces, detaining Hellen until her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Hellen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly that she never was nor ever had been in the town. But the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement. Menelus did not recover Hellen until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. Such was the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his historicizing mind. For if Hellen had really been at Troy, he argues, she would certainly have been giving up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris. The Trojan king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her. Their misfortune was that, while they did not possess and therefore could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was a fact. Assuming the historical character of the War of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply, nor can we greatly wonder why he acquiesced in the tale of Hellen's Egyptian detention. As a substitute for the incredible sanity which the genuine legend imputes to Priam in the Trojans, Pozanius, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pronounced that the Trojan horse must have been, in point of fact, a battering engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Pain Knight rejects Hellen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan War, though she may have been the pretext of it, for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude for one little woman. Mr. Knight suggests various political causes as substitutes. These might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history. The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, in so much as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and isolated. Moreover, the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their anti-historical and semi-divine world, and an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their narrative abode, and many family misfortunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these historic returns, that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse of Homer, the hero after a series of long protracted suffering and expatriation inflicted on him by the anger of Poisonon, at last reaches his native land, but finds his wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance plundered by a troop of insolent suitors. He is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own purse in their scornful treatment. But finally, by the interference of Athene coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic Haggaius which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains. There were, in antiquity, various other poems of similar title and analogous matter. As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks, who, in the fierce exultation of a victory purchased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even spared the altars of the gods in Troy. Athene, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oilis, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves. Their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness. Even Agamemnon and Menilis lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution. Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nester, Diomedes, Neoptalamus, Idominius, and Phylloctides reached home speedily and safely. Agamemnon also arrived in Peloponnesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife. But Menilis was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest privations in Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere before he could set foot in his native land. The Locrian Ajax perished on the Guyrian Rock, though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods. No sooner did Poizodon hear this language than he struck with his trident the rock which Ajax was grasping, and precipitated both into the sea. Calchus, the soothed seer, together with Leontius and Polly poetices, proceeded by land from Troy to Caliphon. In respect, however, to those and the other Grecian heroes, tales were told different from those in the Odyssey, assigning to them a long expatriation and a distant home. Nestor went to Italy, where he founded Metapontum, Pisa, and Heraclea. Philactides also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Cremisa, and sent settlers to Agista in Sicily. Neoptolamus, under the advice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Adesius, who had come by sea, at Moronia, and then pursued his journey to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians. Idominius came to Italy and founded Eurya in the Salentine Peninsula. Diomedes, after wandering far and wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic Gulf, and finally settled in Duania, founding the cities of Argrepa, Beneventum, Atria, and Diomedia. By the favor of Athene, he became immortal, and was worshiped as a god in many different places. The Locrian followers of Ajax founded the Episaphrian Locrian, on the southernmost corner of Italy, besides another settlement in Libya. The previously exiled Teacros, besides founding the city of Solemus in Cyprus, is said to have established some settlements in the Iberian Peninsula. Menestheus, the Athenian, did the like, and also founded Balthalia, in Maesia, and Skyletium in Italy. The Arcadian chief Agapinor founded Paphos in Cyprus, Epius of Panopius and Phosus, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athene, settled at Lagaria, near Cybarus, on the coast of Italy, and the very tools which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown down to a late date in the temple of Athene at Metapontum. Temples, altars, and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos, and in Crete, the foundation of Agamemnon, or of his followers. The inhabitants of the Grecian town of Sione, in the Thracian Peninsula called Pelene, or Polene, accounted themselves the offspring of the Peleneans from Achaea in Peloponnesus, who had served under Agamemnon before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled. The Pamphylians on the southern coast of Asia Minor deduced their origins from the wanderings of Amphilocus and Calcus after the siege of Troy. The inhabitants of the Amphilocan Argos on the Gulf of Ambrosia revered the same Amphilocus as their founder. The Orchimeneans under Aemonus, on quitting the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Eusene Sea, and the barbarous Achaeans under Mount Caucus were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this source. Mariones, with his Cretan followers, settled at Denguion in Sicily, along with the preceding Cretans who had remained there after the invasion of Minos. The Elmians in Sicily were also composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Agesta. We hear of Potolirius both in Italy and on the coast of Caria, of Achaemus, son of Thessius, at Amphipolis, in Thrace, at Solian Cyprus, and at Sinata, in Fyrgia, of Genius, Prothos, and Neuropilus, in Crete as well as in Libya. The obscure poem of Lycophron enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes whose conquest of Troy was indeed a cadmene victory, according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks, wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished. It was particularly among the Italian Greeks where they were worshipped with a very special solemnity that their presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed. I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as well as that of the Argonaut, one of the most striking features in the Hellenic legendary world. Among them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odessius, whose romantic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by Homer. The goddess Calypso and Circe, the semi-divine mariners of Faesha, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman, the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic Leistragonis, and the wind ruler Eolus, the sirens who ensnare by their song as the lotto-foggy fascinate by their food. All these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odessius re-established in his house and family, but so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life. The epic poem called the Telagonia, ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures. Telagonus, his son by Circe, coming to Ithaca in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odessius without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the son for his undesigned parricade. At his prayer and by the intervention of his mother Circe, both Penelope and Telemachus were made immortal. Telagonus married Penelope and Telemachus married Circe. We see by this poem that Odessius was represented as the mythical ancestor of the Thesprocian kings, just as Neoptolomus was of the Molossian. It has already been mentioned that Antenna and Aeonus stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which was by Sophocles and others construed as treacherous collusion. A suspicion indirectly glanced that, though emphatically repelled by the Aeneas of Virgil, in the old epic of Arctinus, next in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, Aeneas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida in terror at the miraculous death of Leacun before the entry of the Greeks into the town and the last night of battle. Yet Leshies, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptolomus. In a remarkable passage of the Iliad, Poizodon describes the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus and predicts that Aeneas and his descendants shall reign over the Trojans. The race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other sons, would thus be preserved since Aeneas belonged to it. Accordingly, when Aeneas is an imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, Poizodon specifically interferes to rescue him and even the implacable Mesentrojan goddess Hiri assents to the proceeding. These passages have been construed by various able critics to refer to a family of Philo, Hellenic or Semi-Hellenic Aeneid, known even in the time of the early singers of the Iliad as masters of some territory in or near the Troad and professing to be descended from as well as worshipping Aeneas. In the town of Skepsis, situated in the mountainous range of Ida, about 30 miles eastward of Ilium, there existed two noble and priestly families who professed to be descended, the one from Hector, the other from Aeneas. The Skepsian critic Demetrius, in whose time both these families were still to be found, informs us that Skamandrius, son of Hector, and Ascanius, son of Aeneas, were the archa-geths or heroic founders of his native city, which had been originally situated on one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time. In Orizbe and Gentinus, there seemed to have been families professing the same descent since the same archa-geths were acknowledged. In Ophirinium, Hector had his consecrated edifice, while in Ilium both he and Aeneas were worshipped as gods, and it was the remarkable statement of the lesbian Menachrodes that Aeneas, having been wronged by Paris and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks. One tale thus among many respecting Aeneas, and that too, the most ancient of all, preserved among the natives of the Troad, who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was that after the capture of Troy, he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcilable. The hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer, Phadoprophugus, and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of Odessius. We hear of him at the Aeneas and Thrace, in Palani, at Aenea, in the Thermiag Gulf, in Delos, at Orchaminus, and Mantinia in Arcadia, in the islands of Scythira and Zacchaeanthus, in Leuchus and Ambrosia, at Buthrodum, in Aperius, on the Salantim Peninsula, and various other places in the southern regions of Italy, at Drapana, and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape Polinorus, at Cumi, Misenam, Caeta, and finally in Latium, where he lays the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her empire. And the reason why his wanderings were not continued still further was that the oracles and the pronounced will of the gods directed him to settle in Latium. In each of these numerous places his visit was commemorated and certified by local monuments or special legends, particularly by temples and permanent ceremonies in honor of his mother, Aphrodite, whose worship accompanied him everywhere. There were also many temples and many different tombs of Aeneas himself, the vast ascendancy acquired by Rome, the ardor with which all the literary Romans espoused the idea of atrocious origin, and the fact that the Julian family recognized Aeneas as their gentile primary ancestor, all contributed to give the Roman version of this legend the preponderance over every other. The various other places in which monuments of Aeneas were found came thus to be represented as places where he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not extinguished. They claimed the hero as their permanent property, and his tomb was to them proof that he had lived and died among them. Anteanor, who shares with Aeneas the favorable sympathy of the Greeks, is said by Pindar, who have gone from Troy along with Menelis and Helen into the region of Kyrene in Libya. But according to the more current narrative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Aeneid, or Vanity, from Paphlegonia, who had come as allies of Troy and went by sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring barbarians and founded the town of Batavium, the modern Padua. The Vanity in this region were said to owe their origin to his immigration. We learn further from Strabo that Episcolis, one of the companions of Anteanor, had continued his wanderings even into Iberia, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his name. Thus endeth the Trojan War, together with its sequel, the dispersion of the heroes, victors, as well as vanquished.


Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile units together with the General Intelligence Directorate destroyed the 222M3 strategic bomber belonging to the Russian Air Force. The information was released by the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Kolay Olshukda IT is reported that a strategic bomber carrying X-22X-32 missiles in bombing Ukrainian cities was shot down by an S-200 anti-aircraft missile complex, 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, over the Stavropol region of Russia. Olshuk said that it was the first time that the anti-aircraft missile units were able to shoot down this type of aircraft, the Russian Ministry of Defense says that the plane crashed, as a result of which two pilots were injured, one died, and there is no information about the fourth pilot, but he is being sought. The West's failure to send weapons to Ukraine puts Putin on the path to victory, Politico. If the situation at the front does not change soon, then Ukraine in its current form may remain a thing of the past, writes Politico. It is noted that Ukraine's forces are running out of ammunition. Western delays over sending aid mean the country is dangerously short of something even harder to supply than shells, the fighting spirit required to win. The Ukrainian military privately acknowledges that more casualties are inevitable this summer, the only question is how serious they will be. After all, Vladimir Putin has perhaps never been so close to his goal, the publication notes. As Politico points out, for a war of this magnitude, the scale of Western leader's efforts to help Kiev falls far short of their rapid fire rhetoric, and it looks increasingly like Putin's bet that he can crush Ukrainian resistance and Western support may be paying off. Increasingly, it looks as if Putin's bet that he can grind down Ukrainian resistance and Western support may pay off. Without a major step change in the supply of advanced Western weapons and cash, Ukraine won't be able to liberate the territories Putin's forces now hold. That will leave Putin free to gnaw on the wounded country in the months or years ahead. Even if Russia can't finish Ukraine off, a partial victory will leave Kiev's hopes of joining the EU and NATO stuck in limbo. The ramifications of such an outcome will be serious for the world. Putin will claim victory at home and emboldened by exposing Western weaknesses. He may reinvigorate his wider imperial ambitions abroad. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are especially fearful. They are neck on his hit list. China already an increasingly reliable partner for Moscow will see few reasons to alter its stance, Politico says. Several senior officers who spoke on condition of anonymity painted a grim forecast that the front line could collapse this summer as Russia launches its expected offensive. Perhaps worse, they expressed fears that Ukraine's own resolve could be weakened as morale in the military was undermined by desperate shortages of supplies.