Hesitæa is cited more than once in the Homeric Scholia (Schol. Venet. ad Iliad, iii. 64; Enstath. ad Iliad, ii. 538).
[807] Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἴχνος σώζεται τῆς ἀρχαίας πόλεως—εἰκότως· ἅτε γὰρ ἐκπεπορθημένων τῶν κύκλῳ πόλεων, οὐ τελέως δὲ κατεσπασμένων, οἱ λίθοι πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων ἀνάληψιν μετηνέχθησαν.
[808] Appian, Mithridat. c. 53; Strabo, xiii. p. 594; Plutarch, Sertorius, c. 1; Velleius Paterc. ii. 23.
The inscriptions attest Panathenaic games celebrated at Ilium in honor of Athênê by the Ilieans conjointly with various other neighboring cities (see Corp. Inscr. Boeckh. No. 3601-3602, with Boeckh’s observations). The valuable inscription No. 3595 attests the liberality of Antiochus Soter towards the Iliean Athênê as early as 278 B. C.
[809] Arrian, i. 11; Appian ut sup.; also Aristidês, Or. 43, Rhodiaca, p. 820 (Dindorf p. 369). The curious Oratio xi. of Dio Chrysostom, in which he writes his new version of the Trojan war, is addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium.
[810] The controversy, now half a century old, respecting Troy and the Trojan war—between Bryant and his various opponents, Morritt, Gilbert Wakefield, the British Critic, etc., seems now nearly forgotten, and I cannot think that the pamphlets on either side would be considered as displaying much ability, if published at the present day. The discussion was first raised by the publication of Le Chevalier’s account of the plain of Troy, in which the author professed to have discovered the true site of Old Ilium (the supposed Homeric Troy), about twelve miles from the sea near Bounarbashi. Upon this account Bryant published some animadversions, followed up by a second treatise, in which he denied the historical reality of the Trojan war, and advanced the hypothesis that the tale was of Egyptian origin (Dissertation on the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians as described by Homer, showing that no such Expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed, by Jacob Bryant; seemingly 1797, though there is no date in the title-page: Morritt’s reply was published in 1798). A reply from Mr. Bryant and a rejoinder from Mr. Morritt, as well as a pamphlet from G. Wakefield, appeared in 1799 and 1800, besides an Expostulation by the former addressed to the British Critic.
Bryant, having dwelt both on the incredibilities and the inconsistencies of the Trojan war, as it is recounted in Grecian legend generally, nevertheless admitted that Homer had a groundwork for his story, and maintained that that groundwork was Egyptian. Homer (he thinks) was an Ithacan, descended from a family originally emigrant from Egypt: the war of Troy was originally an Egyptian war, which explains how Memnôn the Ethiopian came to take part in it: “upon this history, which was originally Egyptian, Homer founded the scheme of his two principal poems, adapting things to Greece and Phrygia by an ingenious transposition:” he derived information from priests of Memphis or Thêbes (Bryant, pp. 102, 108, 126). The Ἥρως Αἰγύπτιος, mentioned in the second book of the Odyssey (15), is the Egyptian hero, who affords, in his view, an evidence that the population of that island was in part derived from Egypt. No one since Mr. Bryant, I apprehend, has ever construed the passage in the same sense.
Bryant’s Egyptian hypothesis is of no value; but the negative portion of his argument, summing up the particulars of the Trojan legend, and contending against its historical credibility, is not so easily put aside. Few persons will share in the zealous conviction by which Morritt tries to make it appear that the 1100 ships, the ten years of war, the large confederacy of princes from all parts of Greece, etc., have nothing but what is consonant with historical probability; difficulties being occasionally eliminated by the plea of our ignorance of the time and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7-21). Gilbert Wakefield, who maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost intensity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Paine (W. p. 17), is still more displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells us that “grave disputation in the midst of such darkness and uncertainty is a conflict with chimæras” (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 modern, that a superstructure of fiction is to be distinguished from a basis of truth, and that the latter is to be maintained 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 plausible; 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 correspondence 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. Remarks, p. 47).