Example from the Trojan legend,
but not therefore false.
§ 22. I will take an instance which the reader will naturally expect to find discussed in this Essay—the legend of the siege of Troy. It may be quite true that old names and old metaphors about the
sun or the summer lie hidden in the names of the heroes. It is to me certain that older stories were taken from their place and fitted on to the newer and more celebrated circumstances of this famous War. But all this I take to be not inconsistent with fact, but even to imply as a necessity that there must really have been such a war, which excited the minds of all the Greeks of a certain date, and so formed the obvious nucleus for all the poetical adventures which clung around it.
The contribution of Dr. Schliemann.
History not an exact science.
The brilliant researches of Dr. Schliemann have demonstrated that the locus of the legend was not chosen at random, but that Troy, or Iliom, was in the first place the site of a prehistoric settlement; in the next, that it was conquered and burned, and re-settled again and again. There existed, moreover, a venerable shrine in the obscure historic town, to which the Locrians, at an early date, sent donations of virgins to atone for the outrage of their mythical ancestor, the lesser Ajax of the Iliad. These facts show that here, as elsewhere, the legend formed itself about a historic site, and with some nucleus of historic fact,—how much will probably for ever remain a subject of dispute[42:1].
If history were an exact science, in which strict demonstration were required at every step, this conclusion might warrant our pursuing Grote's course and rejecting the whole legend as imaginary. But history is really a science of probabilities, in which this perhaps is the greatest charm, that it leaves large room to the imagination in framing hypotheses to supply a rational explanation of results which come before us full-grown, without their beginnings being recorded.
I am not concerned here with the problem of the origin of the Homeric poems. Those who desire a summary of modern research in this great field, and care to know what conclusions I have adopted, may consult my Greek Literature, in which the English reader for the first time found a full conspectus of this great controversy[43:1]. What now comes before us is to estimate the amount of historical truth which can be extracted from our so-called Homer.
Historical value of the Homeric poems.