Whether Lord Byron entertained any doubt of Homer’s Troy ever having existed, is not very clear. It is probable, from the little he says on the subject, that he took no interest in the question. For although no traveller could enter with more sensibility into the local associations of celebrated places, he yet never seemed to care much about the visible features of antiquity, and was always more inclined to indulge in reflections than to puzzle his learning with dates or dimensions. His ruminations on the Troad, in Don Juan, afford an instance of this, and are conceived in the very spirit of Childe Harold.
And so great names are nothing more than nominal,
And love of glory’s but an airy lust,
Too often in its fury overcoming all
Who would, as ’twere, identify their dust
From out the wide destruction which, entombing all,
Leaves nothing till the coming of the just,
Save change. I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
And heard Troy doubted—time will doubt of Rome.
The very generations of the dead
Are swept away, and tomb inherits tomb,
Until the memory of an age is fled,
And buried, sinks beneath its offspring’s doom.
Where are the epitaphs our fathers read,
Save a few glean’d from the sepulchral gloom,
Which once named myriads, nameless, lie beneath,
And lose their own in universal death?
No task of curiosity can indeed be less satisfactory that the examination of the sites of ancient cities; for the guides, not content with leading the traveller to the spot, often attempt to mislead his imagination, by directing his attention to circumstances which they suppose to be evidence that verifies their traditions. Thus, on the Trojan plain, several objects are still shown which are described as the self-same mentioned in the Iliad. The wild fig-trees, and the tomb of Ilus, are yet there—if the guides may be credited. But they were seen with incredulous eyes by the poet; even the tomb of Achilles appears to have been regarded by him with equal scepticism; still his description of the scene around is striking, and tinted with some of his happiest touches.
There on the green and village-cotted hill is
Flanked by the Hellespont, and by the sea,
Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles—
They say so. Bryant says the contrary.
And farther downward tall and towering still is
The tumulus, of whom Heaven knows it may be,
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus,—
All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us.
High barrows without marble or a name,
A vast untill’d and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance still the same,
And old Scamander, if ’tis he, remain;
The situation seems still form’d for fame,
A hundred thousand men might fight again
With ease. But where I sought for Ilion’s walls
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.
Troops of untended horses; here and there
Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth,
Some shepherds unlike Paris, led to stare
A moment at the European youth,
Whom to the spot their schoolboy feelings bear;
A Turk with beads in hand and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there, but the devil a Phrygian.
It was during the time that the Salsette lay off Cape Janissary that Lord Byron first undertook to swim across the Hellespont. Having crossed from the castle of Chanak-Kalessi, in a boat manned by four Turks, he landed at five o’clock in the evening half a mile above the castle of Chelit-Bauri, where, with an officer of the frigate who accompanied him, they began their enterprise, emulous of the renown of Leander. At first they swam obliquely upwards, rather towards Nagara Point than the Dardanelles, but notwithstanding their skill and efforts they made little progress. Finding it useless to struggle with [{156}] the current, they then turned and went with the stream, still however endeavouring to cross. It was not until they had been half an hour in the water, and found themselves in the middle of the strait, about a mile and a half below the castles, that they consented to be taken into the boat, which had followed them. By that time the coldness of the water had so benumbed their limbs that they were unable to stand, and were otherwise much exhausted. The second attempt was made on the 3rd of May, when the weather was warmer. They entered the water at the distance of a mile and a-half above Chelit-Bauri, near a point of land on the western bank of the Bay of Maito, and swam against the stream as before, but not for so long a time. In less than half an hour they came floating down the current close to the ship, which was then anchored at the Dardanelles, and in passing her steered for the bay behind the castle, which they soon succeeded in reaching, and landed about a mile and a-half below the ship. Lord Byron has recorded that he found the current very strong and the water cold; that some large fish passed him in the middle of the channel, and though a little chilled he was not fatigued, and performed the feat without much difficulty, but not with impunity, for by the verses in which he commemorated the exploit it appears he incurred the ague.
WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS
If in the month of dark December
Leander who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont,