[711] He constantly appears in the Mahabhárata, especially in Book I.
[712] Some writers are determined to find chess amongst the Romans, and quote the Panegyric of Piso, and the game of Latrunculi. But if so, where are their chessmen? The earliest allusion in any known author is in Anna Comnena’s Alexias, when the First Crusade had done some good by mixing the Eastern and the Western worlds.
[713] Loc. cit. p. 61.
[714] Sport in British Burmah (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879).
[715] Lib. ii. cap. 53.
[716] The earliest date of the famous siege is b.c. 1370 (Justin, like the Arundelian marbles, gives b.c. 1184), and the latest is b.c. 724–636. In Troy and its Remains, we find (p. 123) that the age proposed for the founding of the city is b.c. 1400; that the war took place after the reigns of six kings (p. 27), say two centuries, or in b.c. 1200; and that Homer lived 200 years after the destruction of the city (p. 91), or in b.c. 1000. Thus Herodotus and Dr. Schliemann do not agree; but what possible agreement can there be upon such a subject?
[717] Would it not be more prudent to say ‘not hitherto found’?
[718] Dr. Schliemann, Ilias.
[719] The Arab, or rather the Moslem, practice of Koran-reading may explain that of ancient Greece. There are two distinct ways: the vulgar, as though it were a profane book; and the learned with peculiar intonation (Kirá’at), of which there are some seventy systems. The Hindús recite with a similar artful modification. So the Hellenes would either pronounce their scriptures, Homer and Hesiod, according to popular accent, or intone by quantity. That men ever wrote accents without pronouncing them is one of those wild theories which can commend itself only to a savant. Besides, we know that as late as the eleventh century there were Greek authors who wrote indifferently according to accent or quantity.
[720] The tools known to the Iliad were those of Central Africa, anvil, hammer, and tongs (Il. xviii. 477, and Od. iii. 434–5).