662 PROGRESSIVE DEGENERACY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



struction of Troy, and consequently conversed with the descendants, 

 in a very near degree, of the warriors whose exploits he celebrates. 

 He acquaints us that, in his age, two of the strongest men would be 

 unable to raise from the earth the fragments of rock with which 

 Hector, Ajax, and Diomed saluted the heads and skins of their op- 

 ponents. These fragments, it appears, were flying about in those 

 days as thick and fast as pebbles at a cock-shy. The exact and ma- 

 thematical Virgil, treating of the same generation, and having before 

 him the exact ratio of the decline down to his own age, allows twelve 

 vigorous athletae of the Augustan age, 



" Q'talia mine hominum producit corpora tellus" ^EN. Lib. 12. 



" Men of such frame as earth produces now." 



For the mere operation of moving the stone with which Turnus 

 proposed to break the head of his adversary ^Eneas. What but 

 manifest truth could have caused two authors of different ages and 

 nations to coincide with such nicety in their calculations? The 

 mace with which Ajax repelled the Trojans from the Grecian 

 fleet was twenty-two cubits fycoxai tMaw/j, or nearly thirty-six 

 English feet in length ; and the ordinary spear of Hector, which that 

 hero was accustomed to dart to the full range of a modern rifle-ball, 

 was half as long, or about eighteen feet English. I must here halt, 

 by the way, to animadvert on Pope, who, in his version, does not do 

 justice to the weapon of Ajax, by at least three feet, and to that of 

 Hector in the same proportion his translation runs thus : 



" A ponderous mace, with studs of iron crown'd, 



Full twenty cubits long, he swings around." Book 15. 



And again, 



" Of full ten cubits was the lance's length." Book 8. 

 Whereas the Greek bard assures us it was exactly eleven cubits long. 

 I could quote the original, but least I should be suspected of osten- 

 tatiously wishing to display my reading, I shall leave the learned 

 inquirer to refer to the passage himself, and content myself, in the 

 succeeding quotations, with Pope's otherwise admirable performance. 

 But neither the lance of Hector, nor the mace of Ajax, could stand a 

 comparison with the spear of Achilles, which was one of the largest 

 ashes on Mount Pelion : 



" An ash. entire 

 Great Chiron fell'd, and shap'd it for his sire." 



The mass of iron hurled by Polypaetes to an enormous distance 

 and won by him as his prize, at the funeral games in honour of 

 Patroclus, was of such size as to suffice for stocking a large farm for 

 the space of five years, with plough-shares, iron tools, and utensils of 

 every descripti on ; but he was a remarkably strong man. 



The appetite of these renowned Greeks, as it may easily be 

 supposed, was on a par with their prowess, and will serve to illus- 

 trate my position. In the present day, I venture to assert, on my 

 own experience and capability, that the aggregate of men, in the 

 fullest enjoyment of health and vigour, will find themselves puzzled 

 to consume, at a single onset, more than three or four pounds of 



