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or a negative lesson. It is said, that the great 

 moral of the Iliad is, to teaeh-the Greeks the 

 advantages of union. The Greeks, in the time 

 of Homer, had no formidable common enemy, 

 iiSiin a later period, when the Persian power 

 threatened the general ruin of Greece, at«t^ 

 therefore, what circumstance suggested :r to 

 Homer the importance of this moral, so as to 

 found his poem upon it, is rather difficult to 

 say. The critics, however, have pronounced 

 this to be the moral, to w^hich the whole Iliad 

 is adapted, and such an implicit faith is ren- 

 dered to their sentence, that it would be con- 

 sidered as a degree of scepticism to dispute it. 

 It must be acknow^ledged, that this moral is 

 fairly to be collected from the Ihad, but whe- 

 ther Homer designed it, or no, and fashioned 

 his poem to this purpose, is very uncertain. — 

 It is probable that he took the tradition of the 

 siege of Troy and the characters of its prin- 

 cipal actors, as they were committed to him, 

 and formed therefrom a popular tale, enriched 

 with the embellishments of poetry. It is no 

 wonder, that discord entered into the history 

 and that Homer exhibited it in his poem,' be* 

 cause he found it in the history; as discord could 

 hardly fail to be the issue of a confederacy, 

 formed by rude, undisciplined and indenendent 

 chieftains. May it not with equal probability 



