APPENDIX, No. I. 77 



To the edition in 1775 of Wood's Fffay on the Original Genius 

 mid Writings o/" Homer, was added his Comparative View of the 

 ancient and prejent State of the Troad. Some years afterwards, I 

 read in the Society a paper attempting to explain the miUtary 

 tranfa(fhions in the Iliad, according to the topography of the 

 country*. Had^I kept by Homer I fhould have fallen into 

 fewer n\iftakes : but, unfortunately, from confidence in fuch a 

 man as Wood, who had vifited the country with his Homer in 

 his hand, I took him and his chart of the Troad for my guides, 

 and thus allowed myfelf to be entangled in fuch a labyrinth of 

 errors, that I ftrove in vain to extricate myfelf. 



The main blunder in Wood is the alteration of the fources 

 of the Scamander, and the confequent placing of ancient Troy 

 deep in the mountainous region of Ida. Every thing elfe was 

 now confounded. Wood did not perceive that Demetrius of 

 Scepils, whom Str a bo follows, builds, in this inftance, on a 

 mere hypothefis. Demetrius, I imagine, founded it on an er- 

 roneous interpretation of Iliad, XII. 18, &c. f, which he under- 

 ftood geographically, without confidering that he had before 

 him a poet, not a geographer. Wood, indeed, traced the courfe 

 of a flream, till at laft he found another that flowed into it : he 

 then fought the fources of this new ftream, and difcovered 

 them. Thus far, all is accurately obferved, and coincides with 

 Demetrius's affertion. But was this ftream of courfe the 

 Scamander ? and was Troy to be immediately transferred to 

 that fpot ? Had not Strabo preceded him with a multitude 

 of doubts ? Wood helped himfelf out with changes of nature, 

 which muft have taken place here, and have altered of confe- 

 quence the face of the country. But fuch changes hiftory knows 

 of only upon the coaft, or when occafioned by the overflow of 



rivers ; 



* This paper is publiflied in Commentat. Sac. Reg. Scientiarum GottingenfiSy 

 torn. VI. under the title of De acie Homirica, et de oppugnatione cajltorum a Tro.- 

 janis fa£}a. 



i See above, p. 6i. 



