82 TABLEAU de la PLAINE de TROTE. 



No. II. (p. 73.). 



Mr Heyne's Note, additional to Mr Dalzel's, on Achilles's 

 Piir/iiit of H¥.CTOK. (Iliad, XXII. 165.). 



LONG as this note has been *, I find it neeeflary ftill to fub- 

 join another. We ought, 1 think, to take up the fubjedl in this 

 way. Here, as frequently happens in regard to Homer, two 

 diftindl queflions occur : i. How the Ancients underftood Ho- 

 mer ? 2. How he Jiiay and Jhould be underftood ? 



Unquestionably the ancients often underftood their Ho- 

 mer furprifingly ill ; and in the inftance before us it may very 

 well have happened that they miftook his meaning. His com- 

 mentators have conftantly been deficient in point of acquaint- 

 ance with the topography of the Troad. Seldom was this rug- 

 ged coaft vifited by travellers, as no great road either led to or 

 run through it. Over the precipices of Mount Ida it was hardly 

 pofTible that there fliould lie any much frequented path. To 

 the prefent hour this coaft continues to be but rarely vifited. 

 Thofe tra«fls only are known to tis through which caravans tra^ 

 vel. Even where an accurate acquaintance with the topography 

 of the country might have been moft confidently looked for, 

 in Strabo for inftance, we find nothing more than an abridg- 

 ment of the accounts of Demetrius of Scepfis ; and that this 

 laft mentioned author, in his examination of the groundi> car- 

 ried throughout in his mind a preconceived hypothefis, is evi- 

 dent in what relates to the fountains of the Simois and Seaman- 

 der. This may perhaps have been the cafe too, when he aflTert}- 



ed 



• See the Englilh Tranflation of M-. Chevalier's Eflay, p. i'35s &c. ; and the 

 German, p. 206, Sec. D. 



