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that the Athenians were a people fond even to a proverb of 

 fidion and romance; that they frequently adopted and main- 

 tained opinions relative to antient cuftoms, &c. without any 

 foundation : I acknowledge that the moft impartial of all hirto- 

 rians, Thucydides, freely declares his apprehenfions that his ac- 

 count of the Peleponnchan war will not pleafe, on account of 

 the attachment of the Athenians to fable. But although it 

 might have been matter of difpute at Athens whether Iphigenia 

 was really facrificed at Aulis or not, yet whether their anceftors 

 and the Trojans fpoke the fame language was a queflion not 

 confined to the poets ; it related to the whole community, and 

 confequently, whatever diftance of time there was between the 

 taking of Troy and the days of iEfchylus, could not have been 

 involved in much obfcurity. 



The works of Homer were not confined to a particular clafs 

 in fociety ; they were not read by hiftorians, or philofophers, or 

 "ftatefmen alone. If they were ftudied by Anaxagoras or Peri- 

 cles, or applauded by the uncommon fenfe and fuperior tafte of 

 Afpafia, they were at the fame time the delight and the inftruc- 

 tion of the multitude : They were, as every one knows, recited 

 at the facred feftivals ; their authority was admitted as unquef- 

 tionable in judicial pleadings. It is fcarccly poiTible to fuppofc 

 that a people fo penetrating, fo inquifitive, fo ingenious as the 

 Athenians, could have been fo converfant as they were with the 

 works of Homer without inveltigating a queftion the moft natu- 

 ral that could occur to them on reading that poet ; did the 

 Greeks and the Trojans ufe the fame language ? If the times in 

 which the tragedies of ^fchylus were aded with peculiar appro- 

 bation 



