146 



the year 1556 before Christ.* In the ages, called Heroic, 

 robbery and piracy were universally practised; the law of 

 the strongest was almost the only one which they acknow- 

 ledged, and openly avowed.'j- After the siege of Troy, al- 

 most all the cities of Greece were disturbed by seditions; 

 and the return of the Heraclidae, eighty years after that 

 siege, occasioned new commotions: in so much, that many 

 3'ears elapsed before peace Avas restored.:]: This universal 

 fermentation forced many to migrate to Asia, and join 

 their countrymen, long established in Ionia, iEolia, and 

 Doris: yet it was in this tempestuous period, that Homer 

 was born and flourished. It does n©t appear, that any, 

 either in that, or the preceding ages, applied themselves 

 to the improvement of their mother tongue; neither, were 

 it requisite, would their ignorance or circumstances permit 

 them to effect it. AVhen, then, did it attain, or from what 

 ^source did it derive, the excellence it possessed in the most 

 barbarous ages? 



This forms a paradox, which can be solved, only, by 

 supposing, that it originally descended to the Ionic race, 

 from the e?irliest ages, in tlie sfame, or rather in a far su- 

 perior degree of perfection; for, during that transmission, 

 it, probably, contracted those defects, Avhich may be ob- 

 served in the earliest compositions that we now possess.]! 



To 



* 2 Goguet, 1.6, 17, IS. 



+ Thucyd. Lib. I. cap. v. Plutarch. Theseus. 

 X Thucyd. Lib. L cap. xii. 



U Mr. Mitford tells us, " no circumstance, in the history of the Grecian 

 >' people, appears more difficult to account for, even in conjecture, tlian the 



" extraordinary 



