And of the Trojan Plain 159 
**Say bringst thou tidings? and concern they 
most 
“My people, or myself? Hast thou alone 
“Heard ought from Phthia? Still, as they 
affirm, 
**Menetius, son of Actor, lives, and still 
“Peleus Atacides. 
Troy remained in safety for nine years, 
because the Trojans kept within their walls: 
a sufficient reason, and the one assigned by 
Homer. The Greeks had not the art of 
storming fortified cities, and never made an 
attempt to do it; and we find that 800 years 
after the Trojan war, the Romans were de- 
tained for 10 years before the walls of Veii.(4) 
Mr. Bryant again objects that there are no 
remains of Troy. But, supposing this to be 
true, we would ask, what can he reasonably 
expect to survive of a city, sacked and burnt 
3,000 years ago ?—of a city too, known only 
as the subject of a poem, when the ruins of 
the mighty Babylon can scarcely be distin- 
guished from the plain on which it stood! 
But Scepticism has no limit: nothing has 
ceased to be, the existence of which may 
not be disputed, and, perhaps, nothing exists, 
which will not some day be called in question. 
(4) Veii was taken A. C. 391. 
