And of the Trojan Plain 161 
of the course of an army, or the action of 
his heroes. 
That Troy, indeed, stood in the neigh- 
bourhood of Ida and the Hellespont, we 
learn from almost every page of the [had, but 
the passages which determine the particular 
plain, the scene of his battles, are neither 
numerous, nor minute; yet fortunately for 
our investigation, there is only one plain in 
the whole district of Ida to which they can 
refer. 
In the thirteenth book of the Iliad, we read 
that Neptune, seated on the heights of Samo- 
thrace, «« Surveyed 
“With wonder thence the tumult of the field ; 
“For thence appeared all Ida, thence the 
towers 
“Of lofty Ilium, and the fleet of Greece. 
Iliad XII. 16. 
Now as there is only one plain which opens 
on the sea in the direction of Ida, and Sam- 
othrace commands a full view of it in its 
whole extent, we may fairly conclude this to 
be the plain of Troy. That it is the true 
scene of the [liad we may further infer from 
the following circumstances. 
It is bounded towards the sea by two re- 
markable promontories, those of Sigeum and 
Rheteum, which, though not named by 
x 
