188 Remarks on the Site of Troy 
the term left can mean only the left of 
Hector, or the Trojans, that is, to the west 
of the plain, for Ajax himself was fighting 
on the Grecian left or eastern side. Hector 
was moreover ‘on the left of all the war,” or 
as his charioteer just afterwards observes, “on 
the skiris of all the battle; and as, at the 
same time, he was ‘‘beside Scamander,” the 
whole plain on which the armies were con- 
tending, must have lain between that river 
and the Throsmos. By anecessary inference 
it follows, that the Scamander in the lowest 
part of its course crossed over from the 
neighbourhood of New Ilium and the tomb 
of Ilus on the eastern, to the western side of 
the plain, and consequently discharged itself 
at Sigeum. By thus crossing over from one 
side of the plain to the other, the river would 
describe a line in some measure parallel tothe 
coast, and thus admit of, and beautifully ex- 
plain, the position of the Trojan watch fires, 
described as 
‘Between the stream 
“Of Xanthus blazing and the fleet of Greece. 
Iliad VIIT. 642. 
Strabo says, that in his time the Simois 
‘and Scamander formed a junction near New 
Ilium,- and then flowed towards Sigeum. 
the Scamander, and if we assign it a position half way between that 
tiver and the Throsmos, we cannot be far from the truth. 
