io8 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book 11. 



The Age of the Trojan war is not the only Heroic Age in 

 Greece, but there were other ages, both before and after that, 

 which may be juftly called Heroic. Two generations before the 



Trojan 



belief was univcrfal in thofe antient times, thnt the Gods did Interpofe in human 

 afFdirs, and often appeared in vlfible forms. In much later times, the Romans be- 

 Jieved that Caflor and Pollux fought on their fide in the battle of the lake Regilius ; 

 And, in times very much later (liil, 1 have no doubt that many of the Spaniards 

 believed that their tutelary faint, St James, appeared on horfeback to aflift them in 

 a great battle that they had with the Peruvians, (See Garcilaflo de la Vega's Hi- 

 flory of the Incas.) I am therefore perfuaded, that a great part of thofe flo- 

 rics of Gods and Goddeiles alFifling the Greeks and frojans in that war, were not 

 fidlions of Homer, but were (lories generally believed at the time he wrote, as much 

 as ftorjes of witches, ghofls, and apparitions, were believed in this country 200 

 years ago. It may be further afkcd. Whether I do not believe that there is a great 

 deal of allegory in Homer ? To this I anfwer. That there were critics of old, men- 

 tioned by Euftathius in the beginning of his Commentary upon the Iliad, who allego- 

 rized every thing in him, the human as well as the divine perfonages. But Ariflar- 

 chus, the beft critic, 1 believe, that ev;:r wrote upon Homfer, allegorized nothing, 

 as Euilathius tells us in the fame pafiage. And, for my own part, tho' I fee that Homer 

 perfonifies fome qualities of the Mind, fuch as Fame and Strife^ and Fear and Terror ^ 

 (as he does even his darts and arrows, by giving them appetites and defues, as Ari- 

 ilotle, in his Rhetoric^hzs obferved), 1 do not call that an Allegory, as it is defpatchcd 

 in a word or two, or, at moft, in a line or two, but only a poetical figure of didlion ; 

 not like Virgil's defcription of fame^ of which the hint, and, indeed, the fubftance, 

 is taken from Homer*s defcription of Strife^ but which is truly an allegory, being 

 carried on for 16 lines, and is therefore, I think, improper for an heroic poem, 

 which ought, to be a narrative of fadls, wh.rreof the a(Slors are real perfonages, not 

 fuch fhadowy beings. 'Ihe alJegorifing fyftem, however, I like much better than 

 the hypothefis of thofe, who, without feeking for an allegory, fuppofe that, not only 

 the perfonages, fuch as Achilles and Hedor, and even the city of Troy itfelf, are 

 mere fictions, intended only for pleafure and amufement, but likewife the manners 

 and cufloms, civil and religious, which Homer has defcribed fo particularly. Now, 

 I think, the ftrength and fize of his heroes are part of what the Italians call the co- 

 Jlunuy which, therefore, I hold not to be a fidlion, any more than the reft of the 

 cqfiume^ But, if it be true, as I have heard it maintained, that the city of Troy 

 never had an exiftence, there is an end of the fiege of Troy, and of all the events 

 there, narrated by Homer, and all the manners and cuftoms defcribed by him ; and 

 Plutarch mufl- be miftaken, when he relates, that Alexander paid heroic honours to 



Achilles 



