A P P E N D I X, No. I. 77 



To the edition in 1775 of Wood's Efay on the Original Genius 

 and Writings of Homer, was added his Comparative View of the 

 ancient and prefent State of the Troad. Some years afterwards, I 

 read in the Society a paper attempting to explain the miUtary 

 tranfacftions in the lUad, according to the topography of the 

 com:itry*. Had J kept by Homer I fhould have fiillen into 

 fewer miflakes : but, unfortunately, from confidence in fuch a 

 man as Wood, who had viiited the country with his Homer in 

 his hand, I took him and his chart of the Troad for my guides, 

 and thus allowed myfelf to be entangled in fuch a labyrinth of 

 errors, that I ftrove in vain to extricate myfelf. 



The main blunder in Wood is the alteration of the fources 

 of the Scamander, and the confequent placing of ancient Troy 

 deep in the mountainous region of Ida. Every thing elfe was 

 now confounded. Wood did not perceive that Demetrius of 

 Scepfis, whom Str a bo follows, builds, in this inftance, on a 

 mere hypothefis. Demetrius, I imagine, founded it on an er- 

 roneous interpretation of Iliad, XII. 18, &c. f, which he under- 

 ftood geographically, without confidering that he had before 

 him a poet, not a geographer. Wood, indeed, traced the courfe 

 of a ftream, till at laft he found another that flowed into it : he 

 then fought the fources of this new flream, and difcovered 

 them. Thus far, all is accurately obferved> and coincides with 

 Demetrius's afTertion. But was this ftream of courfe the 

 Scamander ? and was Troy to be immediately transferred to 

 that fpot ? Had not Str a bo preceded him with a multitude 

 of doubts ? Wood helped himfelf out with changes of nature, 

 which mufl have taken place here, and have altered of confe- 

 quence the face of the country. But fuch changes hiftory knows 

 of only upon the coaft, or when occafioned by the overflow of 



rivers :. 



* This paper is publiflied in Commentat. Soc. Reg. Scientiarum GottingenfiSy 

 torn. VI. under the title of De acie Homerica, et de oppugnatione cajirorum a Tro^ 

 janis faSia. 



t See above, p. 61. 



