570 THE TROAD. 



It is then apparent that Demetrius and Strabo considered the Men- 

 dere as the Scamander ; and though I doubt the justice of that conclu- 

 sion, yet your researches have completely satisfied me as to the 

 accuracy of their description. 



Allow me, then, at last, to revert to Homer, from whom alone I 

 think the clue is to be obtained which will guide us out of the laby- 

 rinth in which we have wandered. And, first, with regard to the 

 situation of the Grecian camp and fleet. I am led to place it at 

 Sigseum, from the following circumstances. All the tombs, except the 

 Aianteum, are to the west of the Mendere river ; and that one of these 

 at Sigseum was always celebrated as the tomb of Achilles, we have the 

 concurrent testimony of ancient history ; the tomb of Patroclus, 

 whether a cenotaph as described in the Iliad, or that in which his 

 ashes, mixed with those of his friend, were deposited according to the 

 Odyssey, must also have been in this part of the plain. That these 

 tombs were at no great distance from Achilles's station, we may, I 

 think, gather from the description, given in the twenty-third book 

 of the Iliad, of the funeral rites of Patroclus. I think, too, that the 

 situation of the tomb of Patroclus at the Sigsean promontory is 

 marked by the arrival and return of the winds Boreas and Zephyrus 

 over " the Thracian sea." II. f. v. 230. This position of the sea to 

 the north and west agrees remarkably with the situation of the tombs 

 at the Sigsean promontory, which appear, I think, also to have been in 

 or immediately adjacent to the camp. That the camp was here, 

 appears farther from the inimitable picture of Achilles in the first 

 book, " sitting apart from his friends," ifi aXoq mktSts o^oiov \ir\ 

 o'Ivotto. 7T ovtov. This surfy shore, and black sea beyond it, I have always 

 considered as applicable to the JEgean, and not to the bounded view 

 across the Hellespont. If the Grecian camp was at Sigceum, and the 

 tents of Achilles and the Myrmidons at the western extremity of that 

 camp, I need not point out to you how exactly the position would 

 agree with the circumstances thus alluded to. Here, too, we have the 

 $7vec7ro*v<p\<>i'<r(-oio QaXiiro-iju where Chryses addressed Apollo, the patron 

 of Tenedos, a picture surely made more natural on this supposition, as 



