576 



THE TROAD. 



epithets assigned to it by Homer. He certainly was the son of 

 Jupiter, and in the 21st book his epithets would lead us to expect a 

 considerable river, but after the Trojans in that book had arrived at 

 the ford of the Scamander (II. <Z\ v. 1.), and one part of them fled 

 towards the city, those whom Achilles pursued fled to the left, and 

 the slaughter continued below, and at the confluence of the two rivers. 

 Below that point the united stream retained always the name of the 

 Scamander ; I have elsewhere given reasons for this supposition, for 

 were not the battle between Achilles and the Scamander at least 

 near* the confluence, the demigod could not be so silly as to invoke 

 the assistance of his kinsman the Simois. At that point all the 

 epithets are certainly applicable, and they are but sparingly used if 

 at all in other parts of the poem, where the Scamander is more 

 appropriately complimented as ev^oc; y xaXt^ocg, and on his ayXaov v^g, 

 and kscXu fiesta, Indeed in after-times the Mendere received all the 

 honours due to the Scamander, and probably the alteration arose 

 from the diversion of the original stream ; for notwithstanding the 

 story of the drain made by a Turkish governor, I strongly suspect 

 the present channel of the stream of Bounarbachi to have been a 

 much more ancient work. The amnis navigabilis of Pliny is marked 

 in your maps, and Mr. Walpole's research has completely accounted 

 for the epithet ; but you seem to forget that Pliny expressly calls it 

 the Scamander. A Turkish governor, as you know, was not likely to 

 originate an improvement of this nature, and it is not possible to 

 account for Pliny's expression, but by supposing the new channel of 

 the Scamander, as it is called, to have existed when he wrote. Nor 

 even does the modern name of Mendere appear to have been 

 uniformly applied to the larger river. 



I agree, therefore, with Chevalier, that after the deflection of this 



* I should suppose the entreaty of the Scamander to the Simois most naturally timed 

 when he was driving the hero down his stream to the point of confluence. It should 

 never be forgotten that near this point a single elm pulled down by Achilles formed a 

 bridge across it, a circumstance which can only be applied to such a stream as that of 

 Bounarbachi. 



