THE TROJAN WAR. 



61 



and the Baltic. Other tracks laid down are equally prepos- 

 terous in the eyes of modern geography. Herodotus adopts the 

 tradition that they returned by the same way they went, — the 

 only way, indeed, they could have returned, — by water. The 

 reader, in view of the romantic embellishments with which this 

 story is loaded, and of the strong doubts resting upon it as an 

 historical event, must choose, from among the various theories 

 we have given, the one he deems the most satisfactory. 



One generation after the date we have assigned to this expe- 

 dition occurred the Trojan War. In the year 1194 B.C., all the 

 Greek states, with Agamemnon at their head, united to revenge 

 the insult offered to Menelaus, King of Sparta, by the Trojan 

 prince Paris, who had carried off the king's wife Helen. During 

 the interval the Greeks, if the Homeric account is to be believed, 

 had made great advances in the arts of ship-building and navi- 

 gation ; for in a very short time eleven hundred and fifty ships 

 were collected at Aulis, the general rendezvous. The Boeotians 

 furnished fifty, and the other states contributed in proportion. 

 Each of them contained one hundred and twenty warriors; they 

 must therefore have been vessels of considerable magnitude. 

 All the ships are described as having masts which could be 

 taken down as occasion required. The sail could only be used 

 when the wind was directly astern. The delicate art of sailing in 

 the wind's eye, or of making to the north with a north wind, 

 was not yet understood. The principal propelling power lay in 

 the oars, which turned in leathern thongs as a key in its hole. 

 Homer represents the ships to have been black, from the color 

 of the pitch with which they were smeared. The sides near the 

 prow were often painted red, whence vessels are sometimes 

 called by the poets red-cheeked. On their arrival upon the 

 Trojan coast, the Greeks drew their fleet up on the land and 

 anchored them by means of large stones. They then surrounded 

 them with fortifications, to protect them from the enemy. 



Homer, who lived two centuries later, — 1000 B.C., — has left us 



