100 PLAIN OF TROY. 
CHAP, have evidence of the truth of the war, v^^hich 
IV. . , . 
v— V -^ cannot be imputed to his invention'. With 
regard to other antiquities where coincidence 
may be discerned between the representation 
of the Artist and the circumstances of the 
Poem, it may also be urged, that they could 
not all have originated in a single fiction, what- 
soever might have been the degree of popularity 
which that fiction had obtained. Every sculp- 
tured onyx, and every pictured patera, found 
in sepulchres of most remote antiquity and in 
distant parts of all the Isles and Continents of 
Greece, cannot owe the subjects they represent 
to the writings of an individual. This were to 
contradict all our knowledge of antient history 
and of mankind. It is more rational to con- 
clude, that both the Artist and the Poet bor- 
rowed the incidents they pourtray from the 
traditions of their country ; that even the Bard 
himself found, in the remains of former ages, 
many of the subjects afterwards introduced by 
him among his writings. This seems to be evident 
from his description of the Shield of jichilles ; 
and, if it should be remarked, that works of 
art cannot be considered as having afforded 
(0 When the Persians, laying claim to all Asia, alleged, as the 
occasion of their emnity to the Greeks, the hostile invasion of Priam, 
and the destruction of Troy by Agamemnon, it cannot be said they 
borrowed the charge from the Poems of Homer. P id. Herodot. lib. i. 
