46 
clarke’s travels. 
the Trojan war, yet destitute of any reference to the works of 
Homer, we meet with documents proving the existence of tra¬ 
ditions independent of his waitings ;* arid in these we have 
evidence of the truth of the war, which cannot be imputed to 
his invention.! With regard to other antiquities where coinci¬ 
dence 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 originate in a single fiction, whatever 
might have been the degree of popularity that fiction had ob¬ 
tained. Every sculptured onyx, and pictured patera, derived 
from sepulchres of most remote antiquity 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 ancient history and of man¬ 
kind. It is more rational to conclude, that both the artist and 
the poet borrowed the incidents they pourtray from the tradi¬ 
tions of their country; that even the bard himself found, in the 
remains of former ages, many of .the subjects afterward intro¬ 
duced by him among his writings. This seems evident from 
his description of the shield of Achilles; and, if it should be 
remarked, that works of art cannot be considered as having 
afforded representations of this nature in the early period to 
which allusion is made, it would be expedient to dwell upon 
this particular part of Homer’s poem, and, from the minuteness 
of the detail, derive, not only internal evidence of an exemplar 
whence the imagery was derived, but also of the perfection 
attained by the arts of Greece in the period when the de¬ 
scription was given.J Later poets, particularly Virgil and 
Ovid, evidently borrowed the machinery of their poems from 
specimens of ancient art, which even their commentators are 
* “ That the ancients differed as to the circumstances of the Trojan war, is well 
known; and that some variations, even in the accounts of those who were actors in 
that scene, left the poet at liberty to adopt or reject facts, as it best suited his pur¬ 
pose, is highly probable...Euripides chose a subject for one of his plays, 
which supposes that Helen never was at Troy; ..yet we cannot suppose that 
he would have deserted Homer without any authority.As the first poets 
differed with regard to the Trojan war, so their brother artists adopted variations. 
.Poiygnotus did not always follow Homer.” Wood's Essay on Homer, pp. 183, 
184- 
f When the Persians, lajnng claim to all Asia, alleged, as the occasion of their en¬ 
mity 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. 
Vid. Hcrodot. lib. i. 
Jf See also the remarkable description of Nestor’s cup, in the eleventh book of the 
Iliad; and the observations relating to it, in my Grandfather’s Work upon Roman 
and Saxon coins, Cowper acknowledged himself indebted to the learning and in¬ 
genuity of my ancestor for the new version introduced by him of a long-mistaken 
passage in Homer’s description of that cup. 
