age

he eminently poffeffed; the electric fire of his genius excited not only poets, but orators, painters, and sculptors, to that fublime which their several arts afterwards attained in his country. His topographical defcriptions (pp) were acknowledged fo exact, that his decision was looked to as legal proof, many ages after, by ftates contending for their limits. He is the firft and fole author from whom any real knowledge of thefe diftant times can be drawn. Without giving us a regular history, he has furnished the most interefting picture of the ftate of Greece at the time of the Trojan war, or more probably of its fituation in his own time. In his two poems he carries us not only into every part of Greece and Afia minor, but to every coast of the Mediterranean then frequented by his countrymen. He makes us acquainted with their inhabitants, with their genealogies and manners. In the Iliad it appears that the continent of Greece, as far as the mountains of Macedonia, the adjacent ifles, whether of the Egean or Adriatic feas, with thofe of Crete and Rhodes, were then divided into about 38 little kingdoms. All of thefe were leagued under their feveral kings in this grand expedition against Troy. To make his court, no doubt, to their defcendants, Homer traces with complaifance the genealogies of many of the heroes, both of Greece, and Afia minor become Grecian in his days. None of thefe, I think, rife beyond the fixth generation, and many ftop fhort of that number at fome god or goddess, from whom the defcent is derived. This is to say that the origin is loft or unknown, and is not reckoned but from those men

who

*

who first dared to feparate themselves from the herd of their contemporaries by fuch bold pretenfions, with which they environed their former obfcurity, in order to subjugate to their laws an ignorant and favage people. This clearly intimates that the greatest part of those states, whofe leaders warred at Troy, were not formed into focieties 220 years before its fiege, and many of them much later. Priam, whofe power and opulence fo much furpaffed thofe any of these petty kings, was only the fixth defcendant from the founder of his ftate. Troy itself, which feems to have fo far excelled all the towns of Greece in grandeur and magnificence, was built by his fourth predeceffor. How unlikely is it then, that any of the kingdoms or towns of Greece should date fo many centutries before it as their chronologies pretend!

of

Homer gives us the number of the Grecian army under its divers chiefs. By Mr. Pope's conputation it amounted to 102,000 men (qq). No account is given of the Trojan army and their allies, who comprehended all the nations inhabiting the western coaft of Asia minor, of Thrace, and of part of Macedonia. That he may have fomewhat exaggerated the ftrength of his countrymen is poffible. This he seems conscious of, by telling us, that it was from the mufe herself, who alone could know it, that he derived the information. But the Grecian army, fuch as he reckons it, may serve as a basis, though perhaps too high a one, on which to conjecture the probable population of thofe countries in the times of which he fpeaks. In an

expedition in which the whole nation concurred with enthusiasm, in which every one of their kings without exception headed his troops, and in an age wherein every man was a foldier, and when the spoils of an opulent city must have strongly excited the cupidity of men accustomed to depredation and piracy, we may reasonably suppose every eighth man capable of bearing arms, or every thirtieth inhabitant, would embark. It appears indeed that Greece long felt the lofs of fuch numbers. This fuppofition would give us about three millions for the whole population at those times; whilst from history we may deduce, that those countries, including the great islands of Crete and Rhodes, must, some ages after, have contained fifteen millions of people. Even at this day, after 400 years oppreffion under the depopulating government of the Ottomans; at this day, when the astonishing number of cities flourishing under their republics, long proftrate in the duft, fhew at moft by a few scattered ruins the grounds on which they formerly ftood, the population of all thefe parts taken together rifes to feven or eight millions. It is fufficiently known, that the great progreffes of population commence not but with civil and permanent fociety; and that of three millions at the time of the Trojan war agrees well with the date of the foundations of the Grecian cities deduced from their corrected chronologies. In nearly the fame space of time the population of North America, which, like Greece, has received into its bofom fucceffive troops of adventurers, rifes not to three millions. But the new Grecian colonies had the advantage which those of America have

not had, of incorporating with the antient ftraggling tribes of the countries in which they fettled. Thefe two circumftances of the foundation of towns, and of the probable population of Greece 250 years after, mutually fupport and confirm each other; and both together prove the antiquity of civilized Greece much more recent than is pretended by fubfequent hiftorians, who, as we have already obferved, for want of real dates framed to themselves an erroneous technical chronology, by prolonging the reigns of kings much beyond the courfe of nature. Contrary to all probabilities, the building of Sicyon is by them placed 282 years before that of any other city in the fame country; 905 years before the taking of Troy; and 1411 after the date which Mr. Bailly thinks proper to give to the deluge. It is furely difficult to believe that countries fo fertile and fo contiguous to Afia, fhould not have been peopled by more than three millions of inhabitants in so long a space. From this furvey, and these prefumptive evidences, certainly as legitimate as those that can be derived from chronologies fraught, as we have seen, with fuch uncertainties and fallacies, I think myfelf entitled to conclude, that feveral centuries may probably be discounted both from the ordinary evaluation of the antiquity of Grecian cities, and from the date affigned by Mr. Bailly for the renovation of mankind.

Let us not haftily infer, from the picture Homer has traced of feveral arts brought to confiderable perfection, a long career of civilization in Greece, or even that those arts had arrived at that precise degree

degree at the time of the Trojan war. We know for certain, that every art of life had been imported into Greece, not long before that epoch, from longer fettled and more civilized countries: when once known, a single genius or two improve them in a very short space. That ingenious author has endeavoured to give to the manners of his heroes all the fimplicity of antient times; but he has probably lent to the arts all that perfection they had acquired in his own times, added to all that of which his creative genius conceived them capable. We fee, in confequence, heroes bufied in cookery and princesses in washing linen. Navigators, as yet, directed their course by a few of the most apparent ftars; their fhips carried from 50 to 120 tons: but, arrived at the end of their voyage, they knew no other method of fecuring them but that of drawing them on fhore. Works in iron feem to be unknown; but fculpture in gold, in filver, in brass, ivory, and wood, feems already to have acquired fome degree of elegance. The art of dyeing, and of imitative embroidery, or tapeftry, in coloured worsteds, gold and filver, are common; all the trinkets and ornaments of women seem complete, and by no means despicable. Thus all the arts of luxury appear in a degree of fplendour little fuited to the pourtrayed fimplicity of manners, or the deficiency of many conveniencies. The Greeks had probably in Homer's time imported, from their expedition to Troy, as the Europeans did after the dark ages from the crufades, these beginnings of magnificence and tafte. The shield of (rr) Achilles is a proof of it. The defcription which the poet gives of it would not dif