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fall of Troy. Solinus 5, in express words, makes the institution of the olympiads by Iphitus, whom hẹ calleth Iphiclus, four hundred and eight years later than the destruction of Troy. The sum is easily collected, by necessary inference, out of divers other places in the same book. Hereunto doth

Eusebius reckoning exclusively agree; and Eratosthenes, (as he is cited by Clemens Alexandrinus,) makes up, out of many particulars, the same total sum, wanting but one year, as reckoning likewise exclusively.

The other collections of divers writers that are cited by Clemens in the same place, do neither cohere any way, nor depend upon any collateral history, by which they may be verified.

The destruction of Troy being in the year before the olympiads four hundred and eight, we must seek the continuance of that from the beginning to the end out of Eusebius, who leads us from Dardanus onwards through the reigns of four kings, by the space of two hundred and five and twenty years, and after of Priamus, with whom also at length it ended. As for the time which passed under Laomedon, we are fain to do as others have done before us, and take it upon trust from Annius's authors; believing Manetho so much the rather, for that in his account of the former kings reigns, and of Priamus, he is found to agree with Eusebius, which may give us leave to think that Annius hath not herein corrupted him. But in this point we need not to be very scrupulous; for seeing that no history or account of time depends upon the reigns of the former kings, but only upon the ruin of the city under Priamus, it may suffice that we are careful to place that memorable accident in the due year.

True it is, that some objections appearing weighty, may be alleged in maintenance of different computa

5 Solin. Polihist. c. ii. 6 Euseb. de præp. Evang. 1. x. c. 3. Alex. Strom. 1. i.

7 Clem.

tions, which, with the answers, I purposely omit, as not willing to dispute of those years, wherein the Greeks knew no good form of a year; but rather to make narration of the actions which were memorable, and acknowledged by all writers, whereof this destruction of Troy was one of the most renowned.

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The first enterprize that was undertaken by general consent of all Greece, was the last war of Troy, which hath been famous even to this day, for the number of princes and valiant commanders there assembled; the great battles fought with variable success; the long endurance of the siege; the destruction of that great city; and the many colonies planted in sundry countries; as well by the remainder of the Trojans, as by the victorious Greeks after their unfortunate return. All which things, with innumerable circumstances of special note, have been delivered unto posterity, by the excellent wits of many writers, especially by the poems of that great Homer, whose verses have given immortality to the action, which might else perhaps have been buried in oblivion, among other worthy deeds done both before and since that time. For it is true which Horace saith:

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed omnes illachrymabiles

Urgentur, ignotique longa

'Nocte; carent quia vate sacro.'

Many by valour have deserv'd renown
Ere Agamemnon; yet lie all opprest
Under long night, unwept for and unknown;
For with no sacred poet were they blest.'

Yet so it is, that whilst these writers have, with strange fables, or, (to speak the best of them,) with allegories far strained, gone about to enlarge the commendations of those noble undertakers; they have both drawn into suspicion that great virtue

which they sought to adorn, and filled after ages with almost as much ignorance of the history, as admiration of the persons. Wherefore it is expedient that we seek for the knowledge of such actions in histories; learning their qualities who did manage them, of poets, in whose works are both profit and delight; yet small profit to those which are delighted otherwise but such as can either interpret their fables, or separate them from the naked truth, shall find matter in poems, not unworthy to be regarded of historians. For, those things excepted, which are gathered out of Homer, there is very little, and not without much disagreement of authors, written of this great war. All writers consent with Homer, that the rape of Helen, by Paris, the son of Priamus, was the cause of taking arms; but how he was hereunto emboldened, it is doubtful.

SECT. II.

Of the rape of Helen; and strength of both sides for the war.

HERODOTUS fetcheth the cause of this rape from very far; saying, that whereas the Phoenicians had ravished Io, and carried her into Egypt, the Greeks, to be revenged on the barbarians, did first ravish Europa, whom they brought out of Phoenicia into Creta, and afterwards Medea, whom they fetched from Colchos, denying to restore her to her father, till such time as they might be satisfied for the rape of Io. By these deeds of the Greeks, Paris, (as the same Herodotus affirms,) was emboldened to do the the like; not fearing such revenge as ensued. But all this narration seems frivolous. For what had the king of Colchos to do with the injury of the Phonicians? or how could the Greeks, as in revenge of lo, plead any quarrel against him, that never had heard the name of Phoenicians? Thucydides, a writer of unquestionable sincerity, maketh it plain, that

the name of barbarians was not used at all in Homer's time, which was long after the war of Troy; and that the Greeks themselves were not then called all by one name, Hellenes, as afterwards. So that it were unreasonable to think, that they should have sought revenge upon all nations as barbarous, for the injury received by one; or that all people else should have esteemed of the Greeks, as of a people opposed to all the world; and that even then, when the Greeks had not yet one common name among themselves. Others with more probability say, that the rape of Helen was to procure the re-delivery of Hesione, king Priamus's sister, taken formerly by Hercules, and given to Telamon. This may have been true. For Telamon, (as it seems,) was a cruel man, seeing his own son Teucer durst not come in his sight, after the war of Troy, but fled into Cyprus, only because his brother, Ajax, (which Teucer could not remedy,) had slain himself. Yet, were it so, that Hesione was ill-intreated by Telamon, it was not therefore likely, that Priamus her brother would seek to take her from her husband, with whom she had lived about thirty years, and to whom she had born children, which were to succeed in his dominion. Whereupon I think that Paris had no regard either to the rape of Europa, Medea, or Hesione; but was merely incited by Venus, that is, by his lust, to do that which in those days was very common. For not only Greeks from barbarians, and barbarians from Greeks, as Herodotus discourseth, but all people were accustomed to steal women and cattle, if they could by strong hand or power get them; and having stolen them, either to sell them away in some far country, or keep them to their own use. So did Theseus and Pirithous attempt Proserpina; and so did Theseus, (long before Paris,) ravish Helen. And these practices, as it appears in Thucydides, were so common, that none durst inhabit near unto the sea, for fear of piracy, which was accounted a trade of

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life no less lawful than merchandise; wherefore Tyndareus, the father of Helen, considering the beauty of his daughter, and the rape which Theseus had made, caused all her wooers, who were most of the principal men in Greece, to bind themselves by solemn oath, that if she were taken from her husband, they should, with all their might, help to recover her. This done, he gave free choice of a husband to his daughter, who chose Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon: So the cause which drew the Greeks unto Troy, in revenge of Helen's rape, was partly the oath which so many princes had made unto her father Tyndareus. Hereunto the great power of Agamemnon was not a little helping; for Agamemnon, besides his great dominions in Peloponnesus, was lord of many islands; he was also rich in money; and therefore the Arcadians were well contented to follow his pay, whom he imbarked for Troy in his own ships, which were more than any other of the Greek princes brought to that expedition.

Thus did all Greece, either as bound by oath, or led by the reputation and power of the two brethren, Agamemnon and Menelaus, or desirous to partake of the profit and honour in that great enterprise, take arms against the Trojans. The Greeks fleet was, (by Homer's account,) one thousand two hundred sail, or thereabouts; but the vessels were not great; for it was not then the manner to build ships with decks; only they used, (as Thucydides saith,) small ships, meet for robbing on the sea; the least of which carried fifty men, the greatest a hundred and twenty, every man, (except the captains,) being both a mariner and a soldier. By this proportion, it appears, that the Grecian army consisted of a hundred thousand men, or thereabout. This was the greatest army that ever was raised out of Greece; and the greatness of this army, doth well declare the strength and power of Troy, which ten whole years did stand out against such forces; yet were the Tro

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