322 HISTORY OF GREECE. graced as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that the Iliad, if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongrui- ties and absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible nar- rative of his own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter of fact. The most important point, however, which his Oration brings to view is, the literal and confiding belief with which the Homeric narrative was regarded, as if it were actual history, not only by the inhabitants of Ilium, but also by the general Grecian public. 1 The small town of Ilium, inhabited by TEolic Greeks, 2 and raised into importance only by the legendary reverence attached to it, stood upon an elevated ridge forming a spur from Mount Ida, rather more than three miles from the town and promontory of Sigeium, and about twelve stadia, or less than two miles, from the sea at its nearest point. From Sigeium and the neighboring town of Achilleium (with its monument and temple of Achilles), to the town of Rhocteium on a hill higher up the Hellespont (with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the Aianteium 3 ), was a distance of sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half in the straight course by sea : in the intermediate space was a bay and an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Sca- mander, and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium stood. This plain was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which the great Homeric battles were believed to have taken place : the portion of the bay near to Sigeium went by the name of the Naustathmon of the Achrcans (i. e. the spot where they dragged their ships ashore), and was accounted to have been the camp of Agamemnon and his vast army. 4 1 Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 310-322. 3 Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8,3: viii. 12, 4. A/oAeif e/c vro/ltwf Tp^a <5of, the title proclaimed at the Olympic games ; like A/oAei)f uiro TAovpivaf, from Myrina in the more southerly region of JEolis, as we find in the list of visitors at the Charitesia, at Orchomenos in Boeotia (Corp. Inscrip. Bocckh. No. 1583> 3 See Pausanias, i. 35, 3, for the legends current at Ilium respecting the v&st size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The inhabitants affirme-i thai after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the arms of Achilles, which he was carry- ing away with him, were washed up by the sea against the tomb of Ajax Pliny gives the distance at thirty stadia : modern travellers make it some thing more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo. 4 Strabo., xiii. p. 596-598 Strabo distinguishes the 'A<U6Ji> Nauffratf/xw.
