It has been, justly, we think, remarked (Quarterly Review, April, 1874), that “not one of the sceptical critics has ever questioned that these (the Homeric poems) show an acquaintance with the topography of the region which (and this is no small point) has borne, from all known antiquity, the name of the Troad.... Homer’s Ida, and Scamander, and Hellespont are as real in his pages as in their existence at the present day.” The inhabitants of Ilium were a mixed population, partly, it is probable, of Thracian origin, and so far only Greek that a Pelasgian element may be traced in both peoples, while they were probably, also, inferior in civilization to the Greeks, with barbaric habits and manners, already obsolete among their more polished enemies. Nor, again, is it at all necessary to maintain that the capture of Troy implies its entire destruction; it is, indeed, more likely that its ultimate ruin was due to the enmity of its Asiatic neighbours, as suggested by Strabo on the authority of an ancient writer, Xanthus. It is clear that Ilium stood on rising ground, between the rivers Scamander and Simois, and that here were placed the palaces of Priam and of his sons. The whole spot was, we may reasonably conclude, surrounded by strong walls, with many gates, only one of which is, however, noticed in Homer by name. Such was the tradition, the long endurance of which is shown in the subsequent sacrifice by Xerxes, recorded by Herodotus (vii. 43). The new Ilium of later days most likely occupied the same traditional site; the theory of Demetrius of Scepsis, adopted by Strabo, of two Iliums separated the one from the other by a considerable interval of ground, being clearly adverse to a common-sense view of the question.[9] Any one would naturally expect that those who constructed _Novum Ilium_ would select that place for their town to which the legends most distinctly pointed; while a manifest objection to the view of Demetrius is that it converts Homer from a poet into a topographer, and attempts to make the natural features of the country accord with his poetic descriptions. It is far more probable that Homer, or whoever collected the poems passing under his name, had but a very general idea of the localities where were laid the scenes he describes: while there is, also, no general agreement as to the true site of Troy among those writers who, in modern times, have more or less accepted the theory of Demetrius and Strabo. Indeed, on the idea of Homer having written his poems with an Ordnance map in his lap, it is simply impossible to fix on any one spot that satisfies all the conditions of his story. Footnote 9: