(M341) Meanwhile the Trojans assemble, with a large body of allies, to resist the invaders, who demand the redress of a great wrong. The Trojans are routed in battle, and return within their walls. After various fortunes, the city is taken, at the end of ten years, by stratagem, and the Grecian chieftains who were not killed seek to return to their own country, with Helen among the spoils. They meet with many misfortunes, from the anger of the gods, for not having spared the altars of Troy. Their chieftains quarrel among themselves, and even Agamemnon and Menelaus lose their fraternal friendship. After long wanderings, and bitter disappointments, and protracted hopes, the heroes return to their homes—such as war had spared—to recount their adventures and sufferings, and reconstruct their shattered States, and mend their broken fortunes—a type of war in all the ages, calamitous even to conquerors. The wanderings of Ulysses have a peculiar fascination, since they form the subject of the Odyssey, one of the noblest poems of antiquity. Nor are the adventures of Æneas scarcely less interesting, as presented by Virgil, who traces the first Settlement of Latium to the Trojan exiles. We should like to dwell on the siege of Troy, and its great results, but the subject is too extensive and complicated. The student of the great event, whether historical or mystical, must read the detailed accounts in the immortal epics of Homer. We have only space for the grand outlines, which can be scarcely more than allusions. (M342) Scarcely inferior to the legend of Troy, is that which recounts the return of the descendants of Hercules to the ancient inheritance on the Peloponnesus, which, it is supposed, took place three or four hundred years before authentic history begins, or eighty years after the Trojan war. We have briefly described the geographical position of the most important part of ancient Greece—the Peloponnesus—almost an island, separated from the continent only by a narrow gulf, resembling in shape a palm-tree, indented on all sides by bays, and intersected with mountains, and inhabited by a simple and warlike race. We have seen that the descendants of Perseus, who was a descendant of Danaus, reigned at Mycenæ in Argolis—among whom was Amphitryon, who fled to Thebes, on the murder of his uncle, with Alemena his wife. Then Hercules, to whom the throne of Mycenæ legitimately belonged, was born, but deprived of his inheritance by Eurystheus—a younger branch of the Perseids—in consequence of the anger and jealousy of Juno, and to whom, by the fates, Hercules was made subject. We have seen how the sons of Hercules, under Hyllos, attempted to regain their kingdom, but were defeated, and retreated among the Dorians.