Amongst these legends which Mr Grote thus relates for the simple purpose of showing what filled the minds of the Greek people when we first become historically acquainted with them, is one conspicuous above all others, and to which most men still cling tenaciously, finding it impossible to resign _all_ of it to the region of fable--we mean "the divine tale of Troy." Many who relinquish without effort the Argonautic expedition, and as an historical problem are glad to be rid of it,--who resign all attempt to extract a prosaic truth out of the exploits of Theseus or the labours of Hercules, and who smile at mention of the race of Amazons--a race so well accredited in ancient times that neither the sceptical Arrian nor Julius Caesar himself ventured to doubt of their existence--would yet shrink from surrendering the tale of Troy, with all its military details, and all its hosts, and all its kings and chieftains, entirely to the domain of fiction. What! No part of it true?--no Agamemnon?--no Ulysses?--no Troy taken?--no battles on that plain where the traveller still traces the position of the hostile forces? "Those old kings," they might exclaim in the language of Milton, when writing in his history of that fabulous line of English monarchs which sprang from Brute the Trojan--in his time still lingering in men's faith, now suffered to sleep unvexed by the keenest historical research,--"Those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered--_it cannot be thought_, without too strict incredulity."[3]