Another subject of controversy has been as to whether the Homeric narratives have a historic basis to rest upon. Some have gone so far as to doubt whether the Trojan War ever took place; and it has been suggested that many of the stories in the _Iliad_ are due to solar myths. But the excavations of Schliemann at Ilium and Mycenæ have rather discredited such scepticism; and the recent explorer already mentioned (Bérard), who has sailed over the course which appears to have been taken by Odysseus,--extending from Troy to Gibraltar,--has found the topographical and maritime allusions so accurate as to come to the conclusion that the poet must have had the benefit of some ancient book of reference, corresponding to the _Pilot’s Guide_, and drawn up in all probability by the Phœnicians, who were masters of the Mediterranean before the Greeks. But while the main thread of the narrative in the _Odyssey_ may be historical, the poet has worked into it many fanciful legends, like those to be found in the literature of many nations. Indeed the story of Odysseus’ adventures as a whole is perhaps no more historical than the tale of Robinson Crusoe, created by Defoe out of the experience of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez. [Illustration: SUNSET FROM THE NORTH-EAST CORNER OF THE ACROPOLIS To the left, a bit of the east front of the Parthenon; to the right, the precipitous north side of the Acropolis; in the middle distance the Erechtheum, showing all three of its porticoes; in shadow, between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum, the upper part of the Propylæa]. No criticism, however, can alter the fact that we have in the _Odyssey_ some of the most charming pictures of social and domestic life that are to be found in any literature, touched up with a colouring of the strangest old-world romance, and deriving lustre from a religion which, however defective from an ethical point of view, was wedded to an imagination so rich and powerful as almost to efface in the mind of the reader the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. CHAPTER II DELPHI AND ITS ORACLE