While, therefore, on the one hand, we have no independent evidence either to affirm or to deny that Achilles or Agamemnôn are consistent with the state of Greece or Asia Minor, at a certain supposed date 1183 B. C., so, on the other hand, even assuming such consistency to be made out, this of itself would not prove them to be real persons. Mr. Clinton’s reasoning altogether overlooks the existence of _plausible fiction_,—fictitious stories which harmonize perfectly well with the general course of facts, and which are distinguished from matters of fact not by any internal character, but by the circumstance that matter of fact has some competent and well-informed witness to authenticate it, either directly or through legitimate inference. Fiction may be, and often is, extravagant and incredible; but it may also be plausible and specious, and in that case there is nothing but the want of an attesting certificate to distinguish it from truth. Now all the tests, which Mr. Clinton proposes as guarantees of the reality of the Homeric persons, will be just as well satisfied by plausible fiction as by actual matter of fact: the plausibility of the fiction consists in its satisfying those and other similar conditions. In most cases, the tales of the poets _did_ fall in with the existing current of feelings in their audience: “prejudice and vanity” are not the only feelings, but doubtless prejudice and vanity were often appealed to, and it was from such harmony of sentiment that they acquired their hold on men’s belief. Without any doubt, the Iliad appealed most powerfully to the reverence for ancestral gods and heroes among the Asiatic colonists who first heard it: the temptation of putting forth an interesting tale is quite a sufficient stimulus to the invention of the poet, and the plausibility of the tale a sufficient passport to the belief of the hearers. Mr. Clinton talks of “consistent and general tradition.” But that the tale of a poet, when once told with effect and beauty, acquired general belief,—is no proof that it was founded on fact: otherwise, what are we to say to the divine legends, and to the large portion of the Homeric narrative which Mr. Clinton himself sets aside as untrue, under the designation of “poetical ornament?” When a mythical incident is recorded as “forming the basis” of some known historical fact or institution,—as, for instance, the successful stratagem by which Melanthus killed Xanthus, in the battle on the boundary, as recounted in my last chapter,—we may adopt one of two views; we may either treat the incident as real, and as having actually given occasion to what is described as its effect,—or we may treat the incident as a legend imagined in order to assign some plausible origin of the reality,—“Aut ex re nomen, aut ex vocabulo fabula.”[78] In cases where the legendary incident is referred to a time long anterior to any records,—as it commonly is,—the second