Before proceeding to what I have further to say of the Agora, I must here add to the discussion opened in Chapter V. the testimony of Homer himself to the form and use of the Agora in the heroic age. In that beautiful passage in which he depicts the trial of a suit, as represented on the Shield of Achilles, he expressly describes the Agora as _a sacred circle_, with the elders _sitting round it on polished stones_, or--as we may now venture to translate--_on smoothed slabs_, like those in the Acropolis of Mycenæ:--[373] "But the townsmen, all assembled In the forum, thronging stood; For a strife of twain had risen, Suing on a fine of blood. All was paid, the first protested, Pleading well to move the crowd; Nought was had, upheld the second: Each to obey an umpire vowed; And the hearers, as they sided This or that way, cheered aloud: And the heralds ordered silence; And, _on chairs of polished stone, _Ranged in venerable circle_ Sate the Elders. One by one Each the clear-toned herald's sceptre Took, and standing forth alone Spake his mind. Two golden talents Lay before them, to requite Only him, among the Judges, Straightliest who should judge the right." [Sidenote: THE AGORA IN HOMER.] What reader can follow this vivid picture, in the light furnished by my discovery of the Agora at Mycenæ, without feeling that the poet had often witnessed such a scene, perhaps on this very spot? Homer makes the Trojan Agora, the assembly of _all the people_, old and young, with the _elders_, meet in the citadel of Ilium, at the gates of Priam.[374] In several passages of the Odyssey he describes the Agora of the Phæacians, which was also in the citadel, near the port. Hither the people were led by Alcinous, to hear the wonderful adventures of Ulysses, and they also "coming, _seated themselves near on polished stones_ (or _smoothed slabs_); and the _spaces of the Agora and the seats_ were quickly filled by the thronging people."[375] To complete the parallel, this Phæacian Agora (that is, its circular enclosure) was "fitted together with stones dragged to their places and sunk in the ground," like the slabs of the Agora at Mycenæ; and it surrounded "a beautiful Posideüm," which we must naturally suppose to have been a small open sanctuary in the centre of the Agora.[376] I may add, as a proof of the great importance of the Agora in the civic life of the Heroic age, that its absence among the Cyclopes is cited by Homer to characterize their barbarous state.[377]