He now begins in what may be called a natural order: taking first that section of the army, which was supplied by the Troic sovereignties, principal and subordinate; and among these giving the first place to the troops of Ilion itself, as the most considerable, and as those chiefly concerned. The next is given to the Dardan forces, which were connected with the original seat of the race, and the following ones to the contingents supplied by the subordinate sovereigns of the rest of Troas. His pursuit of this order reminds us, that the geographical distribution was in the case of the Trojan list simple, and did not require the aid of mental geometry, as he had only to follow, almost throughout, a single line of States along the European and Asiatic coasts. It also strengthens the presumption that, when Homer chose an order so different, and so much less natural and obvious, in the case of the Greeks, he must have been governed by some peculiar reason. It will be observed that, of the eleven divisions of the Allies, the two first are the Pelasgians and the Thracians. As the blood of these two races flowed likewise in the veins of the Greeks, the precedence given to them may have been founded on this relationship. But this presumption is qualified by our finding that, doubtless on the ground of geographical order, the Lycian contingent, which had, at any rate, strong Greek affinities, comes last of all. For a reason given elsewhere, we must consider the numbers assigned to the Greek contingents as approximate representations of their respective force: but the omission to particularize numbers at all in the Trojan Catalogue is itself an evidence of its historical character. The Trojan army was of a miscellaneous character: we also know that the allied contingents went and came, and that their absence from home, not prompted by the same powerful motives as that of the Greeks, was shortened by reliefs. Thus we find Rhesus with his Thracians just arrived in the Tenth Book[495]: Memnon comes to Troy after the death of Hector[496]: and we are told of the sons of Hippotion (Il. xiii. 792), who ἦλθον ἀμοιβοί, had come as reliefs, on the preceding day. An army thus collected piecemeal, and thus fluctuating in its composition, could not leave behind it the same accessible traditions. Again, the destruction of Troy itself obliterated what alone could have been their depository; nor had Homer, as a Greek bard, either the same motives or the same means for gathering detailed information, as he would naturally possess with reference to his own countrymen.