and energetic fancy, which ranges alike over the spheres of sense and of metaphysics. Andromache, virtuous and sincere as Penelope, has no such mental wealth; her thoughts, and those of Hecuba and Priam, both ordinarily and also on the death of Hector, are limited to topics the most obvious and primitive, with which society, however undeveloped, is familiar. From this limitation, and from the nature of those legends respecting deities, of which the scene is laid in Troas, it seems reasonable to believe that the mythological dress is of purely Hellenic origin. [333] Il. ix. 559. [334] Il. xix. 90-133. [335] Il. xxiv. 602-17. [336] Od. xx. 66. [337] Od. xxi. 295-304. The dedication to Jupiter of the lofty and beautiful chestnut-tree[338] near Troy, is in correspondence with the oak of Dodona, and indicates quite a different train of thought from those which conceived the Greek Olympus. It is probably both a fragment of nature-worship in its Oriental form, and likewise a portion of the external and ritual development, in which the religion of Troy was evidently prolific enough. And in this case the negative evidence of Homer is especially strong; because the great number of the particular spots on the plain of Troy, which he has had occasion to commemorate, constitute a much more minute topography there, than he has given us on any other scene, not even excepting Ithaca: so that he could hardly have avoided showing us, had it been the fact, that the religion of Troy entered largely into what Mr. Grote has so well called ‘the religious and personal interpretation of nature.’ [338] Il. v. 697, and vii. 60. Next as to those divine persons of the second order, who are so abundantly presented to us by Homer in relations with the Greeks. Iris visits the Trojans thrice. First, she repairs to their Assembly in the form of Polites. Secondly, she appears to Helen, as her sister-in-law Laodice. She delivers her message to Priam in the Twenty-fourth Book without disguise; perhaps because it was necessary[339] that he should have the assistance of a deity seen and heard, in order to embolden him for a seemingly desperate enterprise. But there is nothing in his account of the interview, which requires us to suppose that the person Iris was known to Priam. The expression he uses is[340] [339] Il. xxiv. 220. [340] Il. xxiv. 223, 194. αὐτὸς γὰρ ἄκουσα θεοῦ καὶ ἐσέδρακον ἄντην. And again, he calls her an Olympian messenger[341] from Jupiter. Another passage carries the argument a point further, by showing us that the appearance of this benignant deity was alarming, doubtless because it was strange, to him. When she arrives, she addresses him very softly τυτθὸν φθεγξαμένη (170): but he is seized with dread; [341] Sup. p. 155. τὸν δὲ τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα· an emotion, which I do not remember to have found recorded on any apparition of a divinity to a Greek hero. ~_Poverty of Trojan Mythology._~