The course, however, of the siege itself affords a very marked instance, in which the whole body of the Greeks was guilty of omitting the regular sacrifices proper to be used in the inauguration of a great undertaking. In the hasty construction of the trench and rampart, they apparently forgot the hecatombs[402]. Neptune immediately points out the error in the Olympian Court; and uses it in aid of his displeasure at a work, which he thinks will eclipse the wall of Troy, executed for Laomedon by himself in conjunction with Apollo. Jupiter forthwith agrees[403], that after the siege he shall destroy it. And the Poet, returning to the subject at the commencement of the Twelfth Book, observes that the work could not last, because it was constructed without enlisting in its favour the good will of the Immortals[404]. This omission of the Greeks is the more characteristic and remarkable, because the moment when they erected the rampart was a moment of apprehension, almost of distress. [402] Il. vii. 450. [403] Ibid. 459. [404] Il. xii. 3, 9. Thus, then, it appears that, as a nation, the Trojans were much more given to religious observances of a positive kind, than the Greeks. They were, like the Athenians[405] at a later epoch, δεισιδαιμονέστεροι. And, again, as between one Greek and another, there is no doubt that the good are generally, though not invariably, scrupulous in this respect, and the bad commonly careless. Thus much is implied particularly in Od. iii. 131, as well as conclusively shown in the general order of the Odyssey. But, as between the two nations, we cannot conceive that the Poet had any corresponding intention. Although a more scrupulous formality in religion marks the Trojans than the Greeks, and although in itself, and _cæteris paribus_, this may be the appropriate sign of piety, yet it is a sign only; as a sign it may be made a substitute, and, as a substitute, it becomes the characteristic of Ægisthus and Autolycus, no less than it is of Eumæus and Ulysses. As between the two nations, the difference is evidently associated with other differences in national character and morality. We must look therefore for broader grounds, upon which to form an estimate of the comparative virtue of the two nations, than either the populousness of Olympus on the one side, or the array of priests and temples on the other. [405] Acts xvii. 22. Nowhere do the signs of historic aim in Homer seem to me more evident, than in his very distinct delineations of national character on the Greek and the Trojan part respectively. But this is a general proposition; and it must be understood with a certain reservation as to details. ~_Two modes of handling for Greece and Troy._~