I do not remember that he ever mentions a very high number of days or of years, but his use of both days and years, when it does not embrace terms defined by custom, has the marks of being highly poetical. Take for instance the principal and almost only statements of the poem, that can claim to be called chronological. They are those which represent the period of the siege as a decade of years, preceded by a decade of preparation, and followed by a third decade for the vicissitudes of the Return. Here are three terms of years, all found in a Poet, who does not elsewhere deal in terms of years at all. Of history, or what purports to be such, Homer has given us a great deal, and he has placed it in the exactest and clearest order. But in no one instance, out of all his prior history, does he found himself on any numerical definitions of time. Moreover, these three terms of years are all exactly equal, which heightens the unlikelihood of their being historical. Lastly, the three terms are just of the number of years required to make up what was, according to all appearances, the Homeric term of a γενεὴ, or generation of men. The passage, on which the proof of this last assertion must principally be founded, is that in the First Book[824], which describes the age of Nestor; [824] Il. i. 250-2. τῷ δ’ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων ἐφθίαθ’, οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ’ ἐγένοντο ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν. I take the word γενεὴ to mean here, ‘the term of thirty years,’ but with the necessary qualification of ‘_or_ thereabouts;’ and for the following reasons: Nestor is represented in the Iliad as the oldest of the Greek chieftains of the first order. Yet Ulysses[825] was elderly, ὠμογέρων. Idomeneus, again, was older than Ulysses, as is plain from the more marked manner in which his advance in years is described. He is μεσαιπόλιος[826], and not fully ablebodied, as appears from his somewhat limited share in military operations; but Nestor is evidently older than Idomeneus, as he always addresses the whole body with the authority that belongs to the most extended experience, and as he never takes an active part, either in battle or in the games. We must, accordingly, suppose Nestor to be represented as at this time an old man of seventy, or from that to seventy-five. [825] Il. xxiii. 791. [826] Il. xiii. 361.