Helenus, Cassandra, and Andromache go free: and the book ends with the beautifully precise statements that the war, truces and all, lasted ten years, six months, and twelve days; that 886,000 men fell on the Greek side, and 676,000 on the Trojan; that AEneas set out in twenty-two ships ("the same with which Paris had gone to Greece," says the careful Dares), and 3400 men, while 2500 followed Antenor, and 1200 Helenus and Andromache. [Sidenote: _Its absurdity._] This bald summary is scarcely balder than the book itself, which also, as can be seen from the summary, and would be more fully seen from the book, has no literary merit of any kind. It reads more like an excessively uninspired _precis_ of a larger work than like anything else--a _precis_ in which all the literary merit has, with unvarying infelicity, been omitted. Nothing can be more childish than the punctilious euhemerism by which all the miraculous elements of the Homeric story are blinked or explained away, unless it be the painstaking endeavour simply to say something different from Homer, or the absurd alternation of fighting and truces, in which each party invariably gives up its chance of finishing the war at the precise time at which that chance is most flourishing, and which reads like a humorous travesty of the warfare of some historic periods with all the humour left out. [Sidenote: _Its capabilities._] Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the Romantic period that it fastened so eagerly on this sorriest of illegitimate epitomes.[84] Very few persons at that time were in case to compare the literary merit of Homer--even that of Ovid and Virgil--with the literary merit of these bald pieces of bad Latin prose. Moreover, the supernatural elements in the Homeric story, though very congenial to the temper of the Middle Age itself, were presented and ascribed in such a fashion that it was almost impossible for that age to adopt them. Putting aside a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la deesse d'amors," there was nothing of which the mediaeval mind was more tranquilly convinced than that "Jubiter," "Appollin," and the rest were not mere fond things vainly invented, but actual devils who had got themselves worshipped in the pagan times. It was impossible for a devout Christian man, whatever pranks he might play with his own religion, to represent devils as playing the part of saints and of the Virgin, helping the best heroes, and obtaining their triumph. Nor, audacious as was the faculty of "transfer" possessed by the mediaeval genius, was it easy to Christianise the story in any other way. It is perhaps almost surprising that, so far as I know or remember, no version exists representing Cassandra as a holy and injured nun, making Our Lady play the part of Venus to AEneas, and even punishing the sacrilegious Diomed for wounding her. But I do not think I have heard of such a version (though Sir Walter has gone near to representing