It is exactly what we saw happening in Babylonia that happened here too in Greece. It is exactly what happened again and again in the great story--the peoples from a wild barren country come pressing down upon peoples living in a more fertile one. Out of Thrace, which you will see on the map lying to the north of Greece, down through Macedonia and Thessaly, came wild warlike tribes pressing on the peoples of the more fertile south. Various reasons for their movements are given by the Greeks who left their native country and settled, some in the islands, some in Asia Minor. In some instances it was admitted that they went under pressure of enemies; but that is not a reason which would be very pleasant to their pride. Other reasons were recorded, but probably this was really the most common. In their sailings to and fro, and tradings, they would learn about the countries on the Mediterranean shores. {124} Even if they had not full knowledge of it before, they would have learnt all that they needed to know about the western shore of Asia Minor in the course of the ten years which are assigned to the Siege of Troy. Ilus was father of Tros, king of Troy, and the Greeks called Troy Ilium, after Ilus, rather than after the son Tros from whom the name Troy came. And the Iliad is therefore the story of Ilium, otherwise called Troy. This splendid poem is attributed to Homer as its author, but what Homer probably did was to recite, or to sing to the accompaniment of the lyre, these stories, which were only written down years afterwards. We may imagine him something like the bard or the troubadour. How much of his own invention he added to the story we cannot know. The story, as we have it from him, is that Queen Helen having been taken from her home, with her own willing consent, by Paris and carried to Troy, the Greeks went after her and tried to get her back. They tried for the whole ten years which are ascribed to the Siege of Troy. Helen was the most beautiful lady in the world, and the Iliad is certainly one of the most beautiful poems. But can we believe the story? The Greeks were a singularly intelligent people. Does it seem the act of any intelligent people to go on fighting for ten years in order to get back even the most beautiful lady in the world? And if they were at all intelligent they would certainly be apt to reflect that she would not be likely to be equally beautiful at the end of the ten years as she was at the beginning. [Sidenote: The Siege of Troy] A very learned Grecian scholar, Dr. Walter Leaf, has written a book about the Siege of Troy which tells the story in a much less romantic and poetical but a {125} much more probable way. And I want to tell that story, as he tells it, very shortly to you, because it gives such a good idea of the way that men were living along the shore of Asia Minor at that time, say 1200 or so B.C.