The reasons for thinking that the wish to do away with these Trojans and their market was the real motive of the ten years' war are strengthened when we look at the names of the peoples that came to the help of the Greeks on the one side and of the Trojans on the other. Those that came to the assistance of the Greeks {127} were the peoples along the Mediterranean shores or on the islands; those that aided the Trojans were the peoples from the east. So we have the two set in rather distinct opposition to each other; the Trojans and the eastern people who sent their things to the market at Troy and had an interest in the market being kept up, and the western peoples who wanted the market destroyed. That is a very prosaic story, is it not, in comparison with the romance about the beautiful lady? It is not the kind of story that Homer or any other bard would care to sing or his listeners would take pleasure in hearing. But I am afraid it is more likely to be the true story of the reason why a practical and intelligent people like the Greeks fought so hard and so long to annihilate Troy. I have said so much about this famous siege because it gives such a good opportunity of setting what are probably the facts beside the fictions which have been founded on them. It teaches us how these poetic stories were made. [Sidenote: The Odyssey] The other great poem attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, is only another chapter, dealing with the adventures of one of the principal Greek heroes, of the story of the siege. It is even more glorious reading than the Iliad itself. Now, whatever the truth be about the Trojan war, one fact is quite clear and certain from its story, as well as from other evidence, that the Greeks had dealings, constant dealings, with Asia Minor. Therefore their thought, their art, their culture, and all that was most remarkable in their character as a nation, was known in Asia Minor, it was known among all these islands of the Ægean Sea and along the southern, the African, shores of the Mediterranean. Everywhere that it went {128} it was superior to the thought and the culture of the native people, and everywhere it had its effect. I want you to realise that. It was not by reason of the force of their arms, though they were such good fighters, that the Greeks count for so much in our great story, but by reason of the force of their thought, and of their accomplishments.