[6] _Ibid_., p. 56, note. For human sacrifice see "The Cyclic Poems," later. [7] _Ibid_. p. lxxxvi. [8] _Ibid_. p. lxxxvii. [9] Pausanias, from the _Thebais_, ii. 20. 4, ix. 9. 1. [10] Hdt. ix. 27. [11] _Suppliants_, Isoc., _Oral. Panegyr_. p. 196. Auger. [12] Pausanias, i. 28. 7. [13] Hdt. v. 65. [14] _Iliad_, xxiii. 679; _Odyssey_, xi. 271-280. [15] Scholiast. _Iliad_, xxiii. 679. [16] Thucydides, i. 2. [17] See "The Story of Palamedes." CHAPTER XVI HOMER AND "THE SAGA" Every reader of the _Iliad_ perceives that the poet knows an immense mass of legend and tradition. Thus, like Shakespeare, and our great masters of fiction, Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, he rarely introduces a minor character without marking the individuality in some memorable way. Often he does this by some line or two on the ancestry of the personage, and we are for a moment brought into touch with "old unhappy far-off things," or meet some notable trait of character. Thus Theano, daughter of Kisseus of Thrace, priestess of Athene in Troy, and wife of Antenor, is only introduced to utter the prayer of the women to the relentless goddess (_Iliad_, vi. 302-310). Yet we know her when we meet her, for (_Iliad_, v. 69-71) we have already heard of her goodness of heart. She reared Meges, a bastard of Antenor, "kindly, like her own children, to please her lord." Here we have probably no more than a touch of Homer's genial and discriminating art; it is not probable that the poet took this trait from any traditional "saga." On the other hand, when in a digression he makes Nestor speak of old heroes, Epeians and Lapithae; or when Glaucus tells the tale of Bellerophon and the wife of Proetus; or Phoenix touches on the tragedy of fair-haired Meleager of Aetolia; or Agamemnon speaks of the birth of Heracles, or, in several other references to Theban wars, to the Amazons, and so forth, Homer is clearly drawing from the great legendary store of Achaeans or Pelasgians (to use that term for the earlier people).