sons, we apprehend, are
disposed to adhere to the belief that some famous siege must have taken
place, or why should the poet's imagination take this direction?--why
should he cluster his heroes and his exploits round the walls of Troy?
Now, the effect of Dr Thirlwall's line of argument is to show how the
poet's imagination was likely to take this direction, and yet there have
been no siege of Troy, none at least by Agamemnon and his allies, none
at the epoch which Homer assigns to it.

"We conceive it necessary," says Dr Thirlwall, "to admit the reality of
the Trojan war as a general fact; but beyond this we scarcely venture to
proceed a single step."[5] He finds it impossible to adopt the poetical
story of its origin, partly from its inherent improbability, and partly
"because we are convinced that Helen is a merely mythological person. It
would be sufficient," he says, "to raise a strong suspicion of her
fabulous nature to observe that she is classed by Herodotus with Io, and
Europa, and Medea--all of them persons who, on distinct grounds, must
clearly be referred to the domain of mythology. This suspicion is
confirmed by all the particulars of her legend; by her birth, (the
daughter of Jupiter, according to Homer;) by her relation to the divine
Twins, whose worship seems to have been one of the most ancient forms of
religion in Peloponnesus, and especially in Laconia; and by the divine
honours paid to her in Laconia and elsewhere."

Compelled to reject the cause of the war assigned by Homer, and finding
Helen a merely mythological person, "we are driven," he continues, "to
conjecture to discover the true cause; yet not so as to be wholly
without traces to direct us." He then refers to the legend which,
numbering Hercules among the Argonauts, supposes him, on the voyage, to
have rendered a service to the Trojan king Laomedon, who afterwards
defrauded him of his stipulated recompense. Whereupon Hercules, coming
with some seven ships, is said to have taken and sacked Troy; an event
which is alluded to and recognised by Homer. "And thus we see," adds the
author, "Troy already provoking the enmity or tempting the cupidity of
the Greeks, in the generation before the celebrated war; and it may be
easily conceived that if its power and opulence revived after this blow,
it might again excite the same feelings."

Very easily conceived, but not rendered a jot more easy by aid of this
legend of Hercules. The story of him of t