be the result of the labours of several distinct authors; that if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority of Thucydides and Aristotle, the Hymns and Margites, not to say the Batrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes impossible; that all that has been so often said as to the fact of as many lines, or more, having been committed to memory, is beside the point in question, which is not whether 15,000 or 30,000 lines may be learned by heart from a book or manuscript, but whether one man can compose a poem of that length, which, rightly or not, shall be thought to be a perfect model of symmetry, or consistency of parts, without the aid of writing materials; that, admitting the superior probability of such a thing in a primitive age, we know nothing analogous to such a case; and that it so transcends the common limits of intellectual power as at the least to merit, with as much justice as the opposite opinion, the character of improbability.-H. N. Coleridge.

6

THE SEVEN WISE MEN OF GREECE.

Neither the number nor the names of this constellation of wise men are given by all authors alike. Dikæarchus numbered ten, Hermippus seventeen: the names of Solon the Athenian, Thales the Milesian, Pittakus the Mitylenean, and Bias the Prienean, were comprised in all the lists; and the remaining names, as given by Plato, were, Kleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes, Myson of Chêne, and Cheilon of Sparta. Among their sayings or mottoes, inscribed in the Delphian temple, were, Know thyself,' 'Nothing too much,' Know thy opportunity,' 'Suretyship is the precursor of ruin.' Bias is praised as an excellent judge, and Myson was declared by the Delphian oracle to be the most discreet man among the Greeks, according to the testimony of the satirical poet Hipponax. This is the oldest testimony (540 B.C.) which can be produced in favour of any of the seven; but Kleobulus of Lindus, far from being universally extolled, is pronounced by the poet Simonides to be a fool. Dikæarchus, however, justly observed that these seven or ten persons were not wise men or philosophers in the sense which those words bore in his day, but persons of practical discernment in reference to man and society-of the same turn of mind as their contemporary the fabulist Æsop, though not employing the same mode of illustration. Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thales, were all men of influence in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. Thales stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical philosophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are said not to have meddled. Most of them, if not all, were poets, or com

posers in verse; and there is ascribed to them an abundance of pithy repartees, together with one short saying or maxim peculiar to each, serving as a sort of distinctive motto; indeed, one test of an accomplished man about this time was, his talent for singing or reciting poetry, and for making smart and ready answers.-. -Abridged from Grote's Hist. Greece, vol. iv.

EXPLOITS OF NESTOR.

Nestor, the last of the twelve sons of Neleus, not only defended and avenged Dylos against the insolence and rapacity of his Epeian neighbours in Elis, but also aided the Lapithæ in their terrible combat against the Centaurs, and as companion of Theseus, Peirithöus, and the other great legendary heroes who preceded the Trojan war. In extreme old age he lost his once marvellous power of handling weapons; but his activity remained unimpaired, and his sagacity and influence in council were greater than ever. He not only assembled the Grecian chiefs for the armament against Troy, but took a vigorous part in the siege itself, and was of pre-eminent service to Agamemnon. After the conclusion of the siege he returned to his dominions, and was there found in a strenuous and honoured old age, in the midst of his children and subjects, sitting with the sceptre of authority on the stone bench before his house at Dylos,-offering sacrifice to Poseidon, as his father Neleus had done before him, and mourning only over the death of his favourite son Antilochus, who had fallen in the Trojan war.-Abridged from Grote's Hist. Greece, vol. i.

THE WOODEN HORSE AT THE SIEGE OF TROY.

The Conquest of Troy has been well designated a Cadmeian victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the vanquished.

The Palladium having been conveyed away by stealth from the citadel, one final stratagem was planned for the capture of the town. At the suggestion of Athene, Epeius of Panopeus constructed a hollow wooden horse, capable of containing one hundred men. The élite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus, and others, concealed themselves inside the horse; and the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, issuing from the city, were astonished at the fabric which their enemies had left behind, and the more cautious spirits distrusted the enemy's legacy; but Laocoon, a priest, striking the side of the horse with a spear, the sound revealed that it was hollow. He, with two of his sons, was soon after destroyed by two serpents sent by the gods out of the sea; and by this

terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Sinon, a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind, the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, and drag the horse with triumph into the city. A night of riotous festivity ensued, during which Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks, and loosened the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, attacked from within and without, was sacked and destroyed, and the larger portion of its heroes and people slaughtered or made captive.

Epeius, the constructor of the Trojan horse, subsequently settled at Lagaria, near Sybaris, on the coast of Italy; and the very tools which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were, according to Strabo and others, shown down to a late date in the temple of Athene at Metapontum.

THE PLAINS OF TROY.

The Plains of Troy, so famed and flourishing in ancient days, are now barren and desolate. The classic Scamander is but a muddy stream, winding through an uncultivated plain, covered with stunted oaks, underwood, and rushes. At the opposite extremity of the plain stood the tombs of Hector and Achilles; that of the latter near the Hellespont, where the Greek fleet was moored. Near is the grave of his friend Patroclus. Athenian glories are now reduced to a few tumuli about thirty feet high.-Webster's Travels.

THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

This great festival was held on the banks of the Alpheius, in Peloponnesus, near the old oracular temple of the Olympian Zeus (Jupiter), and attracted its crowds of visitors and maintained its celebrity for many centuries after the extinction of Greek freedom; and only received its final abolition, after more than eleven hundred years' continuance, from the decree of the Christian emperor Theodosius, in 394 A.D. The games were originally a match of runners in the stadium, or measured course; and a series of the victorious runners, formally inscribed and preserved by the Eleians, beginning with Korebus in 776 B.C., was made to serve by chronological inquirers from the third century B.C. downwards as a means of measuring the chronological sequence of Grecian events, hence called Olympiads. The competitors contended not for money, but for glory; and the prize was a wreath from the sacred olive tree near Olympia, and the honour of being proclaimed victor. In the 18th Olympiad were added the wrestling-match, and the complicated Pantathlon, including jumping, running, the

*The second book of the Eneid, containing the exploit of Sinon and the Trojan horse (as Macrobius observeth) Virgil hath verbatim from Nisander.Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors.

quoit, the javelin, and wrestling. In the 23d Olympiad (688 Bc.) was added the boxing-match; and in the 25th (680 B.C.) the chariot, with four full-grown horses. In the 33d Olympiad (648 B.C.) were added the single racehorse, and the Pankration, or boxing and wrestling conjoined, with the hand unarmed or divested of the hard leather cestus worn by the pugilist, which not only rendered the blow of the latter more terrible, but at the same time prevented him from grasping his adversary. Among other novelties added were the race between men clothed in full panoply and each bearing his shield; matches between boys, colts, &c. At the maximum of its attraction, the Olympic solemnity occupied five days; but until the 77th Olympiad, all the various matches had been compressed into one-beginning at daybreak, and not always closing before dark. Thus, during two centuries succeeding 776 B.C., the festival gradually passed from a local to a national character, bringing together in temporary union the dispersed fragments of Hellas, from Marseilles to Trebizond. During the sixth century B.C., three other festivals, at first local, became successively nationalised—the Pythia near Delphi, the Isthenia near Corinth, the Nemea near Kleonæ, between Sikyon and Argos.-Abridged from Grote's History of Greece, vol. iv.

PRODIGIOUS STRENGTH OF MILO OF CROTONA.

Milo was six times victorious in wrestling at the Olympic games. He is said to have carried his own statue to Altis ; and it is further reported of him that he held a pomegranate so firmly in his hand, that it could neither be forced from him by any other person, nor could he himself dismiss it from his grasp. And as he once stood anointing his quoit, he made those appear ridiculous who, by rushing against him, endeavoured to push him from the quoit. The following circumstance, too, evinces the greatness of his strength: he would bind his forehead with a cord, in the same manner as with a fillet or crown, and compressing his lips and holding in his breath, he would so fill the veins of his head with blood, that he would burst the cord through the strength of the veins, It is also said, that having let fall against his side that part of the arm which reaches from the shoulder to the elbow, he would extend the other part, which reaches from the elbow to the fingers, with his thumb turned upwards, and his fingers placed close together; and that when his hand was in this position no one by the greatest exertions could separate his little finger from the rest. They say that he died through wild beasts; for happening, on the borders of Crotona, to meet with a withered oak, into which wedges were driven in order to separate the wood, he endeavoured, through confidence in

his strength, to tear the oak asunder. In consequence of this, the wedges giving way, Milo was caught by the closing parts, and was torn in pieces by the wolves with which that country is much infested. And such was the end of Milo.- From the Posterior Eliacs in the description of Greece by Pausanias, vol. ii. ch. 14: Taylor's translation.

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THE WOODEN WALL" OF ATHENS.

When the Athenian envoys consulted the Delphian oracle as to their hopes at Salamis, the priestess assured them that "the wooden wall' alone should remain unconquered." The people inquired what was meant by the wooden wall.' Some supposed that the acropolis itself, which had been originally surrounded with a wooden palisade, was the refuge pointed out; but the greater number, and among them most of those who were by profession expositors of prophecy, maintained that the wooden wall indicated the fleet, as it does at this day in our national boast of "the wooden walls of Old England."

AMPHION AND HIS LYRE.

When Amphion became king of Thebes, availing himself of his tuition by Hermes, and possessing exquisite skill on the lyre, he employed it in fortifying the city, the stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to the rhythm of his song. Pausanias states that the wild beasts as well as stones were obedient to Amphion's strains; and the tablet of inscription at Sicyon recognises him as the first composer of poetry and harp-music.

IS THE MOON INHABITED?

Anaxagoras of Clazomene was the first of the Ionic philosophers who did not allow the sun and moon to be gods. On this account he was accused of impiety, and thrown into prison; but released by Pericles. "Are they not dreams of human vanity," says Montaigne, "to make the moon a celestial earth, there to fancy mountains and vales, as Anaxagoras did?" Bishop Wilkins, one of the early fellows of the Royal Society, maintained that the moon was a habitable world, and proposed schemes for flying thither!

HOW AGESILAUS WAS DISABLED FROM THE FIGHT.

Agesilaus was going up into the counsel-house of his castle, when he was seized with cramp in his left leg, and put to great pain. A physician being there, opened a vein under the ancle of Agesilaus' foot; which made the pain cease, but