Although but little confidence can be placed in the reality of
the persons and events mentioned in the poems of Homer, yet there
is one kind of truth from which the poet can hardly have deviated,
or his writings would not have been so acceptable as they evidently
were to his contemporaries--and that is, a faithful portraiture
of the government, usages, institutions, manners, and general
condition of the Greeks during the age in which he lived, and
which undoubtedly differed little from the manners and customs
of the Heroic Age. The pictures of life and character that he
had drawn must have had a reality of existence, and they
unquestionably give us, to a considerable extent, a true insight
into the condition of Grecian society at that early period of
the world's history.

And yet we must bear in mind that epics such as those of Homer,
describing the manners and customs of a half-barbarous age, and
intended to honor chieftains by extolling the deeds and lives
of their ancestors, and to be recited in the courts of kings and
princes, would, very naturally, be accommodated to the wishes,
partialities, and prejudices of their noble hearers. And this
leads us to consider how far even the great epic of Homer is to
be relied on for a faithful picture of the political life of the
Greeks during the Heroic Age. We quote the following suggestive
remarks on this subject from a recent writer and able Greek critic:


THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE GREEKS, AS REPRESENTED IN THEIR GREAT EPICS.

"Although, in the Greek epics, the rank and file of the army