we can fix upon the exact period which is here described. The question is whether Homer was sufficiently near to it, whenever it was, to be considered as a competent witness to its various phenomena. Eratosthenes places the Trojan expedition at 1192 B.C., and considers Homer as 100 years later. Aristotle regards him as 140 years later, and Mr. Clinton, whose authority on this subject is very great, adopts the opinion of Aristotle. Mr. Gladstone thinks there is evidence of even greater proximity to the war. The absence of all allusion, in the poems, to the Dorian conquest and the revolution which it produced in Greece; the thousand undesigned indications that the poet is living in a state of society gradually altering but essentially unchanged from that which he describes; and his own testimony that the period from Pirithous, who had a son in the siege, to the siege itself, was equal to the period from the siege to his own day; all these, with other considerations, seem

* Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, p. 70.

to indicate that Homer was within at least two or three generations from the Trojan war.

Now it is evident that Homer intended to give a substantially correct account of the heroic age of Greece. And his proximity to that age not only enabled him to give a correct representation of it, but rendered it impossible for him to give any other; for his contemporaries were as near to it as himself, and would have rejected any other than a truthful picture. There is every evidence in the Iliad and Odyssey that the age described and the age of the author were in such close proximity that the one did not differ materially from the other. But however near to or remote from the heroic age, the author or authors of these poems may have been, it is evident beyond all question that such an age did exist; and that the manners, customs, morality, and religious ideas and usages here described were actually characteristic of a period known as the heroic age of Greece, and that is all that is absolutely necessary to serve our present purpose.

We propose now to present some of the most striking characteristics of this age in reference to politics, morals, and religion, and then show the relation of our results to some of the great problems of universal history. In this inquiry we shall principally follow the lead of Mr. Gladstone, but shall resort, as may seem necessary, to the views of other authorities in the Homeric controversy.

There is a wide difference between Mr. Grote and Mr. Gladstone in their estimate of the polities of the heroic age. Both agree, of course, as to the constituent elements of Grecian society. The king, the council, and the agora are clearly presented to us as the institutions of the state. Besides the chiefs, there were the people or freemen, and the slaves.

The council was an assembly of the chiefs for conference with the king; the agora was a public assembly of the king, chiefs, and people. Mr. Grote's view of the matter is, that the king was virtually supreme, and that the council and agora were merely organs by which his will was executed, and were in no sense

restrictions upon his authority. The council of the chiefs was simply for the advice and information of the king, and never for the purpose of arresting any mischievous measure. The agora is simply for discussion on the part of the chiefs before the people. No proposition is submitted to vote. There seems to be no positive function in it, and the agora, in his view, is "passive," "recipient," and presents a "repulsive view of the degradation of the mass of the people before the chiefs."

Mr. Gladstone's conception of the king, council, and agora is widely different from this, and seems to be fully sustained by an appeal to Homer. He regards the king as possessed, indeed, of great authority, but as dependent for the reverence and obedience of his subjects upon his own personal superiority. The council of the chiefs is not only for the advice of the king, but the king is there freely criticised and resisted; while, in the agora, his plans are fully discussed and sometimes overthrown. The freedom with which Agamemnon is addressed, and sometimes even reviled,

not only by the confederate kings, but also by the chiefs, and the occasions on which he is actually defeated in the agora, show that there was any thing but a slavish submission to his will, either among the chiefs or the people. Nothing is more remarkable in the representation of the heroic age than the prominence and influence of public speaking. The king must have the power of persuasion, and oratory was regarded as the principal title to respect and admiration. The freedom with which public measures could be criticised, the fact that an agora might be called without the agency of Agamemnon, the publicity of every thing connected with the state, and the great regard which was had to the power of persuasion, all show the influence of public opinion. Despotism is impossible, as the whole history of the world shows, where there is perfect freedom of speech, and never did that exist in a higher degree than as it is represented to us in the magnificent orations of the Iliad. Mr. Grote says that there was no positive function in the agora, and that there was no submitting