With one more observation I will conclude my preliminary remarks
about the Iliad. I cannot find its author within the four corners
of the work itself. I believe the writer of the Odyssey to appear
in the poem as a prominent and very fascinating character whom we
shall presently meet, but there is no one in the Iliad on whom I can
put my finger with even a passing idea that he may be the author.
Still, if under some severe penalty I were compelled to find him, I
should say it was just possible that he might consider his own lot
to have been more or less like that which he forecasts for Astyanax,
the infant son of Hector. At any rate his intimate acquaintance
with the topography of Troy, which is now well ascertained, and
still more his obvious attempt to excuse the non-existence of a
great wall which, according to his story, ought to be there and
which he knew had never existed, so that no trace could remain,
while there were abundant traces of all the other features he
describes--these facts convince me that he was in all probability a
native of the Troad, or country round Troy.
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