It Is Not Over The Plain Before Troy That The River Now Flows; Its
Waters Have Edged Away Far Towards
The north, since the day that
"divine Scamander" (whom the gods call Xanthus) went down to do
battle for Ilion,
"With Mars, and Phoebus, and Latona, and Diana
glorying in her arrows, and Venus the lover of smiles."
And now, when I was vexed at the migration of Scamander, and the
total loss or absorption of poor dear Simois, how happily Methley
reminded me that Homer himself had warned us of some such changes!
The Greeks in beginning their wall had neglected the hecatombs due
to the gods, and so after the fall of Troy Apollo turned the paths
of the rivers that flow from Ida and sent them flooding over the
wall, till all the beach was smooth and free from the unhallowed
works of the Greeks. It is true I see now, on looking to the
passage, that Neptune, when the work of destruction was done,
turned back the rivers to their ancient ways:
" . . . [Greek verse],"
but their old channels passing through that light pervious soil
would have been lost in the nine days' flood, and perhaps the god,
when he willed to bring back the rivers to their ancient beds, may
have done his work but ill: it is easier, they say, to destroy
than it is to restore.
We took to our horses again, and went southward towards the very
plain between Troy and the tents of the Greeks, but we rode by a
line at some distance from the shore.
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