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the War

8. German Methods of Penetration in Belgium before and during

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9. The Censorship and its Effects

10. British Diplomacy in the Near East

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11. Belgian Refugees in the United Kingdom

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4. The Forests of Finland and European Timber Supplies

5. The Co-operative Movement in India

6. German Business Methods in France before the War

7. The Boy Scout Movement

8. Compulsory Military Service in England

9. Thoughts on the Parliament of Scotland

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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. 448.-JULY, 1916.

Art. 1.-THE TROJAN WAR.

1. Troy, a Study in Homeric Geography. By Walter Leaf. Macmillan, 1912.

2. Homer and History. By Walter Leaf. Macmillan, 1915.

THOSE Who first read their Homer and learned Greek history more than forty years ago will remember how exclusively literary and philological the questions connected with Homer then appeared to be. The Trojan War was regarded as much on the same footing as the legends of Heracles and the Argonauts. Agamemnon and Achilles were at best as real as Lear and Cymbeline; at worst they were degraded deities. Homer's picture of political and social life possessed indeed historical value, but it was supposed to reflect the conditions of his own time, not earlier than the ninth or possibly the tenth century B.C. But the purely philological phase of Homeric criticism, which was inaugurated by Wolf's memorable 'Prolegomena 'in 1795 and lasted for about eighty years, came to an end when archæology at last appeared on the scene of debate.

The excavations of Dr Schliemann opened a new period in the investigation of the Homeric poems and prehistoric Greece. The new facts which he revealed in swift succession at Troy, Mycenæ, Orchomenus, and Tiryns placed Homer in a new light and raised unexpected problems. It was established that a prehistoric civilisation existed on the Greek mainland which corresponded in general to the Homeric background. But there were certain differences; and the question which immediately Vol. 226.-No. 448.

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