A sea contracted within such narrow limits
may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of _broad_,
which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed on
the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative
nature; the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed
along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of the stream
and contemplated the rural scenery which appeared on every
side to terminate the prospect, insensibly lost the
remembrance of the sea, and his fancy painted those
celebrated straits with all the attributes of a mighty river
flowing with a swift current in the midst of a woody and
inland country, and at length through a wide mouth
discharging itself into the AEgean or Archipelago. Ancient
Troy, seated on an eminence at the foot of Mount Ida,
overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely
received an accession of waters from the tribute of those
immortal rivulets the Simois and Scamander. The Grecian camp
had stretched twelve miles along the shore from the Sigaean
to the Rhaetian promontory, and the flanks of the army were
guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners
of Agamemnon.
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