Greek Texts & Translations

improvement. It was again injured by the Romans under the command of Fimbrias. They took it by siege in the Mithridatic war. Fimbrias was sent as quaestor, with the consul Valerius Flaccus, who was appointed to carry on the war against Mithridates. But having excited a sedition, and put the consul to death in Bithynia, he placed himself at the head of the army and advanced towards Ilium, where the inhabit- ants refused to admit him into the city, as they regarded him as a robber. He had recourse to force, and took the city on the eleventh day. When he was boasting that he had taken a city on the eleventh day, which Agamemnon had reduced with difficulty in the tenth year of the siege with a fleet of a thousand vessels, and with the aid of the whole of Greece, one of the Ilienses replied, We had no Hector to defend the city.

Sylla afterwards came, defeated Fimbrias, and dismissed Mithridates, according to treaty, into his own territory. Sylla conciliated the Ilienses by extensive repairs of their city. In our time divus Caesar showed them still more favour, in imitation of Alexander. He was inclined to favour them, for the purpose of renewing his family connexion with the Ilienses, and as an admirer of Homer.

There exists a corrected copy of the poems of Homer, called the casket-copy. Alexander perused it in company with Callisthenes and Anaxarchus, and having made some marks and observations deposited it in a casket ^note of costly workmanship which he found among the Persian treasures. On account then of his admiration of the poet and his descent from the Aeacidae, (who were kings of the Molossi, whose queen they say was Andromache, afterwards the wife of Hector,) Alexander treated the Ilienses with kindness.

But Caesar, who admired the character of Alexander, and had strong proofs of his affinity to the Ilienses, had the greatest possible desire to be their benefactor. The proofs of his affinity to the Ilienses were strong, first as being a Roman, —for the Romans consider Aeneas to be the founder of their race,—next he had the name of Julius, from Iulus, one of his