Although  the  ancient  traditions  of  Rome,  of  Greece,  and  also
of  Israel,  are  filled  with  legend,  it  is  remarkable  how  much  of  actual
fact  is  recorded  in  them.
Biblical  traditions  have  in  one  sense  been  fully  verified  by  the
Babylonian  excavations.  They  show  that  occurrences  such  as  are
recorded  in  them  actually  took  place,  but  the  statements  in  the  sev-
eral books  of  the  Old  Testament  are  not  simply  narratives  of  the
facts  but  stories  of  events  as  they  appeared  to  the  children  of  Israel
at  the  time  when  they  were  written.  They  are  onesided  and  are
not  historical  in  a  strict  sense  of  the  word ;  they  are  historical  only
in  so  far  as  they  are  echoes  of  actual  events,  the  narrative  being
modified  by  beliefs  of  their  authors.
The  same  is  true  of  Troy  and  Homer.  The  word  Homer  means
"arranger"  or  "compiler,!'  and  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  the
Homeric  epics,  knows  that  the  several  songs  are  not  written  by  the
same  hand.  They  are  two  great  compilations  and  we  must  assume
that  the  ancient  rhapsodists  selected  with  preference  themes  more
or  less  closely  related  to  the  Siege  of  Troy  and  the  adventures  of
Odysseus.  They  may  have  composed  other  songs  which  are  now
lost,  but  when  at  the  time  of  Pisistratus  the  Homeric  rhapsodies
were  redacted  into  two  great  epics,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  the
most  obvious  discrepancies  were  removed  while  all  those  materials
that  did  not  fall  in  with  the  general  plan  were  doomed  to  oblivion.
