4. By observing Homer’s accounts of the worship of Apollo in different Trojan families, we may discover a remarkable consistency and connexion in the ancient tradition.
In the first place he represents it as belonging chiefly to the family of the Panthoidæ. Panthus (from whom a tribe in modern Ilium derived its name Πανθωῒς)(949) was a priest of the god,(950) and hence his sons were protected by Apollo in battle.(951) Hence also Euphorbus, the descendant of Panthus, is selected to kill Patroclus, who, as well as all the other Æacidæ, was in the heroic mythology represented as odious to Apollo.(952)
The other family, described in the Iliad as connected with Apollo, is that of Æneas, whom, when wounded by Diomed, the god himself conducted to his temple on the citadel of Troy, and delivered over to the care of Latona and Artemis.(953) Now that this history was not a mere arbitrary fiction of the poet may be distinctly proved. For we know that, after Troy had fallen, the remaining Trojans still maintained themselves in the mountains; they are mentioned by Herodotus as a separate state existing in the stronghold of Gergis, in the defiles of Ida;(954) and, even after the Peloponnesian war, Dardan princes reigned here and at Scepsis.(955) It can, we think, be shown that Homer’s prophecy(956) respecting the future dominion of the descendants of Æneas over the remnant of the Trojan nation, refers solely to the town of Gergis, and perhaps to the neighbouring valleys. Now the chief temple at Gergis was that of Apollo,(957) and in the same town there was an ancient Sibylline oracle, known by the name of the _Hellespontine_ or _Mermessian_. We now see that the ancient poet, being well acquainted with the existence of the Æneadæ at Gergis, their festivals and sacrifices, felt himself bound, according to the spirit of mythology, to represent Apollo as the ancient guardian of that family.
We shall seize this opportunity of briefly pointing out the results which may be drawn from these facts, in illustration of the fable of Æneas. We must first assume that the above oracle of Apollo at Gergis announced to the Trojan Gergithians the re-establishment of their nation under the dominion of the descendants of Æneas. Such a prophecy, in fact, agrees so exactly with the spirit and system of the ancient oracles, that its existence can scarcely be doubted. The hopes, the longing after a restoration of their ancient power, must necessarily have assumed this form among the distressed and conquered Trojans. Now a colony of Gergithians also inhabited the territory of the Æolian Cume,(958) where Apollo possessed a magnificent temple;(959) and if these oracles had been known to the Cumæans, they would readily have passed over to their kinsmen the Cumans of Campania. At this last place there was, on the summit of a rock, a temple of Apollo (one of the most ancient in the whole settlement, and, as it was pretended, built by Dædalus);(960) underneath was the grotto of the sibyl. Here it was said that Æneas landed; and here, according to Stesichorus, he remained, and never went further to the north.(961) Nothing was more probable than that these oracles should in both cases have been applied locally, and that a new Troy should in consequence have been founded both in Asia and Italy. Hence, when the Greek sibylline oracles, in connexion with the worship of Apollo, became the state-oracles of Rome, all that had been prophesied of districts near the Hellespont was, without scruple or ceremony (though not without the ingenuity of commentators and interpreters), applied to Rome. It is evident that the origin of the strange fable of Æneas, the father of Romulus, and all that was afterwards added to it, may be explained in this simple manner.