_"Priam's six-gated city," &c._--In the prologue to Troilus and Cressida
occurs--
" . . . Priam's six-gated city,
Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan,
And Antenorides, with massy staples,
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."
What struck me here was the omission of the only gate of Troy really known
to fame, _the Scaean_, which looked on the tomb of the founder Laomedon;
before which stood Hector, "full and fixed," awaiting the fatal onslaught
of Achilles; where Achilles, in turn, received his death-wound from the
shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the wooden horse was
triumphantly conveyed into the doomed city.
The six names are shown to be taken by Shakspeare in part from Caxton, and
in part from Lydgate: and in Knight's edition we are told that they are
"pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."
Let us examine this assertion. The names are to be found pretty nearly as
above, but with one important difference, in Dares' _History of the Trojan
War_. My authority is Ruaeus, the Delphine editor of Virgil (see his note at
_AEn._ II. 612.). Now Dares (perhaps the oldest of the profane writers whom
we know) was a Phrygian, who took part in the Trojan war, and wrote its
history in Greek: and the Greek original was still extant in the time of
AElian, from A.D. 80 to 140. Of this, now lost, a Latin translation still
survives, by some attributed to Cornelius Nepos, and by some regarded as
spurious; but, either way, its date must be long antecedent to "the middle
age of romance-writers." It was doubtless from this Latin history that
Caxton or Lydgate, or both, derived directly or indirectly the names they
adopted; and yet it is to be noted that they give respectively the names of
_Chetas_ and _Cetheas_ to one of their gates, and omit the well-known
_Scaean_, which Dares expressly mentions; for I presume that no principle of
philology will sanction the identification of _Scaean_ with either of the
terms used by these two writers.
I have trespassed somewhat on your space, but let me hope the subject may
be farther elucidated. The points I wish to put forward are, Shakspeare's
omission of the Scaean gate, and the proposition by Knight (for a
proposition it is, though in a participular form), that these six names are
"pure inventions of the middle age of romance-writers."