Note 51 — Chapter XIX · THE EXCURSION

‘Homer has said nothing, positively, of the size of any of his heroes, but only comparatively, as I shall presently observe: nor is this to be wondered at; for I know no historian, ancient or modern, that says anything of the size of the men of his own nation, except comparatively with that of other nations. But in that fine episode of his, called by the ancient critics the Τειχοσκοπια or Prospect from the Walls, he has given us a very accurate description of the persons of several of the Greek heroes; which I am persuaded he had from very good information. In this description he tells us that Ulysses was shorter than Agamemnon by the head, shorter than Menelaus by the head and shoulders, and that Ajax was taller than any of the Greeks by the head and shoulders; consequently, Ulysses was shorter than Ajax by two heads and shoulders, which we cannot reckon less than four feet. Now, if we suppose heroes to have been no bigger than we, then Ajax must have been a man about six feet and a half, or at most seven feet; and if so Ulysses must have been most contemptibly short, not more than three feet, which is certainly not the truth, but a most absurd and ridiculous fiction, such as we cannot suppose in Homer: whereas, if we allow Ajax to have been twelve or thirteen feet high, and, much more, if we suppose him to have been eleven cubits, as Philostratus makes him, Ulysses, though four feet short of him, would have been of a good size, and, with the extraordinary breadth which Homer observes he had, may have been as strong a man as Ajax.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 146.