Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/22

was a powerful prince, who must have had at his disposal the neighbouring gold mines of Astyra, and who carried on an intercourse with distant nations, both by land and sea; above all, it perished by fire. Now let us turn to the outlines of the Greek story of Ilion. Here, too, we hear of a city that was already old in the days of the Trojan war; whose walls and public buildings had already undergone destruction and subsequent restoration; which, like Hissarlik, was large and wealthy, with a lofty citadel, whereon stood the royal palace and the temples of the gods; which was encircled by great walls crowned by towers; whose prince was the rich and wide-ruling Priam, with allies that came from far and near; while its end was to be captured by Greek invaders and burnt to the very ground. When we add to this, that Hissarlik has now been proved to be the only site in the Troad which can correspond with the Homeric Troy, it is difficult to resist the conclusion, that Dr. Schliemann has indeed discovered Ilion.

But, in saying this, it is not necessary to maintain that all the topographical details mentioned in the Iliad can be verified in the immediate neighbourhood of Hissarlik. As Dr. Schliemann has remarked, "Homer gives us the legend of Ilium's tragic fate as it was handed down to him by preceding bards, clothing the traditional facts of the war and destruction of Troy in the garb of his own day." A would-be critic of Dr. Schliemann's has recently discovered that the geography of the Iliad is eclectic, and in all its details suits no single locality in the Trojan plain. But the discovery is not a new one; it was stated by myself in the Academy four years ago, as well as by Dr. Schliemann in Ilios, and is to be found in other writers before us. In determining whether the second prehistoric city of Hissarlik is the Ilion of Homer, it is as little necessary to harmonize all the topographical indications of the Iliad with its site, as it is to harmonize the picture of Trojan civilization drawn in the Homeric Poems with the