Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/301

§ II. Tumulus of Patroclus.—The passage just cited seems to prove that in Homer's mind there was only one tumulus raised for Patroclus and Achilles. But it is highly probable that the two neighbouring tumuli also existed in the Homeric age, or at least the one which is now attributed to Patroclus. This latter had been excavated in 1855 by Mr. Frank Calvert, of the Dardanelles, in company with some officers of the British fleet. They sank an open shaft in it and dug down to the rock, without finding anything worth their notice. But at that time archaeologists had not yet given any attention to the fragments of ancient pottery. Even when in 1876 I made the large excavations at Mycenae, the delegate of the Greek Government, the Inspector of Antiquities, Mr. P. Stamatakes, pronounced the immense masses of fragments of highly important archaic pottery which were brought to light, and which far exceeded in interest anything of that kind ever found in Greece, to be useless débris, and urgently insisted that they should be shot from the hill with the real rubbish; in fact I could not prevent this being done with quantities of such fragments. It was in vain that I telegraphed to Athens, begging the Minister of Public Instruction, as well as the President of the Archaeological Society, Mr. Philippos Ioannes, to stop this vandalism. Finally I invoked the aid of the Director-General of Antiquities, Mr. P. Eustratiades, and of Professor E. Castorches, and I owe it solely to the energy of these worthy scholars, that the Archaeological Society was at last induced to put a stop to that outrage, and to command Stamatakes to preserve all the fragments of pottery. Since that time people have begun to regard pottery as the cornucopiae of archaeological knowledge, and to employ it as a key to determine approximately the age of the sites where it is found. Science will, therefore, be grateful to me for having saved the really enormous masses of fragments of most ancient Mycenean pottery from certain destruction.