Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/39

ence between prehistoric and Hellenic pottery on the one hand, or archaic and classical Greek pottery on the other, and covers his ignorance by misquoting the words of an eminent French archaeologist who has made the early pottery of the Levant his special study? The English public is apt to think that a man who is reputed to be a great scholar is qualified to pronounce an opinion upon every subject under the sun. As a matter of fact, he knows as little as the public itself about those subjects in which he has not undergone the necessary preliminary training, and his writing about them is but a new form of charlatanry. The power of translating from Greek and Latin, or of composing Greek and Latin verses, will not enable a scholar to determine archaeological problems, any more. than it will enable him to translate the hymns of the Rig-Veda, or to decipher a cuneiform inscription. Theories in regard to Dr. Schliemann's discoveries at Hissarlik have been gravely put forward of late, which have derived an importance only from the influential character of the organs in which they have appeared. It has been maintained in sober earnest, that the fifth stratum of ruins represents the Macedonian Ilion, which was embellished by Lysimakhos about 300 B.C., and sacked by Fimbria in 85 B.C., while the fourth city was that visited by Xerxes, and the third city the old Aeolic settlement. It is only necessary for the reader who does not pretend to a knowledge of archaeology to examine the woodcuts so lavishly distributed throughout the pages of Ilios, in order that he may judge of the value of such a hypothesis, or of the archaeological attainments that lie behind it. The pottery, the terra-cotta "whorls," the idols, the implements and weapons of stone and bone, found in the prehistoric strata of Hissarlik, are all such as have never been found—nor are likely to be found—on any Greek site even of the prehistoric age. We shall look for them in vain at Mykênae, at Orkhomenos, at Tiryns, or in the early tombs of