Ancient history from the monuments: Greek cities & islands of Asia Minor

Cyzicus—Lampsacus—Abydus—Assus—Palæ-Scepsis—Troy—Dr. Schliemann—Ilium Novum—Alexandria—Troas—Pergamum or Pergamus—Æolis.

Before we proceed to give a somewhat detailed account of the more important cities of Asia Minor, and of the islands adjacent to its west and southern shores, we may mention that Asia Minor, as it lies on the map, exhibits, in its contour, a remarkable resemblance to Spain. Extending between N. Lat. 36° and 42°, and E. Long. 26° and 40°, it is about the same size as France, and somewhat less than Spain and Portugal taken together. Its interior consists of a central plateau, rarely lower than 3,000 ft. above the sea, often much more; many portions of it, however, especially to the N. and E., affording excellent pasturage for sheep, and, therefore, now, as for centuries, the natural home of the Turkomán shepherds.

At the S.W. end of Asia Minor terminates, also, the great central mountain-range of Asia itself, which, running from the Brahmaputra westwards, connects the Himálayas and the Caucasus.

Many of the streams flowing from these mountains are heavily charged with lime; hence the remarkable deposits of travertine, &c., to be seen at Hierapolis and elsewhere. Indeed, to the geological features of the country we owe the fact that the military and commercial routes through Asia Minor have been always nearly the same, the earliest and the latest conquerors having followed the same roads.

The present produce of Asia Minor is almost insignificant when considered with reference to its geographical area, and to the great wealth extracted from it by the Romans (Cic. pro Leg. Manil. 2). But every land, alike, decays under the oppressive and unintelligent rule of the Osmanlis of Constantinople. The name, Asia Minor, we may add, is comparatively modern, and is not met with earlier than Orosius, in the fifth century A.D., while that of Anatolia (Ἀνατολἠ) is used first by Constantinus Porphyrogenitus, in the tenth century A.D.

The chief provinces of Asia Minor (omitting the smaller subdivisions of Ionia, Æolis, and Troas, included, as these latter are usually, under Mysia and Lydia) are the following:—Mysia, Lydia, Caria, to the W., and fronting the Ægean Sea; Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia, opposite to Crete and Cyprus; Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, on the Black Sea; and, in the centre, Pisidia and Lycaonia, Phrygia, Galatia and Cappadocia.

We propose to notice the more important towns, according to the order of the provinces just recited; and, following this order, we take first Mysia and its chief town, Cyzicus (the Esquize of mediæval times), which was situated on the neck of a peninsula running out into the Sea of Marmora. Mr. Hamilton describes its position as “a sandy isthmus, having near its southern end many large blocks of stone,” not, improbably, the remains of Strabo’s “bridge.” Many ancient monuments may still be traced among its present cherry-orchards, attesting its original magnitude and magnificence, most of the relics now visible being Roman, and its destruction having, no doubt, been mainly due to the great earthquakes in the reign of Tiberius and Aurelius, which ruined and depopulated so many other of the fairest towns of Asia Minor.^[1]

Mr. Hamilton, indeed, noting the loose and rubbly character of its buildings, doubts the architectural fame of the city; but it is probable that what we now see was once cased with marble, as much fine marble is found in the adjacent hills. Some, too, of its buildings are of a granite easily disintegrable. Any how, it would seem to be a place where well-conducted excavations might bring to light many curious relics of the past. Cyzicus was classed by Anaximenes of Lampsacus among the colonies of Miletus, but was not of importance till the close of the Peloponnesian war, when, by the discreditable peace of Antalcidas, it was surrendered to the Persians, its ultimate prosperity being in great measure due to its position, as a natural entrepôt, between the Black Sea and the Ægean. In Roman times it was, according to Strabo, a “Libera civitas,” and, with the exception of Nicomedia and Nicæa, the most important city in that part of Asia Minor. In the days of Caracalla it had become a “Metropolis,” and, still later, was an Episcopal see.

Of the great wealth and, we may perhaps add, of the popularity of its citizens in the fifth and fourth century B.C., the gold coins, called Cyzicene staters, are ample evidence; though it may be doubted whether, as was once thought, the zecchino (or sequin), means Cyzicene. In an able paper by Dr. (now Sir Patrick) Colquhoun (Trans. Roy. Liter. vol. iv. p. 35), it is clearly shown that the “Squise” of Ville-Hardouin is the ancient Cyzicus, “the oldest commercial place in the world,” as that writer, with some exaggeration, asserts. The form “Esquisse” is probably, as Dr. Colquhoun suggests, a corruption of εἰς Κὐζικον (“to Cyzicus”).^[2] Dr. Colquhoun’s paper is full of curious information on the early mediæval state of this part of Asia Minor. Its decline was mainly due to the invasion of the Goths in A.D. 262, but it long remained the metropolis of the Hellespontine province (Hierocl. Synecd. p. 661. Malala, Chron. i. p. 364). It was finally destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 943.

Another Mysian town of note was Lampsacus, also a colony of Miletus and Phocæa, attested as this is by its gold and silver coins, and by a statue of a prostrate lion, said to have been the work of Lysippus, and subsequently, placed by Agrippa in the Campus Martius at Rome. The town was famous for its wine, and was, for this reason, granted to Themistocles, who is said to have learnt here, or at Magnesia, Persian in a year; the district around having been granted to him by his old enemy the King of Persia. Like most of the towns of western Asia Minor, it often changed hands during the rival contests of its more powerful neighbours; but, having, with a wise forethought, voted a crown of gold to the Romans, it was accepted by them as an ally,^[3] and, hence, was, in the time of Strabo, a town of some magnitude. A small village, called Lampsaki, most likely marks on our modern maps the site of the old town.

A little to the south of Lampsacus was Abydus, at the narrowest part of the Hellespont, and opposite the town of Sestus.^[4] It was a little above Abydus that Xerxes constructed his famous bridge, B.C. 480; but, except for the gallant resistance it made to Philip, son of Demetrius, king of Macedon, Abydus has no place in history. In legendary lore, however, it was the scene of the famous swimming of Leander to visit his lady-love, the Priestess of the Temple at Sestus, on the opposite or European shore, a natatory feat, however, far surpassed in recent days. Lord Byron’s lines on the subject are well known:—

Leander’s labour, however, was greater than that of the poet or his companion, in that he swam against the stream to reach Sestus, the current being often so powerful that a well-manned boat cannot be pulled straight across it.

A little further down the coast, and facing nearly due south, is Assus, a site which has been visited by many travellers, as Walpole, Choiseul-Gouffier, Raoul-Rochette, Fellows, and Pullan. The most ancient monuments of Greek art in the Louvre at Paris were removed thence. The position of the chief buildings is very grand; indeed, in Strabo’s time, Assus was considered as a fortress almost inaccessible.^[5] Its ruins are still remarkably perfect, one gate at least, of triangular construction, resembling those at Mycenæ and Arpinum. There are, also, vestiges of a hexastyle Doric temple, showing some analogy with those at Pæstum. Seventeen large fragments from the metopes and two façades of the Temple were ultimately removed to France by Capt. Chaigneau, together with a Doric capital. They were found scattered over the slope of the hill, and must have been removed at some time or the other, probably for building purposes; indeed, fragments of similar pieces were also noticed in some of the neighbouring houses. In character of workmanship, the sculptures resemble the Æginetan marbles now at the British Museum. But their execution is not so effective, the material of which they are made being the coarse red stone of the neighbourhood. To the same cause is, perhaps, due the fact that they had not been carried away long ago. Had they been of fine marble, they would have been valuable plunder. Sir Charles Fellows, speaking of Assus, says, “After depositing my baggage, I took the most intelligent Turk in the place as my cicerone.... Immediately around me were the ruins, extending for miles, undisturbed by any living creature except the goats and kids. On every side lay columns, triglyphs and friezes, of beautiful sculpture, every object speaking of the grandeur of this ancient city. In one place I saw thirty Doric capitals placed up in a line for a fence.” Sir Charles Fellows gives a drawing of one of the friezes now in Paris, and adds, “I then entered the Via Sacra, or Street of Tombs, extending for miles. Some of these tombs still stand in their original beautiful forms, but most have been opened, and the lids are lying near the walls they covered, curiosity or avarice having been satisfied by displacing them.... These ruins are on a considerably larger scale than those of the Roman city, and many of the remains are equally perfect. Several are highly ornamented and have inscriptions; others are as large as a temple, being twenty to thirty feet square; the usual height of the sarcophagus is from ten to twelve feet.”^[6]

Palæ-Scepsis is interesting for the native tradition, that it was once the capital of Æneas’s dominions. It appears to have been situated near the source of the Æsepus—high up on Mount Ida—the later Scepsis being about sixty stadia (7½ miles) lower down (Strabo, xiii. 607). Dr. Colquhoun^[7] states that a village in the neighbourhood still bears the name of Eski Skisepje, which, as Eski means “old” in Turkish, corresponds with Palæ-Scepsis; Dr. Colquhoun at the same time quotes the words of its discoverer, the distinguished Oriental scholar, Dr. Mordtmann. “I did discover,” says Dr. Mordtmann, “a most ancient city with its acropolis, towers and walls built of hewn stone, and furnished with four gates. The antiquity of the place was manifested by an oak having fixed its roots in the wall, and by its trunk having grown to a girth of 530 centimètres (about 17 feet). On reference to Strabo, I first became aware that I had discovered, probably, the most ancient ruin in Asia Minor, for I hold that this can be no other than Palæ-Scepsis.” The evidence adduced by Drs. Mordtmann and Colquhoun confirms the accuracy of Strabo. The later town of Scepsis is memorable for the discovery there, during the time of Sylla, of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which had been buried by the illiterate relations of one Neleus (a pupil of Aristotle and friend of Theophrastus), lest they should be carried off by Attalus, then founding his library at Pergamus. It appears from Strabo, that though preserved from utter ruin, the precious MSS. had suffered much from damp and worms; but they suffered still more by the injudicious efforts of their purchaser, Apellicon of Teos, a well-meaning person, though wholly incompetent to supply the gaps he found.

But the most celebrated place in Mysia was the ancient city of Troy. It would be out of place here, indeed impossible, to discuss any of the various theories of ancient or modern times referring to this famous town and its no less famous war. It is enough to state here our firm belief in the existence of both, and further, that the legends since grouped around them by no means demand any such non-existence. We have no doubt that a prominent conical hill, now called Hissarlik, does represent the spot where old Troy once stood.^[8] The convergency of the various stories of ancient history, the existence at Hissarlik of ruins of remote antiquity, and the singular fitness of the position (unless, indeed, all that is attributed to Homer is to be condemned as purely mythical), lead to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that here, if anywhere, once stood this celebrated town.

The inhabitants of Ilium were a mixed population, partly, it is probable, of Thracian origin, and so far only Greek that a Pelasgian element may be traced in both peoples, while they were probably, also, inferior in civilization to the Greeks, with barbaric habits and manners, already obsolete among their more polished enemies. Nor, again, is it at all necessary to maintain that the capture of Troy implies its entire destruction; it is, indeed, more likely that its ultimate ruin was due to the enmity of its Asiatic neighbours, as suggested by Strabo on the authority of an ancient writer, Xanthus. It is clear that Ilium stood on rising ground, between the rivers Scamander and Simois, and that here were placed the palaces of Priam and of his sons. The whole spot was, we may reasonably conclude, surrounded by strong walls, with many gates, only one of which is, however, noticed in Homer by name. Such was the tradition, the long endurance of which is shown in the subsequent sacrifice by Xerxes, recorded by Herodotus (vii. 43).

The new Ilium of later days most likely occupied the same traditional site; the theory of Demetrius of Scepsis, adopted by Strabo, of two Iliums separated the one from the other by a considerable interval of ground, being clearly adverse to a common-sense view of the question.^[9] Any one would naturally expect that those who constructed Novum Ilium would select that place for their town to which the legends most distinctly pointed; while a manifest objection to the view of Demetrius is that it converts Homer from a poet into a topographer, and attempts to make the natural features of the country accord with his poetic descriptions. It is far more probable that Homer, or whoever collected the poems passing under his name, had but a very general idea of the localities where were laid the scenes he describes: while there is, also, no general agreement as to the true site of Troy among those writers who, in modern times, have more or less accepted the theory of Demetrius and Strabo. Indeed, on the idea of Homer having written his poems with an Ordnance map in his lap, it is simply impossible to fix on any one spot that satisfies all the conditions of his story.

We must now notice the recent marvellous researches of Dr. Schliemann, for, though they have done little towards the revelation of Homer’s Troy, they have demonstrated that, many feet below very ancient and still existing walls, there have once been enormous structures, the treasury, fortress, and royal residence of some wealthy ruler of remote antiquity. While, therefore, we do not believe that Dr. Schliemann has found old Troy, in the same sense that Layard discovered the palaces of Sardanapalus, the Greek inscriptions he has unearthed have assuredly proved the identity of the modern Hissarlik with Novum Ilium. What, then, is the history of Schliemann’s researches, and what has he done that any other man might not have done with as ample means at his command? Doubtless there are other men who might have done as much as he, notably Mr. Layard. As Dr. Schliemann was much influenced by his early education at home, and as his career has been a very extraordinary one, we feel sure our readers would like to know something of the digger as well of as what he has dug out. We purpose, therefore, to give a brief sketch of his personal history, and then, with equal brevity, to add a notice of what he has accomplished.

Born in 1822 at a small village in Mecklenburg, he tells us that, “as soon as I learnt to speak my father related to me the great deeds of the Homeric heroes,” and, though from ten years of age he was an apprentice in a warehouse,^[10] he always retained, as he adds, “the same love for the famous men of antiquity which I conceived for them in my first childhood.” As time went on Schliemann became a clerk, though on a yearly salary of only £32: but he contrived to live on half—to do without a fire, and to devote all his spare moments to the study of languages. Thus he learnt first English and French, each in six months, and then other modern tongues, including Russ.

To Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese he allowed only six weeks each. During the eight years from 1846 to 1854 he was so much occupied in business that he had no time for literature; in the latter end, however, of the second year he found time to learn Swedish and Polish. It was not till January, 1856, that he ventured to attack Greek, his fear being, as he naïvely remarks, that the fascination of its study might interfere with his commercial duties. Aided however by two Greek friends, he tells us he learnt modern Greek in six weeks, and, in three months more, sufficient classical Greek to understand the ancient writers, and especially Homer. In 1858 Dr. Schliemann was able to travel over Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and Egypt, on the way learning somewhat of (we presume colloquial) Arabic, and returning thence through Syria and Athens to St. Petersburg. It was not, however, till 1863 that he had secured, by his vigorous commercial occupations, the means to spend the rest of his life as he pleased.

His first plan, in 1864, was to visit the fatherland of Ulysses, but this was only a hasty and flying trip, and he was, shortly afterwards, induced to extend his journey to India, China, and Japan. On his return to Europe he spent some time in Paris, but made also, thence, journeys to Greece and the plains of Troy, an account of which, written, it would seem, about 1868, he has given in the first volume of his recent work. This volume contains, inter alia, the result of his studies among the “Cyclopean” works in Argolis, a knowledge of great value to him when he commenced his more important excavations. He seems also, about this period, to have carefully examined the Troad, and to have satisfied himself that Hissarlik was the place at which to commence his excavations. Having married a Greek lady, in every sense a “help-meet” for the work he had set himself to do, he went again to the Troad in the spring of 1870, and, having secured an ample number of labourers, continued his excavations there during the greater part of the period between the autumn of 1871 and the summer of 1873.

It must not be supposed that this work was one of ease or pleasant toil: he had not the patient “Chaldeans” who did Layard’s behests, still less had he Hormuzd Rassam to settle, as a native only can settle, the ever-rising disputes between the Greek and Mussulman “navvies.” Indeed, to secure one pavement from destruction, he had to tell his workmen that by this road “Christ had gone up to visit King Priam”! The cost, too, was very heavy; for he had often 150 men in his employment, and expended, from his own resources, fully £8,000. Is it possible to estimate too highly such exertions towards the ascertainment of the reality or falsity of ancient story, and this, too, by the only thoroughly effectual means, the excavation of sites of traditional importance? Can we withhold our admiration for the labourer, even though his enthusiasm may have led him to believe all he found was Trojan, the golden relics, especially, being those of King Priam? and, after all, what matters the theory of the excavator, so the work he does is well done? As well might we quarrel with Mr. Parker’s labours in Rome, because he has coupled with his most valuable excavations his own, somewhat fanciful, belief in the personality of a Romulus. Every honest excavation, such as those of Dr. Schliemann and Mr. Parker, are so many landmarks recovered from all-destroying time. We can well afford to dispense with or to smile at the fancies of the excavators, so only that a careful record be kept of what the excavations have really revealed.

Dr. Schliemann’s account of his diggings, between the autumn of 1871 and June 17, 1873, has been published in the form of twenty-three letters or memoirs; a mode of narrative the more pleasant that it places the reader au courant with the daily ideas of the discoverer, though, necessarily, causing some repetition and not a few corrections. His Introduction, however, gives a sufficient summary of what he accomplished. With the text he has also provided an atlas of 217 photographic plates of the plans and excavations carried on throughout the whole plain of Troy, together with representations of between three and four thousand individual objects discovered. These photographs—not, we regret to say, from the originals, but from drawings of them—are wholly inadequate to give any satisfactory idea of the beauty or character of the objects themselves.

Dr. Schliemann having, as we have stated, made up his mind^[11] that the rising ground now called Hissarlik (or fortress) was the site of Old Troy, commenced his diggings there, on a plateau about 80 feet above the level of the plain, with a steep descent to the N.E. and N.W. Above this plateau is a portion of ground 26 feet higher, about 925 feet long by 620 feet wide, which he assumed to be the Pergamum of Homer, or citadel of Priam. If so, beneath and around this Acropolis must have been the second as well as the earlier city. Dr. Schliemann went to work much as miners do when they are “prospecting,” only on a larger scale: he took soundings of the plain till he reached the virgin rock, at a depth never greater than 16 feet, at first meeting only with walls of houses and fragments of pottery of a Greek or even later period. As he found nothing else up to the edge of the Pergamum,^[12] he concluded that the original Ilium did not spread into the plain, and that its area was accurately defined by the great wall he afterwards found. In short, he concluded that the city had no special Acropolis,^[12] as feigned by Homer, and that any enlargement of the old town was due to the débris gradually thrown down or accumulated around the base of the small central hill. He adds, rather amusingly, “I venture to hope that the civilized world will not only not be vexed that the town of Priam has shown itself scarcely the twentieth part as large as was to be expected from the statements of the Iliad, but, on the contrary, that, with delight and enthusiasm, it will accept the certainty that Ilium did really exist.”

There is nothing specially remarkable in the small size of the “supposed” Troy. It was an ancient custom to build the town round a central Acropolis where possible. So was it with Athens and Mycenæ, with Rome, Carthage and Mount Zion; the ordinary dwellings of the population for centuries being huts or small cottages, like the traditional Tugurium of Romulus, buildings which would, naturally, leave behind them no traces of their former existence. It has been well remarked, that Homer cannot fairly be accused of having invented this Pergamum, as the hill was a natural fact: and that what he really did, was, to indulge his imagination as to the magnificence of the town he grouped on it or in the plain round it.

The little hill of Hissarlik became, therefore, the centre of Dr. Schliemann’s labours, the most productive field of his excavations, and the site where he laid open walls far more ancient than Greek Ilium, with a perfect entrance-gateway and paved road through it, together with many remains of houses, and a marvellous collection of relics, some of great intrinsic value. But the most unexpected discovery was the position of the various remains, proving, as this did, that, at least, four different sets of people had occupied this site, and covered it with their own buildings, in complete unconsciousness that there had been elder races there before them, whose remains were actually under them. The same fact has been noticed, but on a small scale, elsewhere. Thus Roman London lies some sixteen or seventeen feet under the Mansion House or Bank of England; so, too, Layard found successive traces on the mound of Nimrud of Arab, Roman, and Parthian occupation. But such traces are as nothing to what Dr. Schliemann’s works revealed. It was clear that the natural hill of Hissarlik had been, at first, somewhat levelled, being also, in some places, made more secure by a retaining wall, and that, above this, the successive ruins have been heaped up in a solid mass from 46 to 52 feet above the native rock. On this, lastly, Novum Ilium was built. Dr. Schliemann gives a section, whence it appears that, commencing from the existing surface, Greek Ilium occupies about six feet in depth; that at 23 feet below this, Dr. Schliemann’s “Troy of Homer” is reached; and that, under this “Troy,” again, is a third stratum 29 feet thick, the whole human accumulations. The most sceptical person on the subject of “Troy divine” cannot question the accuracy of Dr. Schliemann’s measurements, whatever he may think of his theories. It is manifest that even the stratum immediately under Ilium Novum is essentially prehistoric. Of what date, then, are the still lower strata? Indeed, calculations, on such a point, can as little be relied on as those of Mr. Horner on the alluvium of the Egyptian Delta. There are, however, some matters connected with them that must be noticed from their peculiarity. Thus the super-imposed layers testify to periods of occupation rather than to those of destruction; while the theory of distinct and well-defined stone, bronze, and iron ages completely breaks down, stone implements occurring in all the strata, and even where bronze is abundant. Iron, on the other hand, is almost wholly absent. Thus instruments of stone and of copper occur with ornaments in gold, silver, and even ivory, evidencing, as these do, advance in civilization and, as the cause of this, some interchange of commerce with other nations.

Whatever else, therefore, may be thought of Dr. Schliemann’s researches, it cannot be doubted but that the excavations at Hissarlik form a new chapter in the history of man, and as such [apart from any supposed connection with Homer], are a sufficient reward for his labour and expenditure of capital. It would unquestionably have been better (but who shall control honest enthusiasm?) had he been less ready to invest every discovery he made with some Homeric name; we could have been well free of such pretentious identifications as the Tower of Ilium, the Scæan gates, the Royal Palace, and King Priam’s Treasure; just as, in a similar case, Mr. Parker’s valuable contributions to the early history of Rome are not improved by the revival of the legend of a Romulus and Remus, and of the suckling of these heroes by a she-wolf. Nothing, however, allowing for these slight blemishes, can exceed the interest of Dr. Schliemann’s narrative.

“The excavations,” to quote his own words, “prove that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the débris of the first settlers (which is from twenty to thirty feet thick), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings.... The strata of this Trojan débris, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, and rise from five to ten feet above the great wall of Ilion, the double Scæan gate, and the great surrounding wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo, and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great this heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone of the road leading from the double Scæan gate down to the plain; for when a few months ago I laid this road open, all the slabs appeared as much uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished by a stratum of scoriæ of melted lead and copper of a thickness of from ⅕ of an inch to 1⅕ inch, which extends nearly through the whole hill at a depth of from 27 feet to 29 feet.”

It was here that Dr. Schliemann found the prodigious structure he has named the “Tower of Ilion,” a building no less than 40 feet thick. “This tower,” he adds, “after having been buried for thirty-one centuries, and after, during thousands of years, one nation after another had built its houses and palaces high above its summit, has now again been brought to light, and commands a view, if not of the whole plain, at least of its northern parts, and of the Hellespont.” A little way beyond this tower is a remarkably perfect gateway, fitted for two pairs of gates, one behind the other, the upper fastenings of which still remain in the stone posts. These Dr. Schliemann takes for the “Scæan gates” of Homer. He then came to what he calls the “Palace of Priam,” no doubt, a house of some kind, at a depth of from 22 to 26 feet, resting upon the great tower, and directly under the Temple of Minerva. Its walls were built of small stones cemented with earth, and would seem to belong to different epochs. The walls vary in thickness from 4 feet to 1 foot 10 inches. All about, within as well as without, are abundant signs of fire, which must have burnt with prodigious fury. Dr. Schliemann speaks of many feet in thickness of red and yellow wood ashes. Here, as at Nineveh and at Carthage, the first destruction seems to have been fire, the great extent of it, in each case, having probably arisen from the wooden construction of the upper portions of these houses. At Nineveh, it has been reasonably supposed that only the foundations of the walls were of stone or brick, the upper part, like many Eastern houses at the present day, being wholly of wood, which would readily catch fire, and fill the rooms below with burning embers. In several of the rooms of one of these houses Dr. Schliemann found red jars from 7 to 8 feet high, and, to the east of the house, what he assumes to have been a sacrificial altar, a slab of granite 5 feet 4 inches long by 5 feet 5 inches broad. Such a conflagration, it is likely, would be long remembered; and it has been acutely asked whether, after all, there may not have been an Asiatic Iliad handed down from mouth to mouth, of which Homer may have availed himself, as did the mediæval Minnesingers.

The next and the greatest of Schliemann’s discoveries was also one of his last: we give it in his own words. “In the course of excavations on the Trojan wall, and in the immediate neighbourhood of Priam’s house, I lighted on a great copper object of remarkable form, which attracted my attention all the more, as I thought I saw gold behind. Upon this copper object rested a thick crust of red ashes and calcined ruins, on which again weighed a wall nearly 6 feet thick and 18 feet high, built of great stones and earth, and which must have belonged to the period next after the destruction of Troy. In order to save this treasure from the greed of my workmen, and to secure it for science, it was necessary to use the very greatest haste, and so, though it was not yet breakfast-time, I had “paidos,” or resting-time, called out at once. While my workmen were eating and resting I cut out the treasure with a great knife, not without the greatest effort and the most terrible risk of my life, for the great wall of the fortress which I had to undermine, threatened every moment to fall upon me. But the sight of so many objects, of which each alone is of inestimable worth to science, made me foolhardy, and I thought of no danger. The carrying off, however, of the treasures would have been impossible without the help of my dear wife, who stood by ready to pack up the objects in her shawl as I cut them out, and to take them away.”

We may add that the whole find lay together in a quadrangular mass, retaining the shape of the box in which it had been deposited, and that hard by was a large key, presumably that which once locked it. The treasure had, probably, been hastily packed, an idea fully sustained by its miscellaneous character. Indeed, the same thing seems to have happened in the case of the bronze plates found by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. The mass of precious metal found is simply astonishing, one cup alone weighing 40 oz. of gold, while there were besides, innumerable objects in bronze, silver and gold, spears and axes, and two-edged daggers, together with a large bronze shield, with a central boss, and a rim raised as if to receive the edges of ox-hides or other covering. Fortunately, the gold vessels had resisted the action of the fire; some of them having been cast, others hammered; in some cases, too, soldering had been used. One curious portion of the collection Dr. Schliemann describes as follows:—“That this treasure was packed,” says he, “in the greatest haste, is shown by the contents of the great silver vase, in which I found, quite at the bottom, two splendid golden diadems, a fillet for the head, and four most gorgeous and artistic pendants for ear-rings. On them lay fifty-six golden ear-rings and 4,750 little golden rings, perforated prisms and dice, together with golden buttons and other precious things which belonged to other ornaments. After these, came six golden bracelets, and, quite at the top of all, in the silver vase, were two small golden cups.”

Besides these more precious objects, Dr. Schliemann met with a quantity of what, for want of a better name, may be called idols, consisting of flat pieces of stone, marbles, and terra-cotta, [and, in one instance, of the vertebra of some antediluvian animal,] containing on one side “an attempt to model a face whether human or owlish.” Such objects are not rare. In the British Museum are many flat pieces of burnt clay, with moulding on them, of the rudest kind, not wholly unlike what Dr. Schliemann found. Dr. Schliemann sees in these the original type of the sacred owl of Minerva,—to say the least,—a very bold guess. Indeed, but for the place where they were found, their remote antiquity might be doubted, as they might be, after all, but degraded types of a good period of art. Dr. Schliemann, however, maintains that many of these strange owl-headed objects of clay are representatives of Athene,—in fact, the original type of the γλαυκῶπις θεὰ, the “goddess with the bright or flashing eyes,” and, also, that this epithet ought to be now translated the “owl-faced goddess”! But though Dr. Schliemann may urge in favour of his views that, as the worship of Athene was of Oriental origin, there is no reason why she should not have been represented as owl-faced, just as we find an eagle-headed Nisroch, a hawk-headed Ra, and a ram-headed Ammon, there is, really, no evidence in favour of his theory. Mr. Newton has embraced everything in his remark that “the conception of the human form as an organic whole, a conception we meet with in the very dawn of Greek art, nowhere appears” in Dr. Schliemann’s collections, the probability being that these objects are of an antiquity long antecedent to anything Greek, and the work of a people in no way connected with the Greeks. In Greek art, the usual adjunct to most representations of Athene on coins is the owl, while in Homer (Odyss. iii. 372) Athene leaves Nestor, under the form of an osprey. It is possible, therefore, that these metamorphoses symbolize a still earlier faith.

Having already stated our belief that not only did an Ilium or a Troy really exist, but, also, that there was a real living Homer, we need not notice the objections urged against the opinions of Dr. Schliemann, on the ground that “as the Iliad is a mythical poem, it is absurd to expect in it any historical kernel,” a method of reasoning, to say the least, unsatisfactory, if not fallacious. There is no conceivable reason why the most mythical poem may not comprehend contorted images of real events; the difficulty, in each case, and the only real difficulty, being the unravelling of the confused stories, which prevent our taking up the tangled skein of history. No one supposes the early legends of the Zendavesta to be history, yet some of the stations of the migration from N.E. to S.W. can be reasonably identified: so, too, no one supposes the story of Gyges in Herodotus historical, though the annals of Assur-bani-pal prove the reality of a “Gugu, king of Ludim.” The prehistoric theory may be pressed too far.

Of the character of the art of the objects of Dr. Schliemann, or of the date of his wonderful collections, there is, at present, no evidence on which to base a reasonable judgment. One thing, however, seems certain; that they are not Greek—nor in any way connected with Greek art. If among the vast numbers of objects found, there may be some objects resembling others met with in Greece, the natural inference would be that, as so much of Greek art is traceable ultimately to Asia, so, too, are these. Nor must we, altogether, ignore the possible effects of commerce. Dr. Schliemann has certainly proved the existence of a wealthy population—living on the spot that tradition and history alike have assigned to Troy; and we cannot doubt that the owners of these remains were pre-Hellenic. It is not so long ago that Semiramis was as mythical a name as King Priam; and who can say that a future Rawlinson may not prove the truth of a Trojan Priam as clearly as that “Sammuramit” reigned in Nineveh? The dwellers on the rock of Ilion clearly were “no prehistoric savages,” but denizens of a real city, with its fortress and palace. It is curious that, above Dr. Schliemann’s “Trojans,” at a distance of from 23 to 33 feet, dwelt a population who constructed their houses of small stones and earth, and, occasionally, of sun-dried bricks. The artistic remains of this people are inferior to those below them; yet they made coarse pottery, battle-axes, knives, nails, &c., with a slight use of copper or bronze, but with plenty of stone implements. This place, having been destroyed in its turn, another set of people occupied the mound, a race inferior in civilization to all who had preceded them. These people, it has been suspected, were Cimmerians, perhaps, portions of the Nomad tribes, who, we know from Herodotus and Strabo, constantly made eruptions into Asia Minor.

We must add that, among the various objects found by Dr. Schliemann, were some scratches of the rudest kind, on a honestone, from the first supposed to be letters of some alphabet. The truth of this conjecture has been recently proved by the persevering study of Professor Gomperz, of Vienna, who says that, in the comparisons he has made between the Cypriote alphabet and the Hissarlik inscriptions, “I have not schematized, I have not enlarged or reduced anything. Every dot, every twist is copied with slavish accuracy from the best Cyprian documents. Nor have I allowed myself to be eclectic and to mix letters of different periods and localities.” Professor Max Müller adds, “Accepting these statements of Professor Gomperz, I can only repeat my conviction, that his decipherment of the first inscription Tagoi Dioi seems to me almost beyond reasonable doubt.” The interpretation of the other presumed inscriptions is more open to doubt.

It is a remarkable fact, as clearly shown by Dr. Schliemann’s researches, that the occupiers of all these strata, alike, were tillers of the ground, while the huge jars found standing upright can hardly have been used for any other purpose than the storing of wine, oil, or corn. The quantity of copper found suggests a connection with Cyprus—the island of copper—as do, also, the inscriptions just noticed; subsequent analysis, however, has thrown doubt on Dr. Schliemann’s idea that his vessels were of pure copper.^[13] The fine red pottery, too, is said to resemble very much the existing pottery of Cyprus. The vases are, however, not painted, nor have any traces of sculpture been as yet detected.