DR. SCHLIEMANN’S original narrative of his wonderful discoveries on the spot marked as the site of Homer’s Ilium by an unbroken tradition, from the earliest historic age of Greece, has a permanent value and interest which can scarcely be affected by the final verdict of criticism on the result of his discoveries. If he has indeed found the fire-scathed ruins of the city whose fate inspired the immortal first-fruits of Greek poetry, and brought to light many thousands of objects illustrating the race, language, and religion of her inhabitants, their wealth and civilization, their instruments and appliances for peaceful life and war; and if, in digging out these remains, he has supplied the missing link, long testified by tradition as well as poetry, between the famous Greeks of history and their kindred in the East; no words can describe the interest which must ever belong to the first birth of such a contribution to the history of the world. Or should we, on the other hand, in the face of all that has been revealed on the very spot of which the Greeks themselves believed that Homer sang, lean to the scepticism of the scholar who still says:—“I know as yet of one Ilion only, that is, the Ilion as sung by Homer, which is not likely to be found in the trenches of Hissarlik, but rather among the Muses who dwell on Olympus;” even so a new interest of historic and antiquarian curiosity would be excited by “the splendid ruins,” as the same high authority rightly calls those “which Dr. Schliemann has brought to light at Hissarlik.” For what, in that case, were the four cities, whose successive layers of ruins, still marked by the fires that have passed over them in turn, are piled to the height of fifty feet above the old summit of the hill? If not even one of them is Troy, what is the story, so like that of Troy, which belongs to them?

What is the light that is struggling to break forth from the varied mass of evidence, and the half-deciphered inscriptions, that are still exercising the ingenuity of the most able enquirers? Whatever may be the true and final answer to these questions—and we have had to put on record a signal proof that the most sanguine investigators will be content with no answer short of the truth[1]—the vivid narrative written by the discoverer on the spot can never lose that charm which Renan has so happily described as “la charme des origines.”

The Editor may be permitted to add, what the Author might not say, that the work derives another charm from the spirit that prompted the labours which it records. It is the work of an enthusiast in a cause which, in our “practical” age, needs all the zeal of its remaining devotees, the cause of learning for its own sake. But, in this case, enthusiasm has gone hand in hand with the practical spirit in its best form. Dr. Schliemann judged rightly in prefixing to his first work the simple unaffected record of that discipline in adversity and self-reliance, amidst which he at once educated himself and obtained the means of gratifying his ardent desire to throw new light on the highest problems of antiquity, at his own expense. His readers ought to know that, besides other large contributions to the cause of learning, the cost of his excavations at Hissarlik alone has amounted to 10,000l.; and this is in no sense the speculative investment of an explorer, for he has expressed the firm resolution to give away his collection, and not to sell it.

Under this sense of the high and lasting value of Dr. Schliemann’s work, the present translation has been undertaken, with the object of laying the narrative before English readers in a form considerably improved upon the original. For this object the Editor can safely say, on behalf of the Publisher and himself, that no pains and cost have been spared; and Dr. Schliemann has contributed new materials of great value.

The original work[2] was published, at the beginning of this year, as an octavo volume, accompanied by a large quarto “Atlas” of 217 photographic plates, containing a Map, Plans, and Views of the Plain of Troy, the Hill of Hissarlik, and the excavations, with representations of upwards of 4000 objects selected from the 100,000 and more brought to light by Dr. Schliemann, which were elaborately described in the letter-press pages of the Atlas. The photographs were taken for the most part from drawings; and Dr. Schliemann is the first to acknowledge that their execution left much to be desired. Many of his original plans and drawings have been placed at our disposal; and an especial acknowledgment is due both to Dr. Schliemann and Monsieur Émile Burnouf, the Director of the French School at Athens, for the use of the admirable drawings of the terra-cotta whorls and balls made by M. Burnouf and his accomplished daughter. A selection of about 200 of these objects, which are among the most interesting of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries, occupies the 32 lithographic plates at the end of this volume. With the exception of the first three Plates (XXI.-XXIII.), which are copied from the Atlas, in order to give a general view of the sections of the whorls and the chief types of the patterns upon them, all the rest are engraved from M. Burnouf’s drawings. They are given in the natural size, and each whorl is accompanied by its section. The depth at which each object was found among the layers of dÉbris is a matter of such moment (as will be seen from Dr. Schliemann’s work) that the Editor felt bound to undertake the great labour of identifying each with the representation of the same object in the Atlas, where the depth is marked, to which, unfortunately, the drawings gave no reference. The few whorls that remain unmarked with their depth have either escaped this repeated search, or are not represented in the Atlas. The elaborate descriptions of the material, style of workmanship, and supposed meanings of the patterns, which M. Burnouf has inscribed on most of his drawings, are given in the “List of Illustrations.” The explanations of the patterns are, of course, offered only as conjectures, possessing the value which they derive from M. Burnouf’s profound knowledge of Aryan antiquities. Some of the explanations of the patterns are Dr. Schliemann’s; and the Editor has added a few descriptions, based on a careful attempt to analyze and arrange the patterns according to distinct types. Most of these types are exhibited on Plates XXII. and XXIII.

The selection of the 300 illustrations inserted in the body of the work has been a matter of no ordinary labour. One chief point, in which the present work claims to be an improvement on the original, is the exhibition of the most interesting objects in Dr. Schliemann’s collection in their proper relation to the descriptions in his text. The work of selection from 4000 objects, great as was the care it required, was the smallest part of the difficulty. It is no disparagement to Dr. Schliemann to recognize the fact that, amidst his occupations at the work through the long days of spring and summer, and with little competent help save from Madame Schliemann’s enthusiasm in the cause, the objects thrown on his hands from day to day could only be arranged and depicted very imperfectly. The difficulty was greatly enhanced by a circumstance which should be noticed in following the order of Dr. Schliemann’s work. It differed greatly from that of his forerunners in the modern enterprise of penetrating into the mounds that cover the primeval cities of the world. When, for example, we follow Layard into the mound of Nimrud, and see how the rooms of the Assyrian palaces suddenly burst upon him, with their walls lined with sculptured and inscribed slabs, we seem almost to be reading of Aladdin’s descent into the treasure-house of jewels. But Schliemann’s work consisted in a series of transverse cuttings, which laid open sections of the various strata, from the present surface of the hill to the virgin soil. The work of one day would often yield objects from almost all the strata; and each successive trench repeated the old order, more or less, from the remains of Greek Ilium to those of the first settlers on the hill. The marvel is that Dr. Schliemann should have been able to preserve any order at all, rather than that he was obliged to abandon the attempt in the later Plates of his Atlas (see p. 225); and special thanks are due for his care in continuing to note the depths of all the objects found. This has often given the clue to our search, amidst the mixed objects of a similar nature on the photographic Plates, for those which he describes in his text, where the figures referred to by Plate and Number form the exception rather than the rule. We believe that the cases in which we have failed to find objects really worth representing, or in which an object named in the text may have been wrongly identified in the Plates, are so few as in no way to affect the value of the work. How much, on the other hand, its value is increased by the style in which our illustrations have been engraved, will be best seen by a comparison with the photographic Plates. It should be added that the present work contains all the illustrations that are now generally accessible, as the Atlas is out of print, and the negatives are understood to be past further use.

Twelve of the views (Plates II., III., IV., V., VI., VII. A and B, IX., X., XI. A and B, and XII., besides the Great Altar, No. 188) were engraved by Mr. Whymper; all the other views and cuts by Mr. James D. Cooper; and the lithographed map, plans, and plates of whorls and balls by Messrs. Cooper and Hodson. In the description appended to each engraving all that is valuable in the letter-press to the Atlas has been incorporated, and the depth at which the object was found is added. Some further descriptions of the Plates are given in the “List of Illustrations.”

The text of Dr. Schliemann’s work has been translated by Miss L. Dora Schmitz, and revised throughout by the Editor. The object kept in view has been a faithful rendering of the Memoirs, in all the freshness due to their composition on the spot during the progress of the work. That mode of composition, it is true, involved not a few of those mistakes and contradictions on matters of opinion, due to the novelty and the rapid progress of the discoveries, which Dr. Schliemann has confessed and explained at the opening of his work (see p. 12). To have attempted a systematic correction and harmonizing of such discrepancies would have deprived the work of all its freshness, and of much of its value as a series of landmarks in the history of Dr. Schliemann’s researches, from his first firm conviction that Troy was to be sought in the Hill of Hissarlik, to his discovery of the “ScÆan Gate” and the “Treasure of Priam.” The Author’s final conclusions are summed up by himself in the “Introduction;” and the Editor has thought it enough to add to those statements, which seemed likely to mislead the reader for a time, references to the places where the correction may be found. On one point he has ventured a little further. All the earlier chapters are affected by the opinion, that the lowest remains on the native rock were those of the Homeric Troy, which Dr. Schliemann afterwards recognized in the stratum next above. To avoid perpetual reference to this change of opinion, the Editor has sometimes omitted or toned down the words “Troy” and “Trojan” as applied to the lowest stratum, and, both in the “Contents” and running titles, and in the descriptions of the Illustrations, he has throughout applied those terms to the discoveries in the second stratum, in accordance with Dr. Schliemann’s ultimate conclusion.

In a very few cases the Editor has ventured to correct what seemed to him positive errors.[3] He has not deemed it any part of his duty to discuss the Author’s opinions or to review his conclusions. He has, however, taken such opportunities as suggested themselves, to set Dr. Schliemann’s statements in a clearer light by a few illustrative annotations. Among the rest, the chief passages cited from Homer are quoted in full, with Lord Derby’s translation, and others have been added (out of many more which have been noted), as suggesting remarkable coincidences with the objects found by Dr. Schliemann.

From the manner in which the work was composed, and the great importance attached by Dr. Schliemann to some leading points of his argument, it was inevitable that there should be some repetitions, both in the Memoirs themselves, and between them and the Introduction. These the Editor has rather endeavoured to abridge than completely to remove. To have expunged them from the Memoirs would have deprived these of much of the interest resulting from the discussions which arose out of the discoveries in their first freshness; to have omitted them from the Introduction would have marred the completeness of the Author’s summary of his results. The few repetitions left standing are a fair measure of the importance which the Author assigns to the points thus insisted on. A very few passages have been omitted for reasons that would be evident on a reference to the original; but none of these omissions affect a single point in Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries.

The measures, which Dr. Schliemann gives with the minutest care throughout his work, have been preserved and converted from the French metric standard into English measures. This has been done with great care, though in such constant conversion some errors must of course have crept in; and approximate numbers have often been given to avoid the awkwardness of fractions, where minute accuracy seemed needless. In many cases both the French and English measures are given, not only because Dr. Schliemann gives both (as he often does), but for another sufficient reason. A chief key to the significance of the discoveries is found in the depths of the successive strata of remains, which are exhibited in the form of a diagram on page 10. The numbers which express these in Meters[4] are so constantly used by Dr. Schliemann, and are so much simpler than the English equivalents, that they have been kept as a sort of “memory key” to the strata of remains. For the like reason, and for simplicity-sake, the depths appended to the Illustrations are given in meters only. The Table of French and English Measures on page 56 will enable the reader to check our conversions and to make his own. The Editor has added an Appendix, explaining briefly the present state of the deeply interesting question concerning the Inscriptions which have been traced on some of the objects found by Dr. Schliemann.

With these explanations the Editor might be content to leave the work to the judgment of scholars and of the great body of educated persons, who have happily been brought up in the knowledge and love of Homer’s glorious poetry, “the tale of Troy divine,” and of

Long may it be before such training is denied to the imagination of the young, whether on the low utilitarian ground, or on the more specious and dangerous plea of making it the select possession of the few who can acquire it “thoroughly":

To attempt a discussion of the results of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries would be alike beyond the province of an Editor, and premature in the present state of the investigation. The criticisms called forth both in England and on the Continent, during the one year that has elapsed since the publication of the work, are an earnest of the more than ten years’ duration of that new War of Troy for which it has given the signal. The English reader may obtain some idea of the points that have been brought under discussion by turning over the file of the “Academy” for the year, not to speak of many reviews of Schliemann’s work in other periodicals and papers. Without plunging into these varied discussions, it may be well to indicate briefly certain points that have been established, some lines of research that have been opened, and some false issues that need to be avoided.

First of all, the integrity of Dr. Schliemann in the whole matter—of which his self-sacrificing spirit might surely have been a sufficient pledge—and the genuineness of his discoveries, are beyond all suspicion. We have, indeed, never seen them called in question, except in what appears to be an effusion of spite from a Greek, who seems to envy a German his discoveries on the Greek ground which Greeks have neglected for fifteen centuries.[5] In addition to the consent of scholars, the genuineness and high antiquity of the objects in Dr. Schliemann’s collection have been specially attested by so competent a judge as Mr. Charles Newton, of the British Museum, who went to Athens for the express purpose of examining them.[6] A letter by Mr. Frank Calvert, who is so honourably mentioned in the work, deserves special notice for the implied testimony which it bears to Dr. Schliemann’s good faith, while strongly criticising some of his statements.[7]

Among the false issues raised in the discussion, one most to be avoided is the making the value of Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries dependent on the question of the site of Troy as determined by the data furnished by the Iliad. The position is common to Schliemann and his adverse critics, that Homer never saw the city of whose fate he sang;—because, says Schliemann, it had long been buried beneath its own ashes and the cities, or the ruins of the cities, built above it;—because, say the objectors, Homer created a Troy of his own imagination. The former existence and site of Troy were known to Homer—says Schliemann—by the unbroken tradition belonging to the spot where the Greek colonists founded the city which they called by the same name as, and believed to be the true successor of, the Homeric Ilium. Of this, it is replied, we know nothing, and we have no other guide to Homer’s Troy save the data of the Iliad. Be it so; and if those data really point to Hissarlik—as was the universal opinion of antiquity, till a sceptical grammarian invented another site, which all scholars now reject—as was also the opinion of modern scholars, till the new site of Bunarbashi was invented by Lechevalier to suit the Iliad, and accepted by many critics, but rejected by others, including the high authority of Grote—then the conclusion is irresistible, that Schliemann has found the Troy of which Homer had heard through the lasting report of poetic fame: ?e?? d? ????? ???? ?????e?.[8] But the corresponding negative does not follow; for, if Homer’s Troy was but a city built in the ethereal region of his fancy, his placing it at Bunarbashi, or on any other spot, could not affect the lost site of the true Troy, if such a city ever existed, and therefore can be no objection to the argument, that the discovery of an ancient city on the traditional site of the heroic Troy confirms the truth of the tradition on both points—the real existence of the city, as well as its existence on this site. The paradox—that Troy never existed and that Bunarbashi was its site—was so far confirmed by Schliemann that he dug at Bunarbashi, and found clear evidence that the idea of a great city having ever stood there is a mere imagination. The few remains of walls, that were found there, confirm instead of weakening the negative conclusion; for they are as utterly inadequate to be the remains of the “great, sacred, wealthy Ilium,” as they are suitable to the little town of Gergis, with which they are now identified by an inscription. In short, that the real city of Troy could not have stood at Bunarbashi, is one of the most certain results of Schliemann’s researches.

The same sure test of downright digging has finally disposed of all the other suggested sites, leaving by the “method of exhaustion” the inevitable conclusion, that the only great city (or succession of cities), that we know to have existed in the Troad before the historic Grecian colony of Ilium, rose and perished—as the Greeks of Ilium always said it did—on the ground beneath their feet, upon the Hill of Hissarlik. And that Homer, or—if you please—the so-called Homeric bards, familiar with the Troad, and avowedly following tradition, should have imagined a different site, would be, at the least, very surprising. This is not the place for an analysis of the Homeric local evidence; but, coming fresh from a renewed perusal of the Iliad with a view to this very question, the Editor feels bound to express the conviction that its indications, while in themselves consistent with the site of Hissarlik, can be interpreted in no other way, now that we know what that site contains.[9]

Standing, as it does, at the very point of junction between the East and West, and in the region where we find the connecting link between the primitive Greeks of Asia and Europe,[10] the Hill of Hissarlik answers at once to the primitive type of a Greek city, and to the present condition of the primeval capitals of the East. Like so many of the first, in Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy, the old city was a hill-fort, an Acropolis built near but not close upon the sea, in a situation suited at once for defence against the neighbouring barbarians, and for the prosecution of that commerce, whether by its own maritime enterprise, or by intercourse with foreign voyagers, of which the copper, ivory, and other objects from the ruins furnish decisive proofs.[11] This type is as conspicuously wanting at Bunarbashi, as it is well marked by the site of Hissarlik.

Like the other great oriental capitals of the Old World, the present condition of Troy is that of a mound, such as those in the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, offering for ages the invitation to research, which has only been accepted and rewarded in our own day. The resemblance is so striking, as to raise a strong presumption that, as the mounds of Nimrud and Kouyunjik, of Khorsabad and Hillah, have been found to contain the palaces of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings, so we may accept the ruins found in the mound of Hissarlik as those of the capital of that primeval empire in Asia Minor, which is indicated by the Homeric tradition, and proved to have been a reality by the Egyptian monuments.[12]

This parallel seems to throw some light on a question, concerning which Dr. Schliemann is forced to a result which disappointed himself, and does not appear satisfactory to us—that of the magnitude of Troy. As the mounds opened by Layard and his fellow labourers contained only the “royal quarters,” which towered above the rude buildings of cities the magnitude of which is attested by abundant proofs, so it is reasonable to believe that the ruins at Hissarlik are those of the royal quarter, the only really permanent part of the city, built on the hill capping the lower plateau which lifted the huts of the common people above the marshes and inundations of the Scamander and the SimoÏs. In both cases the fragile dwellings of the multitude have perished; and the pottery and other remains, which were left on the surface of the plateau of Ilium, would naturally be cleared away by the succeeding settlers. Instead, therefore, of supposing with Schliemann, that Homer’s poetical exaggeration invented the “Pergamus,” we would rather say that he exalted the mean dwellings that clustered about the Pergamus into the “well-built city” with her “wide streets.”

We cannot sympathize with the sentimental objection that, in proportion as the conviction grows that the Troy of Homer has been found, his poetry is brought down from the heights of pure imagination. Epic Poetry, the very essence of which is narrative, has always achieved its noblest triumphs in celebrating events which were at least believed to be real, not in the invention of incidents and deeds purely imaginary. The most resolute deniers of any historic basis for the story of Troy will admit that neither the scene nor the chief actors were invented by Homer, or, if you please, the Homeric poets, who assuredly believed the truth of the traditions to which the Iliad gave an immortal form. Any discovery which verifies that belief strengthens the foundation without impairing the superstructure, and adds the interest of truthfulness to those poetic beauties which remain the pure creation of Homer.

Leaving the Homeric bearings of the question to the discussion of which no speedy end can be anticipated, all are agreed that Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries have added immensely to that growing mass of evidence which is tending to solve one of the most interesting problems in the history of the world, the connection between the East and West, especially with regard to the spread of Aryan civilization.[13] Two points are becoming clearer every day, the early existence of members of the Greek race on the shores of Asia, and the essential truth of those traditions about the Oriental influence on Greek civilization, which, within our own remembrance, have passed through the stages of uncritical acceptance, hypercritical rejection, and discriminating belief founded on sure evidence.

It would seem as if Troy, familiar to our childhood as the point of contact in poetry between the East and West, were reappearing in the science of archÆology as a link between the eastern and western branches of the antiquities of the great Aryan family, extending its influence to our own island in another sense than the legend of Brute the Trojan. How great an increase of light may soon be expected from the deciphering of the Inscriptions found at Hissarlik may be inferred, in part, from the brief account, in the Appendix, of the progress thus far made. In fine, few dissentients will be found from the judgment of a not too favourable critic, that “Dr. Schliemann, in spite of his over-great enthusiasm, ... has done the world an incalculable service.”[14]

The decipherment of the inscriptions will probably go far to determine the curious question of the use of the terra-cotta whorls, found in such numbers in all the four pre-Hellenic strata of remains at Hissarlik. That they had some practical purpose may be inferred both from this very abundance, and from the occurrence of similar objects among the remains of various early races. Besides the examples given by Dr. Schliemann, they have been found in various parts of our own island, and especially in Scotland, but always (we believe) without decorations. On the other hand, the Aryan emblems and the inscriptions[15] marked upon them would seem to show that they were applied to, if not originally designed for, some higher use. It seems quite natural for a simple and religious race, such as the early Aryans certainly were, to stamp religious emblems and sentences on objects in daily use, and then to consecrate them as ex voto offerings, according to Dr. Schliemann’s suggestion. The astronomical significance, which Schliemann finds in many of the whorls, is unmistakeable in most of the terra-cotta balls; and this seems to furnish evidence that the people who made them had some acquaintance, at least, with the astronomical science of Babylonia.

The keen discussion provoked by Dr. Schliemann’s novel explanation of the ?e? ??a???p?? ????? might be left “a pretty quarrel as it stands,”[16] did there not appear to be a key of which neither party has made sufficient use. The symbolism, which embodied divine attributes in animal forms, belonged unquestionably to an early form of the Greek religion, as well as to the Egyptian and Assyrian.[17] The ram-headed Ammon, the hawk-headed Ra, the eagle-headed Nisroch, form exact precedents for an owl-headed Athena, a personation which may very well have passed into the slighter forms of owl-faced, owl-eyed, bright-eyed. Indeed, we see no other explanation of the constant connection of the owl with the goddess, which survived to the most perfect age of Greek sculpture. The question is not to be decided by an etymological analysis of the sense of ??a???p?? in the Greek writers, long after the old symbolism had been forgotten, nor even by the sense which Homer may have attached to the word in his own mind. One of the most striking characters of his language is his use of fixed epithets; and he might very well have inherited the title of the tutelar goddess of the Ionian race with the rest of his stock of traditions. If ??a???p?? were merely a common attributive, signifying “bright-eyed,” it is very remarkable that Homer should never apply it to mortal women, or to any goddess save Athena. We are expressing no opinion upon the accuracy of Schliemann’s identification in every case; but the rudeness of many of his “owl-faced idols” is no stumbling-block, for the oldest and rudest sacred images were held in lasting and peculiar reverence. The Ephesian image of Artemis, “which fell down from Jove,” is a case parallel to what the “Palladium” of Ilium may have been.

The ethnological interpretation of the four strata of remains at Hissarlik is another of the questions which it would be premature to discuss; but a passing reference may be allowed to their very remarkable correspondence with the traditions relating to the site. First, Homer recognizes a city which preceded the Ilium of Priam, and which had been destroyed by Hercules; and Schliemann found a primeval city, of considerable civilization, on the native rock, below the ruins which he regards as the Homeric Troy. Tradition speaks of a Phrygian population, of which the Trojans were a branch, as having apparently displaced, and driven over into Europe, the kindred Pelasgians. Above the second stratum are the remains of a third city, which, in the type and patterns of its terra-cottas, instruments, and ornaments, shows a close resemblance to the second; and the link of connection is rivetted by the inscriptions in the same character in both strata. And so, in the Homeric poems, every reader is struck with the common bonds of genealogy and language, traditions and mutual intercourse, religion and manners, between the Greeks who assail Troy and the Trojans who defend it. If the legend of the Trojan War preserves the tradition of a real conquest of the city by a kindred race, the very nature of the case forbids us to accept literally the story, that the conquerors simply sailed away again.[18] It is far more reasonable to regard the ten years of the War, and the ten years of the Return of the Chiefs (??st??) as cycles of ethnic struggles, the details of which had been sublimed into poetical traditions. The fact, that Schliemann traces in the third stratum a civilization lower than in the second, is an objection only from the point of view of our classical prepossessions. There are not wanting indications in Homer (as Curtius, among others, has pointed out) that the Trojans were more civilized and wealthy than the Greeks; and in the much earlier age, to which the conflict—if real at all—must have belonged, we may be sure that the Asiatic people had over their European kindred an advantage which we may venture to symbolize by the golden arms of Glaucus and the brazen arms of Diomed (Homer, Iliad, VI. 235, 236). Xanthus, the old historian of Lydia, preserves the tradition of a reflux migration of Phrygians from Europe into Asia, after the Trojan War, and says that they conquered Troy and settled in its territory. This migration is ascribed to the pressure of the barbarian Thracians; and the fourth stratum, with its traces of merely wooden buildings, and other marks of a lower stage of civilization, corresponds to that conquest of the Troad by those same barbarian Thracians, the tradition of which is preserved by Herodotus and other writers. The primitive dwellings of those races in Thrace still furnish the flint implements, which are most abundant in the fourth stratum at Hissarlik.

The extremely interesting concurrence of instruments of stone with those of copper (or bronze, see p. 361) in all the four strata at Hissarlik, may be illustrated by a case which has fallen under our notice while dismissing this sheet for press. A mound recently opened at the Bocenos, near Carnac (in the Morbihan), has disclosed the remains of a Gallic house, of the second century of our era, in which flint implements were found, intermixed with pottery of various styles, from the most primitive to the finest examples of native Gallic art, and among all these objects was a terra-cotta head of the Venus Anadyomene.[19] Such facts as these furnish a caution against the too hasty application of the theory of the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.

Another illustration is worth adding of the persistence of the forms of objects in common use in the same region. (See p. 47.) Mr. Davis, in his recently published travels in Asia Minor,[20] describes a wooden vessel for carrying water, which he saw at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, of the very same form as the crown-handled vase-covers of terra-cotta found in such numbers by Schliemann (see p. 25, 48, 86, 95, &c.). “They are made of a section of the pine: the inside is hollowed from below, and the bottom is closed by another piece of wood exactly fitted into it.” The two drawings given by Mr. Davis closely resemble our cut, No. 51, p. 86.

Our last letter from Dr. Schliemann announced the approaching termination of his lawsuit with the Turkish Government, arising out of the dispute referred to in the ‘Introduction’ (p. 52). The collection has been valued by two experts; and Dr. Schliemann satisfies the demand of the Turkish Government by a payment in cash, and an engagement to continue the excavations in Troy for three or four months for the benefit of the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. We rejoice that he has not “closed the excavations at Hissarlik for ever” (see p. 356), and wait to see what new discoveries may equal or surpass those of the “ScÆan Gates,” the “Palace,” and the “Treasure of Priam.”

Meanwhile, as the use of so mythical a name as that of Troy’s last king has furnished a special butt for critical scorn, it seems due to Dr. Schliemann to quote his reason for retaining it:—[21]

“I identify with the Homeric Ilion the city second in succession from the virgin soil, because only in that city were used the Great Tower, the great Circuit Wall, the great Double Gate, and the ancient palace of the chief or king, whom I call Priam, because he is called so by the tradition of which Homer is the echo; but as soon as it is proved that Homer and the tradition were wrong, and that Troy’s last king was called ‘Smith,’ I shall at once call him so.” Those who believe Troy to be a myth and Priam a shadow as unsubstantial as the shape, whose head

need not grudge Schliemann the satisfaction of giving the unappropriated nominis umbra to the owner of his very substantial Treasure. The name of Priam may possibly even yet be read on the inscriptions, as the names of the Assyrian kings have been read on theirs, or it may be an invention of the bard’s; but the name of Troy can no longer be withheld from the “splendid ruins” of the great and wealthy city which stood upon its traditional site—a city which has been sacked by enemies and burnt with fire.

PHILIP SMITH.

HAMPSTEAD,
Christmas Eve, 1874.

Terra-cotta Tablets from the Greek Stratum (1-2 M.).
Terra-cotta Tablets from the Greek Stratum (1-2 M.).