Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/183

i62 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. outside Ilium could show such an array of ancient remains as were visible at Hissarlik before Schliemann excavated the site, and which every traveller has duly chronicled, and informed us that they still numbered a theatre, turned to the Dumbrek valley, with steps cut in the rock, shafts of columns, capitals, and blocks of every size and description ? If the question respecting the true site of '*Troy divine" could not be settled on the mere assertion of the Ilians, the hypothesis which on the first blush looks most likely is that which conceived the Graeco-Roman Ilium as having stood on the ruins of the city stormed and burnt to the ground by the companions of Achylles. The fact that the ancients persistently adhered to this tradition is a strong presumption in favour of identity of name and position. The problem which had been deemed impossible by learned Europe has been solved by the energy and skill of Schliemann, urged thereto by his wish to re-discover Troy. The narrative of how his love for classic lore awoke in him is instinct with simple and unaffected pathos. Owing to the hard necessities of life, he was unable to satisfy his passionate longing until well past middle life ; and we may regret that lack of what is called liberal education should have deprived his judgment of critical insight.^ At forty-six he had realized a fortune large enough, not only to place him above want, but in very easy circumstances. Being now free to indulge his old love, he lost no time in setting out to look for the walls of Troy on the Bali Dagh, on whose slope nestles the village of Bunarbashi, which his fervid fancy pictured as hardly damaged by the victorious Greeks or the hand of time ; for here, since the beginning of the century — on the untrust- worthy authority of Lechevalier — the learned world, almost to a man, had agreed to place the site of ancient Troy.^ On the Bali Dagh, however, he found nothing which in any way would harmonize with his notion of what the ruins should be like, and in 1875 he decided to sound the flanks of Hissarlik. On this spot he conducted no less than eight campaigns, each of several months' duration, stretched over a space of nineteen years (187 1- 1890). He spent large sums of money, and brought to the undertaking a patient energy unsurpassed by any explorer 1 Schliemann, Ilios^ Autobiography of the Author. 2 Lechevalier, Voyage dans la Troade.