Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/194

Troy. 173 below the surface, the walls of the largest house of the settlement were pierced ; in which the fancy easily pictures the mansion of the chief or king, whose subjects dwelt in the lowly huts scattered around the slopes of the plateau. On these slopes, especially south of the cone, large quantities of broken pottery, resembling the earthenware of the acropolis recovered from among the ruins of the earliest settlers, were brought out of the ditches and shafts sunk by Schliemann. That this colony lasted a long time is indicated by the surest and most indestructible of memorials — mounds of ruin and rubbish over two metres in depth. How did it end ? We know not ; but it does not appear to have perished by fire. The stones of the upper rings of these erections lie piled up at the foot of the walls ; but no fragment of baked or even crude brick has been seen in or around them. The distinctive characteristic of this stratum is the almost total absence of metal. Objects of this nature, said to have been collected at a depth varying from thirty-five to fifty feet below the surface, are four copper knives, one of which shows traces of gilding, pins with or without heads, punches, a bracelet and an ear-ring made of silver. It is not much ; nevertheless we are loth to believe that metal objects, above all the silver specimens, in reality can belong to the lowest stratum. In saying this, we need scarcely add, there is no intention on our part to call in question the integrity of the most pains- taking explorer that ever breathed ; one known too for the care with which he noted down the precise spot where the objects were discovered ; but it cannot be denied that errors, for which no one can be held responsible, may have occurred. When the work was proceeding which cleared the esplanade of the burnt city and its surroundings of some of the rubbish, so as to rest the foot of the sustaining walls, as well as the stairs and ramps, on the living rock, many an object which properly belongs to the upper strata may well have fallen and been landed on the level of the oldest dwellings. Even of late, whilst the great trench was open to the sky, how often must not masses of soil and ruin have detached themselves from the upper part of the talus and slipped down into the ditch ? This may have been brought about either by a blow of the spade too heavily dealt, or during stormy weather when nobody was by. Schliemann