Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/236

Troy. 213 and adjacent erections were heaps of broken pottery, amongst which were several vases in perfect preservation, bearing a striking analogy to Mycenian ceramics : shapes and forms are identical.^ Besides these vases, imported it may be from with- out, and the black pottery of the lower beds, we find a mono- chrome grey earthenware, which Schliemann collected from all the neighbouring tumuli, and seemingly due to local industry, for very similar coarse pottery is made all over the Troad at. the present day.* According to M. Dorpfeld, the inhabitants of the third village rebuilt as well as they could the ramparts and portals of the burnt city ; marks of these repairs are especially noticeable at gate F o, whilst he traces a later wall near the south-eastern entrance, which was thrown up to cover a group of buildings erected outside the old enclosure.^ An incident relating to Philip of Macedon, i, e. about the fourth century b.c— noticed by Plutarch and Polysenus, — tends to prove that Ilium was already a fortified place when Lysimachus surrounded it with a wall.* Slight though this data may be, it adds somewhat to the little we know of a hamlet bearing so glorious a name, and confirms the notion suggested by the ruins that the hill was inhabited from the earliest times down to the end of the first period and after it. It remains to discuss whether we should identify the buildings and rampart discovered by Schliemann with the houses of Priam and Hector, and the circuit-wall erected by divine agency. In a word, is it on this hill, or on some one or other of the heights overlooking the plain of the Scamander, that the predecessors of Homer and Homer himself placed the Troy that formed the subject of their lays ? Even had our narrative contented itself with the simple account and general results of Schliemann's excavations, without once naming or even alluding to Troy, their importance would in no way have been impaired, or his discoveries robbed of their value; for they would none the less have unrolled a new chapter for the history of culture and art. We are loth to adopt a line of conduct which would seem 1 Schliemann and Dorpfeld. All the vases and fragments belonging to this series were studied and drawn on the spot by M. Bruckner, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. 2 Schliemann. ^ Dorpfeld. * Plutarch.