Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/266

Troy. 243 of Europe and Asia look at each other across the Hellespont, which here has more the air of a broad river than an arm of the sea, and which in calm weather may be traversed in a fishing-craft, a simple canoe or rafter. No matter how primitive we may imagine navigation to have been at that early date, it could not but have opened up relations between the mainland and the outlying islands bounding their horizon ; behind which were others speckling the bosom of the vast liquid plain. Long before the Phoenicians found out the way to these shores, there existed here among all these islands an active coasting trade, chiefly carried on for the benefit of Troy. On the spot where, later, Homer will run aground the hollow ships of the Hellenes, were beached the boats of Troy and those of her many allies. If coasters were foolhardy enough to venture in these sounds without having previously made friends with the inhabitants, they did so at their risk and peril ; in the security afforded by the strong walls of Pergamus, the leaders of a sea brigandage everywhere rife on these coasts could laugh to scorn complaints made against their unceremonious proceedings. Between the broken lines of this lost history, represented by the ruins of the second city, we can discern points coinciding with the traditions which the Greek epic has preserved ; in it we read of a city whose ships sail far and wide, to the distant shores of Peloponnesus, that they may kidnap its fair women ; then later on of its having to sustain a long siege, and its final overthrow because of a particular rape. As we tumble about the accumulation of debris which contain the remains of the burnt city, Virgil's picturesque verse, expressive of the fateful night of Troy, comes up to the mind — . . . omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troja. The aspect which this city offered after the disaster must have been very similar to that of the *' burnt town" excavated by Schliemann at Hissarlik. We have said in another place that irrefragable indications exist on the ground as to a village having been erected on the ancient site of the second settlement soon after its fall ; and that the new settlers utilized what remained of the old walls, and entrenched themselves behind them. Does not this indirectly confirm the floating rumours current in the Greek world, according to which part of the old population was