without moral or political stability. Lastly, in the hands of the Turk its growth has been fettered by the prejudices of a nation unable to free itself from the bondage of an effete civilization.
I. History
The first peopling of the site of Constantinople is a question in prehistoric research, which has not yet been elucidated by the palaeontologist. Unlike the Roman area, no relics of an age of stone or bronze have been discovered here;[1] do not, perhaps, exist, but doubtless the opportunities, if not the men, have been wanting for such investigations.[2] That the region seemed to the primitive Greeks to be a wild and desolate one, we learn from the tradition of the Argonautic expedition;[3] and the epithet of "Axine,"[4] or inhospitable,, pp. 95, 140), we are made aware of the difficulties the topographical student has to encounter in the Ottoman capital, where an intruding Giaour is sure to be assailed in the more sequestered Turkish quarters with abuse and missiles on the part of men, women, and children.]
- ↑ Schliemann found neolithic remains at Hissarlik, not far off (Ilios, p. 236, 1880).
- ↑ In the sixteenth century, as we are told by Gyllius (Top. CP., iv, 11), the Greeks of Stamboul were utterly oblivious of the history of their country and of the suggestiveness of the remains which lay around them. But an awakening has now taken place and the modern Greeks are among the most ardent in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge. They have even revived the language of Attica for literary purposes, and it may be said that an Athenian of the age of Pericles could read with facility the works now issued from the Greek press of Athens or of Constantinople—a unique example, I should think, in the history of philology. Through Paspates ([Greek: Byzantina Anaktora
- ↑ Alluded to by both Homer and Hesiod (Odyss., xii, 69; Theog., 992). It was one of those unknown countries which, as Plutarch remarks (Theseus, 1), were looked on as a fitting scene for mythical events.
- ↑ Pindar, Pythia, iv, 362; P. Mela, i, 19, etc.
