on the slopes of Ida, while the new Scepsis was near the site of
Bairamich itself. At the village of Kulakli, a little south of the
mouth of the Tuzla, some Corinthian columns and other fragments
mark the temple of Apollo Smintheus (excavated in 1866 by Pullan)
and (approximately) the site of the Homeric Chryse. Colonae was
also on the west coast, opposite Tenedos. Scamandria occupied
the site of Eneh, in the middle of the plain of Bairamich, and
Cenchreae was probably some distance north of it. The shrine
of Palamedes, mentioned by -ancient writers as existing at a town
called Polymedium, has been discovered by J. T. Clarke on a site
hitherto unvisited by any modern traveller, between Assus and
Cape Lectum. It proves to have been a sacred enclosure (temenos)
on the acropolis of the town; the statue of Palamedes stood on a
rock at the middle of its southern edge. Another interesting
discovery has been made by Clarke, viz. the existence of very
ancient town walls on Gargarus, the highest peak of Ida.
II. The Site of Troy.—Troy is represented now by the important ruins on and about the mound of Hissarlik which underlie those already referred to as surviving from the Hellenistic Ilion. Hissarlik is situated about 3½ m. both from the Dardanelles and from Yeni Keui, which lies on the Aegean coast north of Besika Bay. The famous academic dispute concerning the precise site, which began about A.D. 160 with Demetrius of Scepsis, may now be regarded as settled. After the full demonstration, made in 1893, that remains of a fortress exist on the mound of Hissarlik, contemporary with the great period of Mycenae, and larger than the earlier acropolis town first identified by Schliemann with Ilion, no reasonable person has continued to doubt that this last site is the local habitation of the Homeric story. The rival ruins on the Bali Dagh have been shown to be those of a small hill fort which, with another on an opposite crag, commanded the upper Menderes gorge. It is inconceivable that this fort should have been chosen by poets, generally familiar with the locality, as the scene of the great siege, while in the plain between it and the sea there had lain from time immemorial, and lay still in the Mycenaean age, a much more important settlement with massive fortified citadel.
No site in the Troad can be brought into complete accordance with all the topographical data to be ingeniously derived from the text of Homer. The hot and cold springs that lay just without the gate of “Troy” (Il. xxii. 147) are no more to be identified with Bunarbashi, which wells out more than a mile from the Bali Dagh ruins, than with the choked conduits, opened by Schliemann in 1882, to the south of Hissarlik. But the broader facts of geography are recognizable in the modern plain of the Menderes. The old bed of that river is the Scamander and its little tributary, the Dumbrek Su, is the Simois. In their fork lies Hissarlik or Troy. In sight of it are, on the one side, the peak of Samothrace (xiii. 11-14); on the other, the mass of the Kaz Dagh Ida (viii. 52). Hissarlik lies in the plain (xx. 216) less than 4 m. both from the Hellespontine and the Aegean coasts, easily reached day by day by foes from the shore, and possible to be left and regained in a single night by a Trojan visiting the camp of the Greeks (vii. 381-421).
In summarizing what has been found to exist on the mound of Hissarlik in the excavations undertaken there since 1870, it is not advisable to observe the order of the finding, since Schliemann's want of experience and method caused much confusion and error in the earlier revelations. No certainty as to the distinction of strata or their relative ages was possible till Wilhelm Dörpfeld obtained entire control in 1891, after the original explorer's death. There are in all nine strata of ancient settlement.
1. On the virgin soil of the hillock, forming the core of the mound, scanty remains appear of a small village of the late Aegean neolithic period, at the dawn of the Bronze Age, contemporary with the upper part of the Cnossian neolithic bed. This includes what were originally supposed by Schliemann to be two successive primitive settlements. Thin walls of rough stones, bonded with mud, are preserved mainly in the west centre of the mound. No ground plan of a house is recoverable, and there is no sign of an outer fortress wall. In this stratum were found implements in obsidian and other stones, clay whorls, a little worked ivory, and much dark monochrome pottery, either of a rough grey surface or (in the finer examples) treated with resin, highly hand-polished, and showing simple geometric decoration, which was incised and often filled in with a white substance.
2. Superposed on these, remains, where they still exist, but comprehending a much larger area, lies a better constructed and preserved settlement. This has been twice rebuilt. It was enclosed by a massive fortress wall of rudely squared Cyclopean character, showing different restorations, and now destroyed, except on the south side of the mound. Double gates at the south-east and south-west are well-preserved. The most complete and most important structures within the citadel lie towards the north. These are two rectangular blocks lying north-west to south-east, side by side, of which the southern and larger shows a megaron and vestibule of the type familiar in “Mycenaean” palaces, while the smaller seems a pendant to the larger, like the “women's quarters” at Tiryns and Phylakopi (see Aegean Civilization). Other blocks, whose plans are difficult to bring into inter-relation in their present state of ruin, are scattered over the area, but mainly in the south-west. This is the fortress proclaimed by Schliemann in 1873 to be the Pergamos of Troy. But we know that, while his identifications of Homeric topographical details in these ruins were fanciful, a much larger fortress succeeded to this long before the period treated of in the Iliad. The settlement in the second stratum belongs, in fact, to a primitive stage of that local civilization which preceded the Mycenaean; and it is this latter which is recalled by the Homeric poems. The pottery of the second stratum at Hissarlik shows the first introduction of paint, and of the slip and somewhat fantastic forms parallel to those of the pre-Mycenaean style in the Cyclades. The beaked vases, known as schnabelkannen, are characteristic, and rude reproductions of human features are common in this ware, which seems all to be of native fabrication. Bronze had come into use for implements, weapons and utensils; and gold and silver make up a hoarded treasure found in the calcined ruins of the fortification wall near one of the gates. But the forms are primitive and singular, and the workmanship is very rude, the pendants of the great diadems being cutout of very thin plate gold. Disks, bracelets and pendants, showing advanced spiraliform ornament, found mainly in 1878, and then ascribed to this same stratum, belong undoubtedly to a higher one, the sixth or “Mycenaean.” Rough fiddle-shaped idols, whorls, a little worked ivory and some lead make up a find, of whose early period comparison of objects found elsewhere leaves no sort of doubt. This treasure is now deposited in Berlin.
3, 4, 5. This primitive “Troy” suffered cataclysmal ruin (traces of conflagration are everywhere present), and Hissarlik ceased for a time to have any considerable population. Three small village settlements, not much more than farms, were successively erected on the site, and have left their traces superposed one on another, but they yielded no finds of importance.
6. The mound, however, stood in too important a relation to the plain and the sea to remain desolate, and in due time it was covered again by a great fortress, while a city spread out below. The latter has not yet been explored. The remains of this period on the acropolis, however, have now been examined. A portion of them was first distinguished clearly by Dörpfeld in 1882, but owing to the confusion caused by Schliemann's drastic methods of trenching, the pottery and metal objects, really belonging to this stratum, had come to be confused with those of lower strata; and some grey monochrome ware, obviously of Anatolian make, was alone referred to the higher stratum. To this ware Schliemann gave the name “Lydian,” and the stratum was spoken of in his Troja (1884) as the “Lydian city.”
In 1893, however, excavations were carried out on the south of the mound in the hitherto undisturbed round outside the limits of the earlier fortress; and here appeared a second curtain wall of massive ashlar masonry showing architectural features which characterize the “Mycenaean” fortification walls at Mycenae itself, and at Phylakopi in Melos. With this wall was associated not only the grey ware, but a mass of painted potsherds of unmistakably “Mycenaean” character; and further search in the same stratum to west and east showed that such sherds always lay on its floor level. The inevitable inference is that here we have a city, contemporary with the mass of the remains at Mycenae, which imported “Mycenaean” ware to supplement its own ruder products. The area of its citadel is larger than the citadel of the second stratum; its buildings, of which a large megaron on the south-west and several houses on the east remain, are of much finer construction than those which lie lower. This was the most important city yet built on the mound of Hissarlik. It belonged to the “Mycenaean” age, which precedes the composition of the Homeric poems, and is reflected by them. Therefore this is Homer's' Troy.
Its remains, however, having been obliterated on the crown of Hissarlik, almost escaped recognition. When some centuries later a third important city, the Hellenistic Ilion, was built, all the accumulation on the top of the mound was cut away and a terrace made. In this process the then uppermost strata of ruins wholly vanished, their stones being taken to build the new city. The Mycenaean town, however, which had been piled stage upon stage to the summit, descended on the south side a little own the face of the mound; and the remains of its fortifications and houses at that point, lying below the level cut down to by the Hellenistic terrace-makers, were covered by the depositing of rubbish from the crown and again built over. Thus we find them now on the southern slope of the mound only, but have no difficulty in estimating their original extent. Many tombs and a large lower city of this era will doubtless be explored ere long.
