Page:Mycenaean Troy.djvu/13

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PREFACE
9

chamber, and an open court. While VI F shows Cyclopean masonry, VI A is constructed of small rectangular stones. In fact, Homer's description so fits the buildings of the VI City that it seems as if the poet had an accurate knowledge of the Trojan house.

In two places in the poems (Ζ, 88 and Ε, 446),—regarded by many scholars as interpolations (cf. C. Robert, Studien zur Ilias),—references are given to temples. Moreover an altar of Zeus lay at the summit of the citadel (Χ, 172). There is a possibility that the building VI C of our city may be a temple.

6. The citadel walls of the VI Stratum, forming an immense polygon, the broad circuit street inside the city, with several cross streets leading to the summit of the acropolis, and the houses arranged in terraces about the center of the citadel, justify the Homeric epithets, "well-stablished" (ἐύδμητος) and "well-built" (ἐυκτίμενος).

My special obligation is due to Dr. Wilhelm Dörpfeld for his kind permission to use freely his great work, Troja und Ilion, on which I have based the description of the Mycenaean City, and from which I have taken much of the illustrative material.

Professor Alfred Heinrich also has allowed the use of his excellent monograph, Troja bei Homer und in der Wirklichkeit. On this work the chapter entitled "The Mycenaean Age and the Homeric Poems" has been largely based, but several of Professor Heinrich's views are here slightly modified.

I have adapted to the present work—especially in the chapters on the "Troad" and "Mycenaean Civilization"—a number of sections from an article on the