ing on this, Leaf said:[1] "But we know for certain that the dwellers upon the hill of Hissarlik were at a completely different and altogether lower stage of civilization than the royal race of Mycenae. Scarcely half a dozen objects have been found which show a point of contact. If, therefore, Homer correctly describes the Achaeans, his Trojans are quite imaginary." Ludwich, although admitting that most Mycenaean finds are older than the Homeric age, yet declared them to show that the Iliad is no picture of the imagination, but rests upon a real foundation.[2]
What shall be our verdict, now that a new Troy has been brought to light? Shall we accept Dörpfeld's positive words: "Stratum VI is the Homeric Troy, destroyed by the Greeks" (Stratum VI ist das homerische Troja von den Griechen zerstört[3])? At any rate, we are sure that here is a city which had come in touch with Mycenaean civilization, and we can believe that its destruction formed the historical basis of the poem. "The differences," says Frazer, "between the Achaean civilization, as revealed to us by Homer, and the Mycenaean civilization, as exhibited in the monuments, are to be explained by the somewhat later date of the poems, … having been composed at a time when the old civilization … survived only in popular tradition and the lays of minstrels as the fading memory of a golden age of the past."
