Troy. 'The tale of Troy divine,' which forms the background of the Iliad of Homer, briefly told is that Paris (Alexander), son of Priam, king of Troy, carried off Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta; that the Achaean princes, under the command of Menelaus' brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, undertook to recover Helen; that the Achæans, having besieged Troy for nine years, eventually sacked the city and recovered Helen. These events were regarded as historical not only by the Greeks themselves, but by the moderns within the last half century, and a date (1184 B.C.) was assigned with as much precision and confidence to the fall of Troy as to the fall of man. But the remarkable revolution in the views of scholars about mythology, which was begun by Lobeck (see Vol. VII. p. 371) in 1829, and by the brothers Grimm (q.v.), changed all that. Many of the incidents in the Trojan war were shown to be myths common to most Indo-European nations at least. The story of the Iliad reduced itself to 'the old fight between the night and the morning, the old story of the victory and death of the solar hero around the walls and battlements of the sky.' And as late as 1875 it was finally said that 'to seek for fragments of history in either of these is like looking for gold in the rays of the sun' (Sayce, Principles of Comparative Philology, p. 311, note). The Troy and Mycenæ of Homer were regarded as the airy fabric of a poet's dream, when Dr Schliemann, who had begun his excavations in 1870, brought to light the actual stone walls and battlements of Troy, and then proceeded to Mycenæ, where 'he dug up such masses of gold as even he, the millionaire, had perhaps never before seen upon one spot.' Nor did he stop here: guided by his simple faith that what Homer said was true, he continued his excavations until he had demonstrated, by 'the science of the spade,' 'the former power and splendour of every city which is mentioned in Homer as conspicuous for its wealth and sovereignty.' It was natural enough that in the first joy of discovery he should straightway call the palace he revealed at Troy 'Priam's Palace,' the entrance to the citadel 'the Scaean Gate,' and the golden relics 'Priam's Treasure.' It was also natural that doubt should be cast on these identifications (subsequently withdrawn by Schliemann himself). In order, however, to understand the reasons for this doubt, we must state briefly what it is that Schliemann has done.
To begin with, the very site of Troy had been matter of dispute for 2000 years: tradition pointed unswervingly to the mound of Hissarlik, the learned unanimously (with the exception of Grote, who was in the right) declared that Hissarlik could not be the site. Schliemann excavated Hissarlik, and came first upon the remains of the Græco-Roman town, Novum Ilion; below it he dug out the ruins of four (or three) village settlements, one below another; below them he came upon 'the burnt city,' and finally upon the lowest, the oldest, the first city. The Græco-Roman city and the four (or three) village settlements have little interest for us; but the first city and 'the burnt city' are of the highest interest. The first and oldest city yielded in the way of relics principally pottery and stone implements. Metals were practically unknown to its inhabitants, who were plainly a settled pastoral and agricultural people, familiar with the art of weaving (as shown by the numerous spinning whorls discovered), and just beginning to use the potter's wheel. In fine, their culture shows a slight advance upon, but is fundamentally identical with, the culture ascribed by comparative philology to the pro-ethnic Indo-Europeans, who also were in the stone age, a pastoral and agricultural, but not a settled people, practised weaving and made pottery, but without the aid of the potter's wheel. The only other point to be noticed about the first city is that it must have been inhabited for a long time, because the circuit of walls first erected eventually proved too small to contain the inhabitants, and an enlarged ring of fortifications had to be built subsequently. The interval that elapsed between the desertion and decay of this first city and the foundation of the next must have been long, for a layer of earth 1 foot 9 inches deep intervenes between the debris of the first and the second or 'burnt city.' This city too enjoyed a long period of prosperity, for it also outgrew its original walls, which to begin with enclosed a larger area than that of the first city. The inhabitants of this city were, however, still in the stone age; but the number of gold and silver relics, and the presence of some copper implements, point to the approach of the bronze age, and seem to indicate a transition from the age of stone to that of metals. The potter's wheel was now regularly used; and heaps of oyster-shells prove that the inhabitants of the second city had attained a familiarity with the sea not possessed by the pro-ethnic Indo-Europeans. The two most important facts, however, in connection with this city are the discovery of 'Priam's Treasure' and the evidence that the city was destroyed in a conflagration. The treasure consists of big diadems of gold, chains and pendants of gold, golden ear-rings, all packed in a silver jar, bars of silver, 8700 small gold rings, discs, buttons, and small bars of gold, silver vases, gold cups, electrum cups, silver daggers, &c. The whole of this treasure had been packed together and stowed away probably in a secret chamber constructed in the acropolis wall.
We are now in a position to understand the first attitude assumed by criticism towards Schliemann's discoveries. It was admitted—it was impossible to deny—that Schliemann had proved that a wealthy and powerful city had existed in prehistoric times on the site which tradition asserted to be that of Homer's Troy, and that this city had been destroyed by fire; further, that he had proved that Mycenæ, which Homer makes the seat of the mighty Agamemnon, had been in prehistoric times a yet more wealthy and powerful city than Troy. But not only was there no evidence to show that Troy perished by hostile fire, there was actually conclusive proof that no expedition from Schliemann's Mycenæ could have destroyed his 'burnt city,' for, whilst Troy was in the stone age, Mycenæ was in the bronze age—i.e. belonged to a period which did not begin until long after the destruction of the 'burnt city.' Further, Homer could not possibly have known Mycenæ with personal knowledge, for he is familiar with the use of iron—i.e. the Homeric poems originated in the iron age, which did not begin until after the destruction of Mycenæ. Again, it was pointed out that the houses, the dress, the weapons, the mode of burial, and the religious beliefs of the Mycenæans were altogether different from those of the Achæans as described in Homer. The tradition, in fine, that Mycenæ and Troy had once been great and powerful cities may have been known to Homer, but he had no further knowledge than the tradition; and he simply ascribed (wrongly as it seemed) the culture of his own times to the age in which he (or the legend he received) laid the mythical and impossible expedition of the Mycenæans against Troy. This, the first attitude of criticism, still maintained by some critics, has been considerably modified of late by others. Objects have been discovered in 'the burnt city' of Troy decorated with the spiral and circular designs distinctive of Mycenæan wares; and this, it is argued, shows that the golden age of Troy just overlapped the Mycenæan period, and makes it possible, and even probable, that this contact between the two cities led to collision and to the destruction of Troy. Again, articles of iron have been discovered at Mycenæ, showing that Mycenæan civilisation continued into the beginning of the iron age. Further, though it is admitted that the earlier stage of Mycenæan culture (as presented in the shaft-graves) was absolutely unknown to Homer, it is now argued that the remains of the later period (as revealed in the bee-hive or domed tombs) may be reconciled with the older portions of the Homeric poems. But the discussion of these questions has hardly yet fairly begun. The importance of the discussion, however, is enormous: if it can be shown that the later period of Mycenæan culture is portrayed in any portion of Homer, the 'Homeric question' will be settled in favour of the disruptionists, for it is beyond doubt that they received their present form in the age of iron. Further, if the Iliad was sketched in firm outline in Mycenæan times, and was expanded and redacted afterwards, the transition from the one age to the other must have been gradual, and we shall have to look to Mycenæan culture for the origin of many things in Greek civilisation—whereas at present there seems to be an impassable chasm between the two civilisations.
Finally, we must state what additions Schliemann's discoveries have made to our knowledge of prehistoric Greece. Except for them our knowledge of Greece before 1000 B.C., the approximate date of the Dorian invasion (for which see Vol. V. p. 385), is a blank. In consequence of them we know that for some centuries before that date a homogeneous culture (of the bronze age) existed on the shores of most, if not all, of the lands and islands washed by the Ægean Sea. This culture may be called either Mycenæan, because the remains discovered at Mycenæ show it in its most glorious form, or Ægean, because of its locale. During this Mycenæan or Ægean period a lively intercourse was carried on between the land and the isles of Greece, and commerce was frequent even with Egypt. The latter fact is established on the one hand by the Egyptian wares discovered at Mycenæ by Schliemann, and on the other hand by the Mycenæan vases discovered in Egypt by Dr Flinders Petrie. These objects, further, give us the date of the Mycenæan or Ægean period: the Egyptian scarabæi discovered amongst Mycenæan objects bear the names of Egyptian kings back to 1500 B.C., while the Mycenæan vases found in the tombs of the Fayyûm can be definitely dated 1400 to 1100 B.C. Finally, the carrying-trade of this period, by whomsoever done, was not done by the Phoenicians: the suggestion made on p. 386 of Vol. V., that the Phoenicians did not establish their commercial supremacy until after the time of the Dorian invasion, has since been confirmed by the evidence of the pottery discovered in the Necropoleis of Cyprus. It was the Phoenicians who introduced iron into Europe, and the European iron age dates from and after the time of the Dorian invasion. So much for what we know of the Mycenæan or Ægean period. We do not know what was the centre from which this culture originated and spread. We do not know whence came the inhabitants of Mycenæ—whether they were natives or immigrants from the sea. We do not know their name, their race, or even what family of nations they belong to: some call them Semites, some Indo-Europeans, some more vaguely Asiatics, some Carians, some Greeks. The truth is that as yet there is not evidence enough in favour of any one of these guesses to make it even plausible. How or why these peoples allowed their carrying-trade to pass into the hands of the Phoenicians we know not; and even if we may regard it as now generally assumed that the Mycenæan period was brought to an end, as far as the Peloponnesus is concerned, by the Dorian invasion, it is still matter of discussion, as we have seen, whether the overthrow was complete or whether some of the culture of the Ægean period was transmitted to later times, and became an element in what we know as Greek civilisation. Before this question and others raised by Dr Schliemann's discoveries can be settled a long period of inquiry, examination, and further discovery must elapse. At the present time it seems just within the bounds of possibility that there may be a historic basis for the siege of Troy; it seems certain that no portion of the Homeric poems can be contemporary with 'the burnt city'; possible, but not probable, that the 'original Homer' was a contemporary of the later period of Mycenæan culture; improbable that the Dorians, who were notoriously uncultured, should have been the channel through which any elements of Mycenæan civilisation were conveyed to historic Greece; and highly improbable that important affinities will be discovered between Mycenæan or Ægean culture and that Greek civilisation to which (religion apart) modern civilisation owes whatever is good and beautiful and true in it.
To Schliemann's own books—Trojan Antiquities, Ilios, Troja, Mycenæ, Tiryns, Orchomenos—the best introduction is Schliemann's Excavations, by Schuchhardt (Eng. trans. 1891). The first attitude of criticism is seen most clearly in Baumeister's Denkmäler (articles 'Mycenæ,' 'Troja'), and most authoritatively in Köhler's Kuppelgrab von Menidi. The later attitude is seen in Schuchhardt and in Leaf's introduction to the Eng. trans. of Schuchhardt. Petrie's article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, xi. 271-277, is important, but has been seriously called in question by Cecil Torr in the Academy of June to August 1892. See also Dümmler, Athen. Mitt. xi. (1886) 15 ff., 210 ff.; Köhler, ib. vii. 250, iii. 1 ff.;
Milchhöfer, Anfänge d. Kunst, 201; Böttcher's La Troie de Schliemann for the crematorium theory; and Dörpfeld's record (in Troja, 1893) of his important excavations—what was believed to be the real Homeric city being discovered on a higher and more modern level.
THE LEGEND OF TROY.—The legend of descent from the exiled Trojans, so long a favourite notion of the Romans themselves, early took firm hold of the popular imagination in France and England, but it was not Virgil and Statius so much as the spurious histories of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys of Crete (q.v.) that supplied the threads from which was spun the mediæval tale of Troy divine. As early as the 2d century Philostratus (q.v.) in his dialogue the Heroica began the artistic elaboration of the theme, and we find traces of it in the Arthurian legends, the Fabliaux, and the like; another Greek work is the Iliaca, in hexameters, by Joannes Tzetzes, the 12th-century Byzantine grammarian; two Latin elegiac poems of the 12th century are extant, the first anonymous, the other by Simon Chèvre d'Or, canon of the abbey of St Victor in Paris; but it was in 1160 that it took its final literary form in the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-More, a poem of almost 30,000 lines, dedicated to the English queen Eleanor of Poitiers. The characters and incidents are transformed by the artist's touch, taking the colour of his own time, while entire episodes are freely invented—of which the finest, devoted to the loves of the faithless Briseïda, daughter of Calchas, first with Troïlus, next with Diomede, furnished to Boccaccio the subject of his poem Filostrato, on the loves of Troilus and Griseïda. Of the Filostrato Chaucer's 'litill tragedie' Troilus and Cressyde was a free and largely expanded translation, although he speaks of himself as a translator out of Latin, and in two places quotes his author by the name of Lollins. Gower in his Confessio Amantis follows Chaucer, enumerating Troilus and Cressida among his illustrious lovers. Benoît's work was much imitated; it was translated into German in the 12th century, and into Latin at Messina in the 13th by Guido delle Colonne, who did not name his source, and long passed as the author. This work again had a wide popularity in Italian, French, and German translations. It was the origin of the Troy Book of Lydgate (1412-50; printed by Pynson, 1513); Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (c. 1474), the first book printed in English, was a translation of Raoul Le Fèvre's French version. The Life and Death of Hector was a modernisation of Lydgate by Thomas Heywood (1614). From Henslowe's Diary we find that Dekker and Chettle in 1559 prepared a Troilus and Cressida; Shakespeare (1609) followed Chaucer for the story, and Lydgate for some of the details. The Troy legend kept its place throughout the middle ages in graver histories as well as in romances and mysteries, and it long continued to maintain a shadowy existence in chap-books. Brut, the eponymous Trojan hero who found his way to Britain, flourished in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gaimar, Wace, Layamon, and long after these in English chronicles whether in verse or prose, and indeed in the 16th century Polydore Virgil was thought a fool and worse for doubting him.
See the introduction of Moland and D'Hericault to Nouvelles Françaises en Prose du XIVe Siècle (1858); Joly, Benoît de Ste-More et le Roman de Troie (1870); W. Greif, Die mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojaner-sage (Marb. 1886); Collilieux, Dictys et Dares (Gren. 1886); and the admirable introduction to E. Gorra, Testi inediti di storia Trojana (Turin, 1887). For the relation of Chaucer's to Boccaccio's poem, see W. M. Rossetti in Chaucer Society's publications for 1875.