THE SITE OF TROY
Controverses autour de Trole. Par Charles Vellay. (Paris : Societe d'Edition " Les Belles Lettres.")
WHEN Schliemann plunged his spade into the mound of Hissarlik in •the Troad, he opened a new chapter of ancient history. He found a walled town, which had once been rich znd then burned, and his discoveries seemed to indicate that when Homer sang of the Siege of Troy, he was telling of a historical fact. What had before been counted as mere legend was acclaimed as at least based on fact, and the Siege of Troy took its place again as an actual episode of the past. Even those Homeric scholars who did not believe in the existence of Homer believed that Troy had at last been located and that, even if Hector was mythical, his town was not. Earnest seekers tried to identify Homer's descriptions with the actual facts of landscape and excavation, and all seemed to show that he was describing a real place and a real event.
Even so there were difficulties. There were seven cities at least on Hissarlik, and the second oldest, which Schliemann excavated, disappeared from history some eight hundred years before the traditional date for the Siege of Troy. It is true that the sixth city suits the date, but it does not seem to have
been burned. Scamander and Simois, still flowing through the Troad, cannot be made to square with Homer's account of them. No city on the small site of Hissarlik can have been so large or so important as Homer's Troy. But these difficul- ties were lightly brushed aside, and it was claimed that after all rivers change their courses and Homer had the poet's right to exaggerate. With this simple solution M.. Vellay will have no truck. He marshals a fine array' of arguments to show that Hissarlik does not suit Homer's description, and so far many will agree with him, even if something like this has been said before. But he is not merely a destructive critic. He -has his own candidate for Troy. It is Bali-Dagh, another hill but further from the sea and bigger than Hissarlik. It is true that it has not been properly excavated and seems to show no signs of ruins. But why should it ? The evidence of antiquity is that Troy was destroyed, and to expect remains is to ask too much. In this impregnable position M. Vellay fortifies himself, and it is hard to prove him wrong or even right ; for his position is based on a resounding negative. Perhaps after all Homer was neither a geographer nor a his- torian ; perhaps he never saw Troy and created an imaginary landscape from details which are common enough in Asia Minor and a few names which he knew to belong to places near the Hellespont.
C. M. BOWRA.
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