From an eminence near Eren Keui, which we reached under an overclouded sky, we were captivated by the fascinating prospect that burst upon our view. For some miles ahead of us, lying in a tremulous azure haze,
We saw the dark outline of the Trojan plain,
Misty and dim, as things at distance seem
Through the fast waning light of summer eve.
We lost no time in reaching the spot which, for me at least, had been one of peculiar and ever-growing interest since, as a youth, I had fallen under the magic spell of the immortal author of the Iliad and Odyssey. And I was not long on the plain of Troy when I realized the full force of Byron’s words when he declares:
It is one thing to read the Iliad at Sigeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above and the plain and the rivers of the Archipelago around you, and another thing to trim your taper over it in a snug library—this I know.[65]
But there is nothing in this historic region that will appeal to the ordinary tourist. It is a circumscribed plain about eight miles long by four broad, on which he will see little beyond a few bare hillocks and tumuli and occasional hunts or villages of the poor people who here have their home,[66] and hear little as he treads his way through the scattered brakes that cover much of the ground except the voice of a solitary bird which at intervals bursts into song and then is still.
Nor is there anything here to attract those self-satisfied iconoclasts who not only deny that Homer wrote the Iliad but also deny his very existence. Neither is there anything here to impress the followers of Wolf and other so-called atomists who insist that the Iliad is but a collection of ballads composed by a number of rhapsodists.[67] Still less is there here aught to interest those who not only maintain that Homer and his authorship of the Iliad are myths but who also contend that there is no evidence whatever for believing that there was such a place as Troy or for supposing that the traditional Troy was located in this place, or that there ever was such a conflict as the Trojan War, which is so graphically described in the Iliad.
No. To be thrilled by a visit to the well-fought field of Ilium, one must share the sentiments which animated Byron when he contemplated what Catullus so well denominated:
Troia (nefas) commune sepulchrum Asiæ Europæque,