WALL AT HISSARLIK, SHOWING CONTRAST BETWEEN WEATHERED AND PROTECTED COURSES.
THE ILIADIC WALL.
But let us suppose that Troy fell, and that Homer's silence was dictated by the loss of all record as to the manner of its falling. In this case one would think that two, or even three, hundred years must have passed between the fall of Troy and the writing of the Iliad. Let us make it the same distance of time as that between the Parliamentary Wars and the present day. This would throw back the Trojan War to about 1400 B.C., and if we accept Homer's statement that the wall of Troy (i.e. that which Dr. Dörpfeld excavated in 1893—for that this is the Iliadic wall may be taken as certain) was built in the time of Priam's father Laomedon, we should date the wall roughly as 1450 B.C. I may add, that it seems to me to be of somewhat earlier date than the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycene, and hence still earlier than that which bears the name of Clytemnestra.