But in the latter half of the 18th century, these supposed historical facts began to be called in question, Wolf[k] leading the van and holding all scholarship in terror of his name for nearly a century. Critical students of Homer were struck with numerous anomalies in his writings that seemed to them inconsistent with the idea that the Iliad and Odyssey had been composed at one time and by one person. To cite but a single illustration, it was noted that the various parts of these poems were not all written in the same dialect, and it seemed highly improbable that any one person should have employed different dialects in a single composition. Such a suggestion as this naturally led to bitter controversies—controversies which have by no means altogether subsided after the lapse of a century.[a] Later scholarship denies the “stratification of language” in the poems.[b] But the controversy did not confine itself to the mere question whether such a person as Homer had lived and written, it came presently to involve also the subject of the Homeric poems, in particular, of the Iliad.
Certain details aside, the Trojan War had been looked upon as an historical event, quite as fully credited by the modern historian as it had been by Alexander when he stopped to offer sacrifices at the site of Troy. But now the iconoclastic movement being under way there was a school of students who openly maintained that the whole recital, by whomsoever written, was nothing but a fable which the historian must utterly discard. It was even questioned whether such a place as Troy had ever existed. Such a scepticism as this seemed, naturally enough, a clear sacrilege to a large body of scholars, but for several generations no successful efforts were made to meet it with any weapons more tangible than words. Then came a champion of the historical verity of the Homeric narrative who set to work to prove his case in the most practical way. Curiously enough the man who thus championed the cause of the closet scholars and poets and visionaries was himself a practical man of affairs, no less experienced and no less successful in dealing with the affairs of an everyday business than had been the man from whom the iconoclastic movement had gained its chief support. This man was also a German, Heinrich Schliemann.[l]
Having amassed a fortune, the income from which was more than sufficient for all his needs, he retired from active business and devoted the remainder of his life to a self-imposed task, which had been an ambition with him all his life, the search, namely, for the site of Ancient Troy. How well he succeeded all the world knows. But in opposition to the opinions of many scholars he selected the hill of Hissarlik as the site of ancient Ilium, and his excavations there soon demonstrated that at least it had been the site not of one alone but of at least seven different cities in antiquity—one being built above the ruins of another at long intervals of time. One of these cities, the sixth from the top,—or to put it otherwise, the most ancient but one,—was, he became firmly convinced, Ilium itself.
The story of his achievements cannot be told here in detail, and it is necessary to point the warning that Dr. Schliemann’s excavations—wonderful as are their results—do not, perhaps, when critically viewed, demonstrate quite so much as might at first sight appear. There is, indeed, a high degree of probability that the city which he excavated was really the one intended in the Homeric descriptions, but it must be clear to any one who scrutinises the matter somewhat closely, that this fact goes but a little way towards substantiating the Homeric narrative as a whole. The city of Ilium may have existed without giving rise to any such series of events as that narrated in the Iliad. Dr. Schliemann himself was led to realise this fact, and to modify somewhat in later years the exact tenor of some of his more enthusiastic earlier views, yet the fact remains that the excavations at Hissarlik must be reckoned with by whoever in future discusses the status of the Homeric story.
This is not the place to enter into a statement of the multitudinous phases scepticism has taken in dealing with the Trojan legend. The story, whether pure fancy, as some have thought it, or a dramatised and romantic version of actual history, is indispensable to any chronicle of Greece or of Grecian influence.[a] Taking Homer as a basis, it may be outlined as follows:
The Town of Troy
The origin of Dardanus, founder of the Trojan state, has been very variously related; but the testimony of Homer to the utter uncertainty of his birth and native country, delivered in the terms that he was the son of Jupiter, may seem best entitled to belief. Thus however it appears that the Greeks not unwillingly acknowledged consanguinity with the Trojans; for many, indeed most, of the Grecian heroes also claimed their descent from Jupiter. It is moreover remarkable that, among the many genealogies which Homer has transmitted, none is traced so far into antiquity as that of the royal family of Troy. Dardanus was ancestor in the sixth degree to Hector, and may thus have lived from a hundred and fifty to two hundred years before that hero. On one of the many ridges projecting from the foot of the lofty mountain of Ida in the northwestern part of Asia Minor, he founded a town, or perhaps rather a castle, which from his own name was called Dardania.
The situation commanded the narrow but highly fruitful plain, watered by the streams of Simois and Scamander, and stretching from the roots of Ida to the Hellespont northward, and the Ægean Sea westward. His son Erichthonius, who succeeded him in the sovereignty of this territory, had the reputation of being the richest man of his age. Much of his wealth seems to have been derived from a large stock of brood mares, to the number, according to the poet, of three thousand, which the fertility of his soil enabled him to maintain, and which by his care and judgment in the choice of stallions produced a breed of horses superior to any of the surrounding countries. Tros, son of Erichthonius, probably extended, or in some other way improved, the territory of Dardania; since the appellation by which it was known to posterity was derived from his name. With the riches the population of the state of course increased. Ilus, son of Tros, therefore, venturing to move his residence from the mountain, founded, on a rising ground beneath, that celebrated city called from his name Ilion [or Ilium], but more familiarly known in modern languages by the name of Troy, derived from his father.
Twice before that war which Homer has made so famous Troy is said to have been taken and plundered: and for its second capture by Hercules, in the reign of Laomedon, son of Ilus, we have Homer’s authority. The government however revived, and still advanced in power and splendour. Laomedon after his misfortune fortified the city in a manner so superior to what was common in his age that the walls of Troy were said to be a work of the gods. Under his son Priam, the Trojan state was very flourishing and of considerable extent; containing, under the name of Phrygia, the country afterwards called Troas, together with both shores of the Hellespont and the large and fertile island of Lesbos.
A frequent communication, sometimes friendly, but oftener hostile, was maintained between the eastern and western coasts of the Ægean Sea; each being an object of piracy more than of commerce to the inhabitants of the opposite country. Cattle and slaves constituting the principal riches of the times, men, women, and children, together with swine, sheep, goats, oxen, and horses, were principal objects of plunder. But scarcely was any crime more common than rapes; and it seems to have been a kind of fashion, in consequence of which the leaders of piratical expeditions gratified their vanity in the highest degree when they could carry off a lady of superior rank. How usual these outrages were among the Greeks, may be gathered from the condition said to have been exacted by Tyndareus, king of Sparta, father of the celebrated Helen, from the chieftains who came to ask his daughter in marriage; he required of all, as a preliminary, to bind themselves by solemn oaths that, should she be stolen, they would assist with their utmost power to recover her. This tradition, with many other stories of Grecian rapes, on whatsoever founded, indicates with certainty the opinion of the later Greeks, among whom they were popular, concerning the manners of their ancestors. But it does not follow that the Greeks were more vicious than other people equally unhabituated to constant, vigorous, and well-regulated exertions of law and government. Equal licentiousness but a few centuries ago prevailed throughout western Europe. Hence those gloomy habitations of the ancient nobility, which excite the wonder of the traveller, particularly in the southern parts, where, in the midst of the finest countries, he often finds them in situations so very inconvenient and uncomfortable, except for what was then the one great object, security, that now the houseless peasant will scarcely go to them for shelter. From the licentiousness were derived the manners, and even the virtues, of the times; and hence knight-errantry with its whimsical consequences.