the court-martials again and again after they had been temporarily suspended.* But it was a misfortune that the insurrection had to be crushed mainly by the Irish yeomanry, and not by English troops. Mr. Froude says truly: • The yeomanry were strong enough to destroy the rebels; they were not strong enough to pardon them; but we must allow something for the fact that they had volunteered their services to grapple with the unseen enemy who for years had been the terror of their families; had compelled every Protestant house to 'convert itself into a fortress, and had filled the domestic life ' of Protestant Ireland with the most painful anxiety.' Yet, let it be recorded to their honour, that it was the yeomanry and militia-in other words, Irishmen themselves-who broke the back of the rebellion, and saved the country to the British Crown.

ART. VIII.-1. Trojanische Alterthümer.

Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Troja. Von Dr. HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN. 8vo. Leipzig: 1874.

2. Atlas Trojanischer Alterthümer. Photographische Abbildungen zu dem Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Troja. Von Dr. HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN. 4to. (218 Photographic Plates with Descriptive Text.) 1874.

M UCH curiosity was excited, towards the close of last summer, by the announcement, which appeared first in the German newspapers, but soon found its way into those of this country also that a German savant, who was known to have been engaged for a considerable time past in researches on the plain of Troy, had not only determined beyond a doubt the site of that far-famed city, but had brought to light the very palace of King Priam himself, and, what was more, had found upon the site a large portion of the treasures in gold and silver that had once belonged to the Trojan monarch, and which the Greek invaders, as it appeared, had omitted to carry off.

Such a discovery was indeed calculated to arouse the attention, not only of archeologists and scholars, but of every cultivated person in the three kingdoms; for who is there that can pretend to that title, to whom the names of Priam and Hecuba, of Hector and Andromache, are not as familiar as household words? Great as was the interest attached to such marvellous

* Lord Cornwallis laments the excesses of the yeomanry, but admits that the rebels were far more cruel.

discoveries as those at Nineveh, which may be said to have brought to light again the existence of a buried empire, they were deficient in that highest source of interest which is derived from the association and connexion with persons well known in history, or in that poetical and legendary story, which is apt to impress itself more strongly on the mind than any true history.

At the same time this very circumstance was one of the causes which led to this first announcement being received with some incredulity as well as astonishment. The old undoubting faith of former days, which had received the Trojan War as an event as historical and unquestionable as the Crusades, and had looked on Agamemnon and Achilles as no less historical personages than Godfrey of Bouillon or Edward the Black Prince, had almost entirely passed away; and while many scholars were still content to believe that there must remain a substratum of fact underlying this accumulated mass of legend and fiction, others insisted on resolving the whole into those hazy mists of mythology, in which the bewildered inquirer gropes in vain for any glimpse of truth or reality. To be told, therefore, that the results of actual excavations upon the spot had not only proved the real existence of Troy, but the substantial truth of the Trojan War, and revealed objects of great intrinsic value, which could be assigned without hesitation to the period of that event, and might be reasonably believed to have belonged to the aged Priam himself, and been worn or handled by his sons and daughters, was indeed an assertion calculated to arouse the scepticism of more critical scholars, while those who still clung to the ancient legend would be apt to feel that it was too good news to be true.

For some time no definite information on the subject was received; and it was not till the publication of an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes' of January last, by M. Emile Burnouf, the learned director of the French school at Athens; and of one by Mr. Max Müller in The Academy,' almost exactly at the same time, that scholars and archæologists in this country had any means of forming a judgment for themselves of the real value and nature of the discoveries in question. Since then Dr. Schliemann's own work has appeared, containing not only a minute and detailed account of the whole course and progress of his excavations, but is illustrated with photographic representations of all the objects of interest discovered in the course of them, as well as with plans of the excavations and the ruins brought to light, which supply the fullest information concerning all the circumstances of this

extraordinary trouvaille. Whatever opinion we may form as to the scientific and historical results of Dr. Schliemann's discoveries, and however we may feel disposed to dissent from some of his conclusions-tinctured as they are with an enthusiasm natural enough under the circumstances-there can be but one opinion as to the gratitude we owe him for the unwearied zeal with which he prosecuted his labours, at a very heavy expense, during a period of nearly two years, on the supposed site of Troy; as well as for the candid and complete manner in which he has communicated the results of those labours to the public, and afforded them the amplest means of drawing their own conclusions from the materials thus placed at their disposal. Our object in the following pages will be to make our readers acquainted with the facts connected with these very remarkable discoveries, and to point out their bearing on the immediate questions connected with the site of Troy, while we must content ourselves with briefly hinting at some of the other subjects of archæological interest on which they are calculated to throw a new and unexpected light.

But before we proceed to follow the progress of Dr. Schliemann's excavations, it will be necessary to advert briefly to the topography of the surrounding localities, and to the causes that determined him to devote his attention especially to the particular spot where his researches have been productive of such remarkable results. All our readers are probably aware that the topography of the plain of Troy, and the true site of that famous city, have been in modern times the subject of much controversy. No doubt existed, indeed, as to the position assigned to it by the concurrent voice of ancient tradition. Throughout the historical period of Greek literature-from the Persian War to the Roman Empire-there existed on a hill about two miles from the shore of the Hellespont, a town, which still bore the celebrated name of Ilium, and which was generally believed to occupy the site of the city of Priam. A temple dedicated to Pallas Athena, who figures so prominently in the Iliad as the tutelary goddess of Troy, still crowned the heights of its acropolis; and so strong was the belief in the identity of the city thus subsisting with the Homeric Ilium, that when Xerxes was about to conduct his mighty host of barbarians across the Hellespont, he went up to the 'Pergamus ' of Priam' (as it is called by Herodotus), and sacrificed a thousand oxen to the Ilian Athena. His example was followed, a century and a half later, by Alexander, who not only went up

* Herodotus, lib. vii. c. 43.

to the citadel and offered sacrifices to the tutelary goddess, but dedicated there his own suit of armour, and took down in return some of the arms preserved in the temple, which, according to the popular belief, had belonged to one or other of the heroes that had fought in the Trojan War.* After the death of Alexander, the city of Ilium, which had hitherto been a poor and decayed place, notwithstanding its historical celebrity, was restored, enlarged, and fortified anew by Lysimachus, and continued through several centuries, first under the kings of Pergamus, afterwards under the Roman dominion, to be a flourishing and populous town. That it should continue throughout this period to enjoy the character of representing the Homeric city, is no more than was to be expected, and must be admitted to prove nothing, as such a traditional belief, when once established, will almost always continue unchanged.

It was not, indeed, universally adopted. The still, small ' voice' of criticism was raised against it, though with little effect, by a certain Demetrius, a native of Scepsis, a small town in the Troad, who was a contemporary of Aristarchus, and devoted himself to the study of the Homeric poems with so much zeal that he composed a work, extending to not less than thirty books, devoted entirely to a commentary on the Homeric catalogue of the Trojans and their allies. His opinions, however, appear to have met with very little assent in antiquity, and had it not been for their mention by Strabo, who himself adopted his conclusions, we should have remained in total ignorance of the blow thus aimed at the mythical 'legitimacy of Ilium.' The difficulties which presented themselves to his mind-especially the limited space between the reputed Ilium and the sea-were the same that have been the stumbling block of so many modern writers. It was not in accordance with any different tradition, or on the evidence of existing remains, that Demetrius and Strabo were led to disbelieve in the pretensions of the Ilium of their day, but because they found it impossible to reconcile its position with the details given in the Iliad concerning the incidents of the war and the movements of the conflicting armies. It was solely in order to obviate these difficulties and allow more space for the theatre of war, that Demetrius was led to the novel and startling hypothesis that the Ilium which had been so long revered as the representative of the sacred city' had no real claim to that dignity, and that Troy had in reality

occupied a site considerably farther inland, where there still stood in his day a place called the village of the Ilians.'*

On one point, indeed, the arguments first brought forward by the sceptical critics were unanswerable. They proved beyond a doubt that the Ilians of their time could not appeal to the unbroken evidence of tradition which would arise from the continuous occupation of the site from the heroic ages downwards. According to the legendary history of Troy, which was admitted by both sides in the controversy, the city had been destroyed-burnt with fire-and though the Trojan people continued to exist for a considerable period, there is no trace of the re-establishment of the ancient city, until-centuries after the supposed date of its destruction, and long after the age of the Homeric poems-a Greek colony was settled on the spot which for ages afterwards bore the name of Ilium. The date of this second foundation is somewhat vaguely assigned by Strabo to the period of the last Lydian dynastythat is between 720 and 550 B.C. In the long interval between the two, the Troad and the neighbouring districts had been invaded and occupied in succession by several barbarous tribes, chiefly of Thracian origin, and the result was, according to Strabo, that the ethnography of the surrounding region had undergone such changes as to present hardly any resemblance to that which was represented in the Homeric catalogue. But the one definite fact clearly remained: the Ilium known in historical times was a Hellenic city, and its inhabitants could not therefore be descended from the ancient Trojans.

In modern times the particular view advocated by Demetrius and Strabo has found little favour, but the same line of argument has been urged by a host of modern critics in support of another wholly different site as that of the Homeric Ilium. It was as far back as the year 1786, that a French traveller named Le Chevalier, on a visit to the Troad, discovered near the Turkish village of Bunarbashi two springs, which appeared to him so well to answer to the well-known description in the Iliad of the two sources of the Scamander,† as to leave no doubt on his mind that they were really those described by Homer, and that the city of the heroic ages-the only one that could be present to the mind of the poet-was situated on the heights behind Bunarbashi, at a distance of not less than eight or nine miles from the mouth of the Scamander and the shore of the Hellespont. The suggestion thus made was eagerly taken up by several eminent scholars, while it was not less

*Strabo, lib. xiii. c. 1, § 35. † Iliad, xxii. v. 147–156.