The World's Greatest Books - Volume 11 Part 11

The triumph of Sparta has established her empire among the Greeks; she used her power with a tyranny infinitely more galling than the sway of Athens. The Spartan character had become greatly demoralised. Agesilaus, who succeeded to the kings.h.i.+p, set on foot ambitious projects for a Greek conquest of Asia; but Greece began to revolt against the Spartan dominion. Thebes and other cities rose, and called for help from Athens, their former foe. In the first stages of the ensuing war, of which the most notable battle was Coronea, Sparta maintained her supremacy within the Peloponnesus, but not beyond. Athens obtained the countenance of Persia, and the counter-diplomacy of Sparta produced the peace known by the name of the Spartan Antalcidas, establis.h.i.+ng generally the autonomy of Greek cities. But this in effect meant the restoration of Spartan domination.

In course of time, however, this brought about the defiance of Spartan dictation by Thebes and the tremendous check to her power inflicted at the battle of Leuctra, by Epaminondas the Theban, whose military skill and tactical originality there overthrew the Spartan military prestige.

As a consequence, half the Peloponnese itself broke away from Sparta; a force under Epaminondas aided the Arcadians, and the Arcadian federation was established.

h.e.l.lenic Sicily during these years was having a history of her own of some importance. Syracuse, after her triumph over the Athenian forces, continued the contest with her neighbours, which had been the ostensible cause of the Athenian expedition. But this was closed by the advent of fresh invaders, the Carthaginians, who renewed the attack repulsed at Himera. Owing to the disaster to Athens, her fleets were no longer to be feared by Carthage as a protection to the h.e.l.lenic world; and for two centuries to come, her interventions in Sicily were incessant. Now, the presence of a foreign foe in Sicily gave intriguers for power at Syracuse their opportunity, of which the outcome was the subversion of the democracy and the establishment of Dionysius as despot.

His son, Dionysius II., succeeded, and was finally ejected by the Corinthian Timoleon, who, after a brilliant career of victories as Syracusan general against Carthage, acted as general liberator of Sicilian cities from despotisms, laid down his powers, and was content with the position, not of despot, but of counsellor, to the great prosperity of Sicily as a whole.

Going back to the north of Greece, the semi-h.e.l.lenic Macedon with a h.e.l.lenic dynasty was growing powerful. Philip--father of Alexander the Great--was now king, and was resolved to make himself the head of the Greek world. His great opponent is found in the person of the Athenian orator Demosthenes, who saw that Philip was aiming at ascendancy, but generally failed to persuade the Athenians to recognise the danger in which they stood. Philip gradually achieved his immediate end of being recognised as the captain-general of the h.e.l.lenes, and their leader in a new Persian war, when his life was cut short by an a.s.sa.s.sin, and he was succeeded by his youthful son Alexander.

The Greek states, awakening to their practical subjection, would have thrown off the new yoke, but the young king with swift and overwhelming energy swept down from Thrace upon Thebes, the centre of resistance, and stamped it out. He had already conceived, in part at least, his vast schemes of Asiatic conquest; while he lived, Greece had practically no distinguishable history. She is merely an appendage to Macedon.

Everything is absorbed in the Macedon conqueror. With an army incredibly small for the task before him, he entered Asia Minor, and routed the Persian forces on the river Granicus. The Greek Memnon, the one able leader for the Persians, would have organised against him a destructive naval power; but death removed him.

Alexander dispersed the armies of the Persian king Darius at the Issus, captured Tyre after a remarkable siege, and took easy possession of Egypt, where he founded Alexandria. Having organised the administration of the conquered territories, he marched to the Euphrates, but did not engage the enormous Persian hosts till he found and shattered them at the battle of Gaugamela, also called Arbela. Darius fled, and Alexander swept on to Babylon, to Susa, to Persepolis, a.s.suming the functions of the "Great King." The fugitive Darius was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Alexander henceforth a.s.sumed a new and oriental demeanour; but he continued his conquests, crossing the Hindoo Koosh to Bactria, and then bursting into the Punjab. But his ambitions were ended by his death, and their fulfilment, not at all according to his designs, was left to the "Diadochi," the generals among whom the conquered dominions were parted.

Athens led the revolt against Macedonian supremacy, but in vain.

Demosthenes, condemned by the conquering Antipater, took poison. The remainder of the history is that of the blotting out of h.e.l.las and of h.e.l.lenism.

HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN

Troy and Its Remains

Heinrich Schliemann was born at Kalkhorst, a village in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on January 6, 1822, and died on December 27, 1890. During his early childhood an old scholar, who had fallen upon evil days, delighted him with stories of the great deeds of Homeric heroes. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed in a warehouse, but never lost his love for antiquity, and unceasingly prayed to G.o.d that he might yet have the happiness to learn Greek. An accident released him from his low position, and he went to Holland and found a situation in an office. He now began to study languages, suffering extraordinary denials so as to be able to afford money for his studies. In 1846 he was sent by his firm to Russia, learning Swedish and Polish, and next acquired Greek.

Later, he travelled in Europe and the East, making a voyage round the world. At last he realised the dream of his life.

Inaugurating a series of explorations in Greece and Asia Minor, Dr. Schliemann gained fame by his discoveries at Tiryus, Mycenae, and Troy, largely solving the problems of antiquity and archaeology a.s.sociated with these localities.

"Troy and Its Remains" is published here in order that, having read in the cla.s.sical histories, we may see how the ancient world is reconstructed for modern readers, by the records of one of the most famous of archaeologists.

_I.--Searching for the Site of Troy_

_Hissarlik, Plain of Troy, October_ 18, 1871. In my work, "Ithaca, the Peloponnesus, and Troy," published in 1869, I endeavored to prove, both by my own excavations and by the statement of the Iliad, that the Homeric Troy cannot possibly have been situated on the heights of Bunarbas.h.i.+, to which place most archaeologists a.s.sign it. At the same time I endeavoured to explain that the site of Troy must necessarily be identical with the site of that town which, throughout all antiquity and down to its Complete destruction at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century A.D., was called Ilium, and not until 1,000 years, after its disappearance--that is, in 1788 A.D.--was christened Ilium Novum by Lechevalier, who, as his work proves, can never have visited his Ilium Novum.

The site of Ilium is on a plateau 80 feet above the plain. Its north-western corner is formed by a hill about 26 feet higher still, which is about 705 feet in breadth and about 984 feet in length, and from its imposing situation and natural fortifications, this hill of Hissarlik seems specially suited to the acropolis of the town. Ever since my first visit I never doubted that I should find the Pergamus of Priam in the depths of this hill.

On October 10, 1871, I started with my wife from the Dardanelles for the Plain of Troy, a journey of eight hours, and next day commenced my excavations where I had, a year previously, made some preliminary explorations, and had found, among other things, at a depth of 16 feet, walls about 6-1/2 feet thick, which belong to a bastion of the time of Lysimachus.

Hissarlik, the Turkish name of this imposing hill at the north-western end of the site of Ilium, means "fortress," or "acropolis," and seems to prove that this is the Pergamus of Priam; that here Xerxes in 480 B.C.

offered up 1,000 oxen to the Ilian Athena; that here Alexander the Great hung up his armour in the temple of the G.o.ddess, and took away in its stead some of the weapons therein dedicated, belonging to the time of the Trojan war.

I conjectured that this temple, the pride of the Ilians, must have stood on the highest point of the hill, and I therefore decided to excavate this locality down to the native soil, and I made an immense cutting on the face of the steep northern slope, about 66 feet from my last year's work. Notwithstanding the difficulties due to coming on immense blocks of stone, the work advances rapidly. My dear wife, an Athenian lady, who is an enthusiastic admirer of Homer, and knows almost the whole of the Iliad by heart, is present at the excavations from morning to night. All of my workmen are Greeks from the neighbouring village of Renkoi; only on Sunday, a day on which the Greeks do not work, I employ Turks.

_Hissarlik, October_ 26, 1871. Since my report of the 18th I have continued the excavations with the utmost energy, with, on the average, 80 workmen, and I have to-day reached an average depth of 13 feet. I found an immense number of round articles of terra-cotta, red, yellow, grey, and black, with two holes, without inscriptions, but frequently with a kind of potter's stamp upon them. I cannot find any trace of their having been used for domestic purposes, and therefore I presume they have served as _ex votos_ for hanging up in the temples.

I found at a depth of about five feet three marble slabs with inscriptions. One of these must, I think, from the character of the writing, be a.s.signed to the third century, the two others to the first century B.C. A king spoken of in the third century writing must have been one of the kings of Pergamus.

The view from the hill of Hissarlik is magnificent. Before me lies the glorious Plain of Troy, traversed from the south-east to the north-west by the Scamander, which has changed its bed since ancient times.

_Hissarlik, November_ 18, 1871. I have now reached a depth of 33 feet.

During these operations I was for a time deceived by the enormous ma.s.s of stone implements which were dug up, and by the absence of any trace of metal, and supposed that I had come upon the Stone Age. But since the sixth of this month there have appeared many nails, knives, lances, and battle-axes of copper of such elegant workmans.h.i.+p that they can have been made only by a civilised people. I cannot even admit that I have reached the Bronze Period, for the implements and weapons which I find are too well finished.

I must, however, observe that the deeper I dig the greater are the indications of a higher civilisation. And as I thus find ever more and more traces of civilisation the deeper I dig, I am now perfectly convinced that I have not yet penetrated to the period of the Trojan war, and hence I am more hopeful than ever of finding the site of Troy by further excavations; for if ever there was a Troy--and my belief in this is firm--it can only have been here, on the site of Ilium.

_II.--Trojan Life and Civilisation_

_Hissarlik, April 5, 1872._ On the first of this month I resumed the excavations which were discontinued at the end of November.

In the ruins of houses I find, amongst other things, a great number of small idols of very fine marble, with or without the symbols of the owl's head and woman's girdle. Many Trojan articles found in the ruins have stamped on them crosses of various descriptions, which are of the highest importance to archaeology. Such symbols were already regarded, thousands of years before Christ, as religious tokens of the very greatest importance. The figure of the cross represents two pieces of wood which were laid crosswise upon one another before the sacrificial altars in order to produce holy fire. The fire was produced by the friction of one piece of wood against another.

At all depths we find a number of flat idols of very fine marble; upon many of them is the owl's face, and a female girdle with dots. I am firmly convinced that all of the helmeted owls' heads represent a G.o.ddess, and the important question now presents itself, what G.o.ddess is it who is here found so repeatedly, and is, moreover, the only one to be found upon the idols, drinking-cups, and vases? The answer is, she must necessarily be the tutelary G.o.ddess of Troy; she must be the Ilian Athena, and this indeed perfectly agrees with the statement of Homer, who continually calls her _thea glaukopis Athene,_ "the G.o.ddess with the owl's face."

_Hissarlik, June 18, 1872._ I had scarcely begun to extend a third cutting into the hill when I found a block of triglyphs of Parian marble, containing a sculpture in high relief which represents Phoebus Apollo, who, in a long woman's robe with a girdle, is riding on the four immortal horses which pursue their career through the universe. Nothing is to be seen of a chariot. Above the head of the G.o.d is seen about two-thirds of the sun's disc with twenty rays. The face of the G.o.d is very expressive, and the folds of his robe are exquisitely sculptured; but my admiration is specially excited by the four horses, which, snorting and looking wildly forward, career through the universe with infinite power. Their anatomy is so masterly that I confess I have never seen so masterly a work.

It is especially remarkable to find the sun-G.o.d here, for Homer knows nothing of a temple to the sun in Troy, and later history says not a word about the existence of such a temple. However, the image of Phoebus Apollo does not prove that the sculpture must have belonged to a temple of the sun; in my opinion it may just as well have served as an ornament to any other temple.

I venture to express the opinion that the image of the sun, which I find represented here thousands and thousands of times upon the whorls of terra-cotta, must be regarded as the name or emblem of the town--that is, Ilios. In like manner, this sun-G.o.d shone in the form of a woman upon the propylaea of the temple of the Ilian Athena as a symbol of the sun-city.

This head of the sun-G.o.d appears to me to have so much of the Alexandrian style that I must adhere to history, and believe that this work of art belongs to the time of Lysimachus, who, according to Strabo, after the time of Alexander the Great, built here the new temple of the Ilian Athena, which Alexander had promised to the town of Ilium after the subjugation of the Persian Empire.

Were it not for the splendid terra-cottas which I find exclusively on the primary soil and as far as 6-1/2 feet above it, I could swear that at a depth of from 26 to 33 feet, I am among the ruins of the Homeric Troy. [The reader should bear in mind that Dr. Schliemann finally came back to this opinion.] For at this depth I have found a thousand wonderful objects; whereas I find little in the lowest stratum, the removal of which gives immense trouble. We daily find some of the whorls of very fine terra-cotta, and it is curious that those which have no decorations at all are always of the ordinary shape, and of the size of small tops, or like the craters of volcanoes, while almost all those possessing decorations are flat, and in the form of a wheel.

Metals, at least gold, silver, and copper, were known to the Trojans, for I found a copper knife highly gilded, a silver hairpin, and a number of copper nails at a depth of forty-six feet. I found many small instruments for use as pins; also a number of ivory needles, and some curious pieces of ivory, one in the form of a paper-knife, the other in the shape of an exceedingly neat dagger. We discovered one-edged or double-edged knives of white silex in the form of saws in quant.i.ties, each about two inches long; also many hand millstones of lava, and some beautiful red vases, cups, vessels, jugs, and hand plates. In these depths we likewise find many bones of animals; boars' tusks, small sh.e.l.ls, horns of the buffalo, ram, and stag, as well as the vertebrae of the shark.

The houses and palaces in which the splendid terra-cottas were used were large and s.p.a.cious, for to them belong all the mighty heaps of stone, hewn and unhewn, which cover them to the height of from 13 to 20 feet.

These buildings were easily destroyed, for the stones were only joined with earth, and when the walls fell everything in the houses was crushed to pieces by the immense blocks of stone. The primitive Trojan people disappeared simultaneously with the destruction of their town. [Here, as well as in what goes before, Dr. Schliemann writes on the supposition, which he afterwards abandoned, that the remains in the lowest stratum are those of the Trojans of the Iliad.]

Upon the site of the destroyed city new settlers, of a different civilisation, manners, and customs, built a new town; but only the foundation of their houses consisted of stones joined with clay; all the house-walls were built of unburnt bricks. I must draw attention to the fact that I have found twice on fragments of pottery the curious symbol of the _suastika_, or crossed angles, which proves that the primitive Trojans belonged to the Aryan race. This is further proved by the symbols on the round terra-cottas. The existence of the nation which preceded the Trojans was likewise of long duration, for all the layers of _debris_ at the depth of from 33 to 23 feet belong to it. They also were of Aryan descent, for they possessed innumerable Aryan religious symbols. Several of the symbols belonged to the time when Germans, Pelasgians, Hindoos, Persians, Celts, and Greeks still formed one nation.

I found no trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it those curious cups which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant, fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne gla.s.ses, and with two mighty handles on the sides; they are round below, so that they can only stand on their mouths. Further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware, as, for instance, funeral, wine, or water urns, five feet high; likewise, all of those vessels with a beak-shaped mouth, bent back, and either short or long.

I have met with many very curious vases in the shape of animals with three feet. The mouth of the vessel is in the tail, which is upright and very thick, and is connected with the back by a handle. In these strata we also meet with an immense number of those round terra-cottas--the whorls--embellished with beautiful and ingenious symbolical signs, amongst which the sun-G.o.d always occupies the most prominent position.

But the fire-machine of our primeval ancestors, the holy sacrificial altar with blazing flames, the holy soma-tree, or tree of life, and the _rosa mystica_, are also very frequently met with here.

This mystic rose, which occurs very often in the Byzantine sculptures, and the name of which, as is well known, is employed to designate the Holy Virgin in the Roman Catholic liturgies, is a very ancient Aryan symbol, as yet, unfortunately, unexplained. It is very ancient, because I find it at a depth of from 23 to 33 feet, in the strata of the successors to the Trojans, which must belong to a period about 1,200 years before Christ.

At a depth of 30-1/2 feet, among the yellow ashes of a house destroyed by fire, I found silver-ware ornaments and also a very pretty gold ear-ring, which has three lows of stars on both sides; then two bunches of earrings of various forms, most of which are of silver and terminate in five leaves.

I now come to the strata of _debris_ at a depth of from 23 to 13 feet, which are evidently also the remains of a people of the Aryan race, who took possession of the town built on the ruins of Troy, and who destroyed it and extirpated the inhabitants; for in these strata of ten feet thick I find no trace of metal, and the structure of the houses is entirely different. All the house-walls consist of small stones joined with clay. In these strata--at a depth of from 23 to 13 feet--not only are all the stone implements much rougher, but all the terra-cottas are of a coa.r.s.er quality. Still, they possess a certain elegance.