Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/237

 214 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. to ignore the sharp contentions to which these discoveries have given rise, not only among learned societies within university precincts, but in the outside world as well. The names of Troy, Ilion and Pergamus, of Simois and Scamander, call up pictures that are apt to set aglow the imagination of any man, with how- ever slight a tincture of classical lore, on whose ears have fallen the distant sounds and faint echo of Homers immortal song. It is because Schliemann has established a close relation between the memories of the Greek Epic and the fortunate discoveries that serve as illustrations to it, that he has aroused the sympathies of the general public, such as nought else would have done. But for the interest they excited among all cultivated classes, we should not have seen the great political organs, especially in England, open their columns to reporters detailing day by day the progress and successes of the excavations at Hissarlik or Mycenae, and later the polemics which these same discoveries provoked. This is our reason for approaching the question as to the probable site of Troy, insignificant though it may appear now-a-days, viewed from the platform to which higher criticism has reached. The historian unconsciously and in spite of himself falls under the magic spell of the poet, he longs to find and fix somewhere the theatre of the now charming, now pathetic scenes of single combats between gods and heroes, of varying pictures unfolding in recitals which he knows all the time to be mere fictions, but which so oft kept him enthralled. Since the problem has to be faced, the first thing we must do is to be quite clear as to what we ought to think of the Iliad and its method of composition. From the idea we shall form of it, will depend the amount of positive history and geography which we shall distil from the poem, our only source of information of what we know or think we know in relation to the siege of Troy. Time was when nobody dreamt of discussing the problem ; for Homer was supposed to be contemporary or almost contem- porary with the events which he recounts. Was not the question propounded whether the poet might not be one of the heroes of his poem ? The absurd hypothesis according to which Homer was nothing but Ulysses in disguise did not long survive its birth ; it is instructive nevertheless as illustrating the processes and tendencies of a criticism which passed muster in by-gone days. Criticism was then concerned with singling out the real