Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/259

 236 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Ball Dagh. Accordingly, what we are willing to concede is the existence of a small town, situate a little above the village of Bunarbashi ; its fine springs close by must always have attracted folk to settle in their neighbourhood. These ruins, writes Schlie- mann, probably mark the site of Gergis, a fortified place which, from the beginning of the fifth century B.C., was successively- found in the possession of a Dardanian prince, Zenis by name, and vassal of Pharnabazus, then of his Queen Mania and her son-in-law, Meidias. Xenophon, from whom we gather these particulars, adds further on that Gergis finally fell to Dercyllidas.^ Again, neither the hydrography of the Bali Dagh nor the position of its ruins are of a nature to suit the notion which the poet seems to have formed of the general appearance of Troy. The palaces, whether of Priam, Hector, or Paris, the place of assembly where the Trojans were wont to gather together in front of the houses of their princes, the temples of Apollo and Athene, are all found on Pergamus or in the upper city, sv WXei axpi), for with Homer these terms are synonymous ; his heroes are constantly moving from the Scaean Gates to what he calls Pergamus or upper city indifferently, and, as stated above, the distance which intervenes between these two points is over two kilometres. It is hard to admit that so great a distance separated the royal mansions from the springs which supplied water to a large household of princes and troops of attendants. These and other observations bring out the fact that neither the information furnished by the Epic, nor the survey of the ground, nor the results of the excavations, make for Lechevalier's hypothesis : we have found no reason throughout our research for believing that the Bali Dagh marks the site of a fortified place, whose importance, size, and wealth were great enough to have impressed the popular fancy, which had not only preserved floating reminiscences in respect to it, but added to their bulk from age to age. Quite different is the case of Hissarlik. There the explorer is rewarded by an enormous accumulation of debris wonderful to behold. From the lower strata of the artificial mound he picks up objects of varying interest, but which one and all carry thought to the very beginnings of human industry, so that we seem to be present at the rise of the earliest societies which constituted themselves in that 1 Xenophon, Hellen,