Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/263

 240 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. unusual phenomenon, far- from helping them to localize the scene of the combat, would have bewildered and sorely put them out. May not the poet however, in order to embellish his tale, have transferred under the walls of Troy a physical characteristic to be found on some other point of the Troad, or did the two springs really eddy forth at the foot of the ramparts ? This last conjecture is by far the most likely. Accordingly, it is just possible that the Homeric sources are now covered by and flow under the morass extending to the northward of the plain, referred to above ; or they may be represented by the reservoir and the conduits which Schliemann cleared out. This hypothesis would bring the fountains within easy reach of the domestic abodes ; whereas the distance between the top of the Bali Dagh, or more strictly speaking from the KlG. 65. — Plan of subleiranean watercourse. fortress above Bunarbashi and the washing- trough, would have been considerably longer and more difficult to climb. But at Hissarlik the spade has uncovered a watercourse, which at the end of the gallery was found to branch off into two different directions. The work appears to have been executed long after Homer, and the builders of that day diverted the twin springs into these different conduits {Fig. 65) ; whilst Bunarbashi, as already pointed out, rejoices in a multitude of springs. True, at the present day the contrast which struck the contemporaries of Homer between the sister fountains is no longer observable ; but examples of thermal waters having suddenly dried up are by no means rare ; nor, all things considered, would it be wonderful for such a change to have occurred here ; at any rate if the change did take place, it certainly was before the classical age ; for had there existed during the Macedonian and Roman epoch a warm spring near Ilium, over which floated