Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/265

 242 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. space it enclosed for building purposes was of the narrowest. Besides, the layers of vegetable earth covering the ruins of its primitive habitations are deep enough to lead to the conclusion that this group lived and died in very far-off days indeed. That the site was long abandoned is proved from the fact that no remembrance of this population survived its extinction. The case is quite different with what we have called the second city. We know not how far the houses extended in the plain ; but the citadel, with the buildings it contained, has been completely- cleared of the rubbish beneath which it lay buried. The height and thickness of its walls, the amplitude of its buildings, the variety and profusion of objects that were collected in the soil and ruin, the already considerable quantity of copper, bronze, silver, and gold that make their appearance here, everything conveys the notion of a populous city, whose inhabitants were both warlike and industrious, a tribe which husbandry, traffic, and piracy had sufficiently enriched to enable it to import such commodities as the country lacked. The ruins of Hissarlik find no parallel in the Troad ; on no other point are there evidences of so long and vigorous an effort. Reference has been made to the ramparts and portals, to the princely abodes on the acropolis rebuilt several times, and pointing to three distinct periods in the life of the city. Of course it is im- possible for us to name, even approximately, a figure as to the duration of any of them ; but as nothing indicates the occurrence of one of those disasters which leave nothing after them but ruin and desolation, the successive reconstructions are sufficiently accounted for by the natural development of the population settled here, and the need for more space, whilst noticeable throughout is the advance which time had brought to the art of the builder. In an age when the condition of societies was much less prone to change than it is now-a-days, these several changes presuppose centuries, in the life of this small state, of uninterrupted prosperity, during which it played a foremost part in the Troad. Entrenched behind its strong citadel, it could command the trade-routes both by land and sea, whilst the city became the emporium of this part of the world. Among the highways which, from the elevated plateaux of Cappadocia and Phrygia, descended towards the west, more than one must have converged to a point where the coasts