Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/268

 Troy. ^45 after a long siege, in which the ancestors of the Homeric princes ruling the cities of Asiatic Hellas had borne so brilliant a part.^ The desire to celebrate these exploits had inspired the bards whose collective work is summed up, for us at least, in the Iliad; but with their innate though simple feeling for art, which even then characterized them, they borrowed from local traditions certain features which opened up their horizon and widened the scene on which their figures disport themselves at greater ease, and stand out in bolder relief This would account for the fact of Troy having assumed such important proportions, and also why Priam, though sacrificing to the gods whom Nestor and Agamemnon propitiate, is distinct from Greek kings by certain sides of an Oriental monarch. Does not his very special figure reflect the picture of a distant and mysterious past, when a dynasty around which was cast the halo of gold held sway over the upper and lower valleys of Ida, long before iEolian colonists appeared in the Troad ? We cannot take leave of Troy without touching, as briefly as possible, upon a theory diametrically opposed to that espoused by Schliemann and Dorpfeld in regard to the ruins which we have even now surveyed. We allude to E. Boetticher, a retired artillery officer, who spent his leisure in perusing Schliemann s works, and who since 1883 has expressed his opinions in the daily press and other publications, to the effect that the ** so-called citadel of Hissarlik"- is no more than a necropolis containing the ashes of the dead ; that the different layers of ruin and soil which have 1 In this ingenious and highly probable hypothesis, we but follow E. Curtius, Greek History, 2 Boetticher's early articles appeared in the Ausland^ 1883, Nos. 51, 52: SchliemantCs TrojOy eim urzeiiliche Feuer-Nekropole, A longer paper was soon after published in the Zeitschrift fiir Museologie, er'r., 1884, No. 21 : Tiryns und Hissarlik ah Feuemecropolen von terrasiertem Aufbau, Later on he contributed on the same subject a number of papers for the Louvain MuseoUy 1888- 1889, which he also brought out in book form, written in indifferent French, that being the language he had originally used for the Louvain publication, entitled : 2m Troie de Schliemann^ une nkcropole h la manihe assyro-babylonienne^ with preface by C. de Harley. Meanwhile his pen was busy addressing the scholars of every part of Europe ; five of his missives, written about this time, are under my eyes as I write, including his last work, which he has brought out since his journey to Troy. They are severally entitled: Sendschreiben im Kampfe um Ilion ; Hissarlik wie es isf, filnfies Sendschreiben ueber Schliemann' s Troja, 6-r. / Als Handschrift gedriickt im Selbstverlage des Verfassers^ 1890.