426 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



of early sites, in many cases of huge stratified mounds, the unearth- 

 ing of buried buildings, the opening of tombs, and the research of 

 minor relics, has reconstituted the successive stages of whole fabrics 

 of former civilization, the very existence of which was formerly 

 unsuspected. Even in later periods archeology, as a dispassionate 

 witness, has been continually checking, supplementing, and illustrat- 

 ing written history. It has called back to our upper air, as with a 

 magician's wand, shapes and conditions that seemed to have been 

 irrevocably lost in the night of time. 



Thus evoked, moreover, the past is often seen to hold a mirror to 

 the future, correcting wrong impressions — the result of some tempo- 

 rary revolution in the whirligig of time — by the more permanent 

 standard of abiding conditions, and affording in the solid evidence 

 of past well-being the '"substance of things hoped for." Nowhere, 

 indeed, has this been more in evidence than in that vexed region 

 between the Danube and the Adriatic, to-day the home of the 

 Serbian race, to the antiquarian exploration of which many of the 

 earlier years of my own life were devoted. 



What visions, indeed, do those investigations not recall ! Impe- 

 rial cities, once the seats of wide administration and of prolific 

 mints, sunk to neglected villages, vestiges of great engineering 

 works, bridges, aqueducts, or here a main line of ancient highway 

 hardly traceable even as a track across the wilderness! Or, again, 

 the signs of medieval revival above the Roman ruins — remains of 

 once populous mining centers scattered along the lone hillside, the 

 shells of stately churches with the effigies, bullet-scarred now, of 

 royal founders, once champions of Christendom against the Paynim — 

 nay, the actual relics of great rulers, lawgivers, national heroes, still 

 secreted in half-ruined monastic retreats ! Sunt lacrimae rerum et 

 mentem mortalia tang-unt. Even the archeologist incurs more 

 human debts, and the evocation of the past carries with it living 

 responsibilities. * * * 



Whole provinces of ancient history would lie beyond our ken — 

 often through the mere loss of the works of classical authors — were 

 it not for the results of archeological research. At other times again 

 it has redressed the balance where certain aspects of the ancient 

 world have been brought into unequal prominence, it may be, by 

 mere accidents of literary style. Even if we take the Greek world, 

 generally so rich in its literary sources, how comparatively little 

 should we know of its brilliant civilization as illustrated by the great 

 civic foundations of Magna Graecia and Sicily if we had to depend 

 on its written sources alone. But the noble monuments of those 

 regions, the results of excavation, the magnificent coinage — a sum of 

 evidence illustrative in turn of public and private life, of art and 



