HOMER'S TROY TODAY 



By Jacob E. Conner 



THE Trojan walls, unvisited by the 

 idle tourist, are still in evidence ; 

 those same walls that deiied the 

 onslaughts of Agamemnon and Menelaus, 

 of Ajax, A'^estor, Diomed, Ulysses, and 

 Achilles, to fall at last by stratagem. 

 They remain as a ruined and abandoned 

 stage minus its paraphernalia, whereon 

 was played so many centuries ago an in- 

 significant little drama compared with 

 modern events ; but it was a drama so 

 big with human interest divinely told that 

 the world has never known its equal. 



Wars in these crowded modern times 

 are for gain — for shameless gain — but in 

 the youth of the world, if zve take the 

 Iliad literally, men could afford to fight 

 for an ideal. Hence the Homeric war- 

 fare was a beautiful, a poetic pastime, 

 seriously resulting to some happy few, 

 who were thenceforth rewarded with im- 

 mortality in song. 



To be sure, it was all in the telling ; and 

 what would Troy have been without its 

 Homer? Still, as the theater of the 

 world's greatest epic poem, it deserves a 

 visit any year, every year. In the 

 thoughts and emotions it revives and 

 stimulates, in the aroused sense of in- 

 debtedness of all subsequent literature 

 and art, it richly repays a visit. The 

 classical student will leave it in a daze of 

 meditation upon things more real to him 

 than the actual things he has seen and 

 touched. 



NEAR the; DARDANlSlvLES 



Let the narrator conduct you to Troy 

 as he saw it, setting out from the village 

 of Dardanelles for a five hours' hot and 

 dusty ride, accompanied by a mounted 

 Turkish escort. The road strikes timidly 

 out from the village, following a course 

 southward and approximately parallel to 

 the coast, a mile or so distant. Along the 

 plain moved dusty caravans, sometimes 

 of dromedaries, sometimes of donkeys, 

 bearing no spices or other valuable mer- 

 chandise, but firewood, skins, and other 

 local commodities, advertising unmistak- 



ably the poverty of the country. Scat- 

 tered here and there were the encamp- 

 ments of the "muhajirs," or refugees 

 from Macedonia — for the Balkan war 

 was still in progress — living goodness 

 knows how, for they had been driven 

 from home and all they had possessed by 

 the cruel and desolating struggle. Now 

 and then a stork would rise from the tall 

 grass near the watercourses, stretching 

 his head forward and his feet backward, 

 making that long, straight, horizontal line 

 which so unmistakably marks his flight. 



After a couple of hours' travel through 

 the plain the road grows rougher and be- 

 gins to ascend into hilly country. We 

 should be nearing historic ground now, 

 and we glance around the horizon to see 

 if we can identify Mt. Ida, and toward 

 the sea for a first sight of Tenedos ; but 

 no, this is only common soil. Soon we 

 shall be upon the plains of Troy, and we 

 peer anxiously over that next rise of 

 ground in all expectancy. Rounding the 

 summit, we see instead the road leading 

 down into Eren Koui, a Turkish village, 

 where we halt half an hour for coffee. 

 Thence the road begins to wind through 

 the village in a gradual descent until it 

 makes a sudden jerky little turn into the 

 open country, and behold ! the plain of 

 Troy is about us ; not the plain of the 

 historic action, but the drainage area 

 which includes Troy. 



The road, a beautiful government high- 

 way, well graded and well kept, leads 

 straight toward a ridge in the distance, 

 "the Hill of Ilium," at the lower point of 

 which we shall presently see the ruins. 

 It was down that identical ridge, or so 

 we tell ourselves, there being no antiqua- 

 rian present, that the angry god Apollo 

 strode toward vengeance, while the ar- 

 rows in the quiver on his shoulder 

 clanged in ominous music. 



Yonder the summit of Mt. Ida, where 

 the gods in solemn conclave so often sat, 

 where "cloud-compelling Zeus" some- 

 times "thought two ways in his mind at 

 once," or else ended all debate with a nod 



521 



