SCHLIEMANN’S DISCOVERIES AT TROY. 661 
that have arieen one above the other through long periods of time. The lowest 
stratum goes back to a prehistoric age which must have antedated the Trojan war 
by many centuries; the highest stratum was the site of the Hellenic city of Novum 
Tlium. It is the third stratum, thirty-three feet from the bottom and ten feet 
thick, which Schlieman identifies as the Homeric Ilios. Here he claims to have 
found the ruins of a city which answers to all the requirements of the //ad, and it 
is to the substantiation of this claim that his book is devoted. It would be sheer 
presumption to think of summing up in a few lines the immense mass of facts and 
reasoning gathered in the eight hundred pages of the work; but we may venture 
to state in the briefest form the principal propositions by which the conclusion is 
obtained. 
First—The position of the hill of Hissarlik answers nearly all the demands of 
the iad as to the topography and scenery of the surrounding country, in which 
the action of the poem is represented as taking place. 
Second—The structure and arrangement of the ruins of the third stratum 
which have been laid bare correspond to a remarkable extent with the descrip- 
tions of the poem. 
Third —The place bears the strongest evidence of having been destroyed by 
a great conflagration, and in this respect furnishes peculiar evidence of its identity 
with the city which Homer describes as having been given to the flames by the 
victorious Greeks. 
Fourth—The ten treasures of gold and silver found in or near the principal 
house prove the city to have been the residence of a powerful and wealthy chief— 
such an one as Priam is described to be in the poem. These treasures afford 
good ground for the epithet ‘‘ City of Gold,” so frequently used. 
Fifth—The archzological remains of all kinds found in such abundance are 
such as naturally belong to the age which can fairly be assigned to this third 
stratum of the excavations, and correspond with great exactness to the descrip- 
tions of the Ziad. 
Szxth—The historical testimony, to which allusion has already been made, is 
strongly corroborative of the disclosures made by the excavations at Hissarlik. 
It is not likely that Xerxes would have visited Novum Ilium to make libations to 
the heroes slain in the Trojan war, or that Alexander would have come thither to 
offer sacrifices to Priam when on his way to the East, if the traditions which con- 
nected Novum Ilium with the Troy of Homer had not been well founded and 
universally believed. 
It is not pretended, of course, that the topography and remains of the third 
‘city unearthed at Hissarlik correspond in every particular with the pen of Homer. 
It must not be forgotten that Homer deals with his matter in the large and 
imaginative manner of the poet. Still, the agreement is much more striking than 
would be suspected; and, taken together, the propositions stated above make out 
an overwhelming case in favor of Schliemann’s views. As Professor Virchow has 
well said, ‘‘It is not left to our choice where we should place Ilium; therefore we 
