662 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
must have a place which answers to all the requirements of the poetry; therefore 
we are compelled to say: Herve, upon the fortress-hill of Hissarlik—heve, upon 
the ruins of the burnt City of Gold—/uve was Llium.”’ 
Closely connected with the problem as to where Troy stood are other ques- 
tions of fascinating interest. It is but a step to the inquiry whether the persons 
and incidents described in the //ad are to be treated as myths or regarded as his- 
torical facts. There is no room for the discussion of this question here; but we 
may be permitted to remark that since the publication of Dr. Schliemann’s 
researches but few scholars of eminence have cared to speak of the //ad as noth- 
ing more than a collection of poetical fictions. All, indeed, are not willing to 
follow Mr. Gladstone in yielding to Homer an historical authority quite equal to 
that of Herodotus. But that the Trojan war was an actual struggle, ‘‘some 
scene of that act of the warfare between Europe and Asia which made the western 
coast of Asia forever Greek,” as Mr. Freeman puts it, is a proposition entitled by 
every canon of historical criticism to unqualified acceptance. The traditions. 
woven into poetic form by Homer must have rested upon a solid basis of fact. 
Transformed to a very considerable extent they no doubt were by ‘‘the vision 
and the faculty divine” of the poet; but we cannot close our eyes to the literal 
exactness with which many of Homer’s lines fit into the facts revealed by Schlie- 
mann. Henceforth we may have the satisfaction of feeling that Homer was not 
only mighty in fancy—the inspired singer of the ‘‘ways and workings of the 
Olympian gods”—but a trustworthy narrator of historic events. Achilles and 
Hector may be names invented by the poet; but we may be sure that they stand. 
for heroes who actually engaged in deadly strife before the walls of Priam’s city. 
We get from Professor Virchow, a scientific observer of nature, so complete an 
idea of the Trojan plain and the surrounding scenery, as seen from Hissarlik, 
that it seems almost impossible to read the //ad now without realising that it is 
not all fiction. We can stand upon ‘‘Ilion’s towers’’ and view Mount Ida, ‘‘rich 
in springs,’’ where Zeus, the ‘‘cloud-compeller,” dwelt; the heights of ‘‘ woody” 
Samothrace, the seat of ‘‘earth-shaking” Poseidon ; the ‘‘ flowery mead” through 
which the ‘‘eddying” Scamander hurries to the sea; the Hellespontine shore 
where the ships of the Achzeans lay beached in ‘‘double rows.” We can sit in 
the place where Priam, with his ‘‘sage chiefs and councillors,’’ watched 
‘the glorious deeds 
Of Trojan warriors and of brass-clad Greeks.” 
And we can walk through the ‘‘Scezean Gates,” where Hector of the ‘‘ gleaming 
helm” took a last farewell of the ‘‘fair’ Andromache. Surely these glorious 
memories are not all the mere fancies of a poet’s mind!: Surely the war of Troy 
must be real history! Surely this is Troy itself, dismantled and burnt by the fury 
of the victorious Greeks! 
But there is still another question connected with Schliemann’s discoveries 
which must not be allowed to pass unnoticed. Even if it should be granted that 
Troy had a real existence, and that the Ten Years’ War is an historic fact, the 
