168 



Silbury. 



that it was the funeral pile of a very great number of bodies, and 

 is suggestive of that most probably raised by the Trojans after the 

 first truce mentioned in the Iliad, 1 



" When those deputed to inter the slain 

 Heap'd with the rising pyramid the plain : 



High in the midst they heap'd the swelling bed 

 Of rising earth, memorial of the dead." 



A.nd now leaving the plain of Troy for that of Sardis, we come 



to the- famous tomb of Alyattes, the father of Crsosus, who died 



about B.C. 560, a barrow of proportions so gigantic, that it may 



well be called an artificial mountain. Though constructed of 



earth, and. not of stone, a barrow and not a pyramid, and therefore 



not requiring so large an amount of labour as the vast works of 



Egypt, it was nevertheless compared for magnificence by Herodotus 



who had seen it, with the constructions of Egypt and Babylon : 



indeed he says that, with the exception of the gold dust washed 



down from the range of Tmolus, it is the only wonder of Lydia for 



the historian to notice. 2 The tumulus was visited and described 



by Mr. Hamilton in his work on Asia Minor, and recently has been 



accurately measured by M. Spiegenthal, Prussian Consul at 



Smyrna, who has also carefully explored the interior : he gives the 



average diameter of the mound as about 250 metres, or 281 yards, 



which produces a circumference of almost exactly half a mile, which 



was the rough estimate conjectured by Mr. Hamilton as he rode 



round it. 3 " Towards the North it consists of the natural rock, a white 



horizontally-stratified earthy limestone, cut away so as to appear 



as part of the structure, (wherein it bears a striking resemblance to 



Silbury.) The upper portion is sand and gravel, apparently 



brought from the bed of Hermus : several deep ravines have been 



worn by time and weather on its sides, particularly on that to the 



South : we followed one of these as affording a better footing than 



the smooth grass, as we ascended to the summit. Here we found 



the remains of a foundation nearly eighteen feet square, on the 



North of which was a huge circular stone, ten feet in diameter, 



1 Pope's Homer's Iliad, book xxiii. 2 Clio, chap. 93. 

 3 Ravvlinson's Herodotus, vol. i., p. 232. 



