Hoy far the events of the Trojan war, as found in Homer and the Cyclic poets, are to be taken as historical, depends upon the view which is taken of the general character of the materials of popular ballad poetry in all countries. That there is in the general case. an under-stratum of historical reality, out of which the earliest popular poetry grows, may be assumed as certain. But how strong the tendency is, in early uncritical ages, to erect on this foundation a purely imaginary superstructure, need scarcely be mentioned. At the same time there is a very great difference to he observed in the popular poetry of different nations, in respect of the greater or less amount of trustworthy historical matter which lies embedded in the imaginative conglomerate. The excess of the imaginative, fanciful, and altogether improbable element is found in our own Arthurian and Carlovingian romances. In Homer, on the other hand, there is a sobriety of tone, a geographical clearness, and a general air of verisimilitude, which incline the reader to accept the historical reality of the main facts. In the first chapter of Herodotus we find the Phenicians practicing the very same act of abduction, though in a more violent form, which the poet represents as having kindled the famous ten years' warfare between Greece and Troy; and, even in the most general view, the war of Troy between rival peoples on the opposite sides of the iEgean may be looked on as the natural overture of those great struggles, by which, on the same theater afterward, the fate of the world, indicated by the preponderance of the European over the Asiatic element, was more than once decided.
The PLAIN OF TROY is formed by the debris of the great chain of mountains which terminates the peninsula of Asia Minor on the n.w., where it is separated from Europe by the sea of Marmora and the narrow strait of the Dardanelles. This chain of moun tains is called Ida by Homer (ide, wood); and its highest peak toward the s, side of the Troad, overhanging the bay of Adramyttium, is celebrated by the same poet as Gargarus. Westward from this chain the land slopes gradually down by a series of undulating ridges to the s. coast of the Dardanelles. The plain included between these ridges and the sea is the plain of Troy. It is surrounded on all sides by elevated ground, by hills and mountains toward the e. find s.e., and by rocky ridges or cliffs along the coast. At one place only does it open to the sea, and this is at the extreme n.w. corner. where it meets the R. end of the Dardanelles, Here there is a stretch of sandy shore about two rn. in length, begiuning behind the Turkish fort of Koumkale, and trending eastward. This is the only place where a fleet such as that described in the Iliad could effect a permanent landing; and here, accordingly, by general consent, the encampment of the Greeks is placed. The promontory which bounds this bay to the e. is universally acknowledged as the nineteen promontory of the ancients, while that on the w. is the Sigean. Here, also, as the natural mouth of the plain, the principal river, by whose action mainly it was formed. finds its way into the sea. This river is the Menderele obviously a corruption of the Homeric: Scamander, called also by the poet Xanthus, from xanthos, that is, the yellow river, from the color of its waters; a quality which has been noticed by most modern travelers. Looking up the plain from any of the heights about the mouth of the river in a south-easterly direction toward Gargarus, its can easily be traced to a distance of about nine in., where it emerges into the plain through a defile in the mountains. This distance of nine m., therefore, is the extreme length of the plain of Troy. Its breadth is about three miles. It presents the appear ance of " a long tract of meadow-laud, inclosed within a girdle of low, round-backed hills, and prettily garnished by many lines of trees, which skirt the water-courses." These waters, with the single exception of the Scamander, are not large enough, accord ing to our usage, to deserve the name of rivers, but are mere mountain-torrents or brooks, generally dry in summer, some of them nothing better than a sort of natural •drains or ditches. Those deserving of mention are three: the first flowing from•the
chain of Ida westward into the plain, about three m. from the sea, called the Dombrelz; the other in the same direction, about five m. further up, called the Irimair. The third stretunlet rises at the head of the plain, near the Turkish village of Bunarbashi, and creeping along the bottom of the slope toward the Archipelago, forms the boundary of the plain on the NV., and empties itself into theMendereh, about two m. above its mouth. One of these streams must be the Homeric Simois.
The topography of a plain so famous in the history of human civilization has, of course, occupied the attention of the learned both in ancient and modern times; and a considerable library could be formed of volumes in which this region has been described, and its most famous localities discussed. The topographical result of these voluminous discussions can, however, now be given in a very few sentences. In the first place, after seventy years of confusion and hallucination, it may be regarded as certainly established, that the Mendereh is the Scamander. It is also universally allowed that _tVortim Kum, or New Troy, occupied the site of Hissarlik, on an eminence about four in. from the mouth of the river, on its right bank, near the bend of the Dombrek. It is also a matter of general consent, that the great tumulus or barrow, near the Sigean promontory, where the Dardanelles broaden up into the wide JEgean, is the veritable monument of Achilles, described by Homer in a famous passage of the Odyssey; but beyond these three points, it cannot be said that any part of the classical topography of the plain has been ascertained with certainty. The great point to determine, of course, is the site of the Homeric Troy, the capital of the empire of Priam; but this is a matter which, in default of inscriptions, can be ascertained only by previously deciding which of the three streamlets above mentioned is the true heir to the legendary glories of the Homeric Simois; for between the Scamander and the Simois the tide of battle rolled to and fro, as Homer expressly tells us; and at the head of the plain between these two rivers the town of Troy must certaiuly stand. Those who hold with Strabo among the ancients, and Maclaren among the moderns, that the Dombrek is the Simois, have strong grounds for maintaining that New Troy was built upon the site of Old Troy, and that no further search is necessary; while they who look on this point as suspicious, must recognize the Simois in the river of Bunarbashi, and the site of the Pergamus of Priam on the plateau at the great bend of the Scamander, about a m. to the eastward of the village of Punarbashi, where the substructions of an ancient city have been lately excavated. Those who wish to see this nice topographical question discussed in the most masterly style, will read The Plain of Troy Described, by Charles Maclaren (Edin. 1863), on the one side; and trek). das Homerische Ilion, by prof. Weleker, in his collected tracts (Bonn, 1845), on the other. A succinct exposition of the arguments on both sides will be found in prof. Blackie's notes to the Iliad, Book xxi. The literary history of this topographical question, commencing with the work of Le Chevalier, a Frenchman, translated into English by prof. Dalzel in 1791, is extremely curious; but the most dis tinguished scholars and topographers being now agreed that the Mendereh and the Scamander are identical, it is not necessary to make any allusion to the wonderful dis covery of " the wells of the Scamander," by which Lc Chevalier imagined he had made himself immortal. Dr. Schliemann, who lately carried on a systematic investigation of the supposed neighborhood of ancient Troy, believes he has found, at Hissarlik, its veritable site. In July, 1872, he discovered a very large collection of gold, silver, and copper implements and weapons, undoubtedly of great antiquity. He considers that, these are part of the treasures of ancient Troy, probably buried for safety on the night of the conflagration. See his lrojan Antiquities (Trojanische Alterthihner, 1872).