TROY, or TROJA, in classical legend and geography, the name of a district in the N. W. part of Mysia, in Asia Minor, and of a city situated in it. The latter was also called Ilium, and the former Troas, now the Troad. According to the account of Homer, the city was situated on ground rising above the plain formed by the rivers Scamander and Simois. On the S. E. was a hill, which was a spur of Mount Ida, and on which were the acrop olis of the Trojans called Pergamum, the palaces of the king, and the temples of the gods. No such city as Troy, and no such people as the Trojans, were known in historic times. There have been various opinions respecting the site of the ancient city, and many efforts made to reconcile the present topography with the geographical statements made in the Homeric poems, the most impor tant work in this line being the excava tions of Schliemann in the Troad, at the mound of Hissarlik, long the traditional site of Troy.
Schliemann excavated Hissarlik, and came first on the remains of the Grieco Roman town, Novum Ilion, or New Troy; below it he dug out the ruins of four (or three) village settlements, one below an other; below them he came on "the burnt city," and finally on the lowest, the oldest, the first city. This yielded, in the way of relics, principally pottery and stone implements. Metals were prac tically unknown to its inhabitants, who were plainly a settled pastoral and agri cultural people. The interval that
elapsed between the desertion and decay of this first city and the foundation of the next must have been long, for a layer of earth 1 foot 9 inches deep intervenes between the debris of the first and the second or "burnt city." The inhabitants of this city were, however, still in the stone age; but the number of gold and silver relics, and the presence of some copper implements, point to the approach of the bronze age, and seem to indicate a transition from the age of stone to that of metals. The two most important facts in connection with this city are the dis covery of what Schliemann believed at first to be "Priam's Treasure" and the evidence that the city was destroyed in a conflagration. The treasure consists of big diadems of gold, chains and pend ants of gold, golden earrings, all packed in a silver jar, bars of silver, 8,700 small gold rings, disks, buttons, and small bars of gold, silver vases, gold cups, electrum cups, silver daggers, etc. The whole of this treasure had been packed together and stowed away probably in a secret chamber constructed in the acropolis wall. Scholars are not agreed as to the accuracy of Schliemann's discoveries.