riper years, and even in the time of Socrates
there were Athenian gentlemen who could repeat both the Iliad and
Odyssey by heart. In whatever part of the ancient world a Greek
settled he carried with him a love for the great poet, just as much as
the Christian family takes the Bible to its new frontier home. No work
of profane literature has exercised so wide and long-continued an
influence.

The site of Troy is upon a plateau on the eastern shore of the AEgean
Sea, about 4 miles from the coast and 4-1/2 miles southeast from the
port of Sigeum. The plateau lies on an average about 80 feet above the
plain, and descending very abruptly on the north side. Its
northwestern corner is formed by a hill about 26 feet higher still,
which is about 705 feet in breadth and 984 in length, and from its
imposing situation and natural fortifications this hill of _Hissarlik_
seems specially suited to be the Acropolis of the town.

Like the other great Oriental capitals of the Old World, the present
condition of Troy is that of a mound, such as those in the plain of
the Tigris and Euphrates, offering for ages the invitation to
research, which has only been accepted and rewarded in our own day.
The resemblance is so striking as to raise a strong presumption that,
as the mounds of Nimrud and Hillah have been found to contain the
palaces of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings, so we may accept the
ruins found in the mound of Hissarlik as those of the capital of that
primeval empire in Asia Minor.

As the mounds opened by Layard and his fellow laborers contained only
the "royal quarters," which towered above the rude buildings of
cities, the magnitude of which is attested by abundant proofs, so it
is reasonable to believe that the ruins at Hissarlik are those of the
royal quarter, the only really _permanent_ part of the city built on
the hill capping the lower plateau which lifted the huts of the common
people above the marshes and inundations of the Scamander and the
Simois. In both cases the fragile dwellings of the multitude have
perished, and the pottery and other remains, which were left in the
surface of the plateau of Ilium, would naturally be cleared away by
the succeeding settlers. Homer's poetical exaggeration exalted the
mean dwellings that clustered about the acropolis into the "well-built
city" with her "wide streets."

The erroneous theory which assigns Troy to the heights of Bunarbashi
could, in fact, never have gained grou