EXCAVATIONS AT TROY.

"Was the Troy which Homer celebrates, the citadel of Priam, a real city? And where did it lie?" With these questions Professor Dorpfeld, after a brief introduction, began his lecture in the Fogg Art Museum, last night, on the "Excavations at Troy." He referred to the fact that different answers had been given to these questions both in antiquity and in the present day. There lay, in antiquity, on a hill in the valley of the Scamander, three or four miles distant from the Hellespont, a Greek city called Ilion, adorned with a temple of Athena. The inhabitants of this city believed that they lived on the site of ancient Troy; Xerxes and Alexander the Great visited the place that they might see the scene of the action of the Trojan war. The geographer Strabo, however, and some other ancient writers were of a different opinion. They removed Troy to a site four miles further east. Among modern scholars, some have denied the existence of Troy altogether; others, as Curtius and Kiepert, have placed it six miles further toward the south, near Bunarbaschi.

Schliemann sided with the inhabitants of ancient Ilion, and in 1870 undertook excavations, which he continued until 1890, on the hill now called Hissarlik. After Schliemann's death these excavations were continued by Professor Dorpfeld until 1894, first at the expense of Mrs. Schliemann and then at the expense of the German emperor.

Professor Dorpfeld, before he stated the results of these excavations, reminded his hearers of the facts about Troy and the later Ilion which have been transmitted to us from ancient writers. Homer, in referring to the situation of ancient Troy, gives many hints that point very directly to Ilion. Ilion itself was twice completely destroyed. The city was again rebuilt by Sulla and the Roman emperors, and was especially honored as the ancestral city of the Julii for Aeneas, the ancestor of this family, had come from Troy. In Byzantine times this great city was completely destroyed and became a wilderness.

By means of many plans and photographs Professor Dorpfeld sought, with marked success, to give his hearers a picture of the results of the excavations. Nine strata had been found one over the other, marking the site of nine different settlements, each of which in its turn had been destroyed. In the upper stratum Roman buildings were uncovered, including a stately temple of Athena built of marble, and three theatres, and many colonnades and houses. Countless marble inscriptions record that this city was called Ilion, and that some of its buildings were erected by the Roman emperors. Under these Roman buildings, as the excavations were continued into the lower strata, were found simple houses built of smaller stones, whose age is determined by the character of the pottery found in and about them. These are beyond question the houses of the little city visited by Alexander the Great and by Xerxes. Under these houses were then found the remarkable ruins of a stately city surrounded by strong walls of defense and protected by towers and gates. Within the walls were many single stately buildings. The walls were built of massive blocks of stone and were fifteen feet in width. These walls, and in particular a great tower fifty feet in width, are very impressive even in their ruins. Professor Dorpfeld declared that he knew no where else in Greece walls of any ancient city that were so solid and so strong. There is a great probability that this citadel, found under the ruins of Greek Ilion, is the Troy that was destroyed by the Greeks under Agamemnon. This supposition is made certain by the character of the objects found in the houses and near the city walls. Here have been found fragments of the same sort of antique pottery which the excavations at Tiryns and Mycenae have made known to every archaeologist, and which, according to the results of excavations in Egypt and for other reasons, must be regarded as belonging to a time from one thousand to fifteen hundred years before Christ.

Beneath the ruins of this stately citadel five prehistoric settlements have been discovered, which were made two thousand years before Christ and in still more ancient times. Even on the photographs, as shown by the slides, these early settlements have an extremely ancient and primitive look. Of these five a srata Professor Dorpfeld described one, the second from the bottom, at length, regrading this to be of special importance. This also was a citadel with great walls and towers; Schliemann believed it to be the citadel of Priam. I this stratum he found the celebrated articles of gold which he denominated the "Treasure of Priam." This citadel, however, is certainly earlier than the time of the Trojan war. In viewing it one involuntarily recalls, as Professor Dorpfeld suggested, the tradition preserved in Homer that ancient Troy had one before been destroyed.

Professor Dorpfeld, by means of a vertical section of the hill, which showed the different strata one above the other, made it very clear how Schliemann came to overlook the upper citadel.

The Greeks and Romans, said the lecturer in closing, were convinced that the citadel of ancient Troy had occupied the site of the later city of Ilion, although they were able to see nothing of the ruins of the settlement of heroic times. Can we, then, longer doubt that Troy has actually been found, when we see before us stately walls of heroic times, and when the great importance of the site is so clearly demonstrated by its frequent prehistoric settlement?