7. To “Mycenaean” Troy succeeded a small unfortified settlement,
which maintained itself all through the Hellenic age till the
Homeric enthusiasm of Alexander the Great called a city again into
being on Hissarlik.
8. The Hellenistic Ilion, however, has left comparatively little trace, having been almost completely destroyed in 85 B.C. by Fimbria. Portions of fortifications erected by Lysimachus are visible both on the acropolis (west face chiefly) and round the lower city in the plain. A small Doric temple belongs to the foundation of this city, and a larger one, probably dedicated to Athena, seems to be of the Pergamene age. Of its metopes, representing Helios and a gigantomachia, important fragments have been recovered. Coins of this city are not rare, showing Athena on both faces, and some inscriptions have been recovered proving that Hellenistic Ilion was an important municipality.
9. Lastly about the Christian era, arose a Graeco-Roman city, to which belong the theatre on the south-east slope of the hill and the ornate gateway in the same quarter, as well as a large building on the south-west and extensive remains to north-east. This seems to have sunk into decay about the 5th century A.D.
Bibliography.—J. F. Lechevalier, Voyage de la Troade (1802); Choiseul-Gouffier, Voyage pittoresque (1809); Dr Hunt and Professor Carlyle, in Walpole's Travels (1817); O. F. v. Richter, Wallfahrten im Morgenlande (1822); W. M. Leake, Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor (1824); Prokesch v. Osten, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Orient (1836); C. Fellows, Excursion in Asia Minor (1839); C. Texier, Asie Mineure (1843); R. P. Pullan, Principal Ruins of Asia Minor (1865); P. B. Webb, Topographie de la Troade (1844); H. F. Tozer, Highlands of Turkey (1869); R. Virchow, Landeskunde der Troas, in Trans. Berlin Acad. (1879); H. Schliemann, Troy (1875); Ilios (1880); Troja (1884); Reise der Troas (1881); W. Dörpfeld, Troja (1892) and Troja und Ilios (1902); C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations (Eng. trans., 1891); P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History (1892). (D. G. H.)
III. The Legend of Troy.—According to Greek legend, the oldest town in the Troad was that founded by Teucer, who was a son of the river Scamander and the nymph Idaea. Tzetzes says that the Scamander in question was the Scamander in Crete, and that Teucer was told by an oracle to settle wherever the “earth-born ones” attacked him. So when he and his company were attacked in the Troad by mice, which gnawed their bow-strings and the handles of their shields, he settled on the spot, thinking that the oracle was fulfilled. He called the town Sminthium and built a temple to Apollo Smintheus, the Cretan Word for a mouse being sminthius. In his reign Dardanus, son of Zeus and the nymph Electra, daughter of Atlas, in consequence of a deluge, drifted from the island of Samothrace on a raft or a skin bag to the coast of the Troad, where, having received a portion of land from Teucer and married his daughter Batea, he founded the city of Dardania or Dardanus on high ground at the foot of Mt Ida. On the death of Teucer, Dardanus succeeded to the kingdom and called the whole land Dardania after himself. He begat Erichthonius, who begat a son Tros by Astyoche, daughter of Simois. On succeeding to the throne, Tros called the country Troy and the people Trojans. By Callirrhoe, daughter of Scamander, he had three sons—Ilus, Assaracus and Ganymede. From Ilus and Assaracus sprang two separate lines of the royal house—the one being Ilus, Laomedon, Priam, Hector; the other Assaracus, Capys, Anchises, Aeneas. Ilus went to Phrygia, where, being victorious in wrestling, he received as a prize from the king of Phrygia a spotted cow, with an injunction to follow her and found a city wherever she lay down. The cow lay down on the hill of the Phrygian Atē; and here accordingly Ilus founded the city of Ilion. It is stated that Dardania, Troy and Ilion became one city. Desiring a sign at the foundation of Ilion, Ilus prayed to Zeus and as an answer he found lying before his tent the Palladium, a wooden statue of Pallas, three cubits high, with her feet joined, a spear in her right hand, and a distaff and spindle in her left. Ilus built a temple for the image and worshipped it. By Eurydice, daughter of Adrastus, he had a son Laomedon. Laomedon married Strymo, daughter of Scamander, or Placia, daughter of Atreus or of Leucippus. It was in his reign that Poseidon and Apollo, or Poseidon alone, built the walls of Troy. In his reign also Heracles besieged and took the city, slaying Laomedon and his children, except one daughter Hesione and one son Podarces. The life of Podarces was granted at the request of Hesione; but Heracles stipulated that Podarces must first be a slave and then be redeemed by Hesione; she gave her veil for him; hence his name of Priam (Gr. πρίασθαι, to buy). Priam married first Arisbe and afterwards Hecuba, and had fifty sons and twelve daughters. Among the sons were Hector and Paris, and among the daughters Polyxena and Cassandra. To recover Helen, whom Paris carried off from Sparta, the Greeks under Agamemnon besieged Troy for ten years. At last they contrived a wooden horse, in whose hollow belly many of the Greek heroes hid themselves. Their army and fleet then withdrew to Tenedos, feigning to have raised the siege. The Trojans conveyed the wooden horse into Troy; in the night the Greeks stole out, opened the gates to their friends, and Troy was taken.
See Homer, Il. vii. 452 seq., xx. 215 seq., xxi. 446 seq.; Apollodorus ii. 6, 4, iii., 12; Diodorus iv. 75, v. 48; Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 29, 72, 1302; Conon, Narrat. 21; Dionysius Halicarn. Antiq. Rom. i. 68 seq. The Iliad deals with a period of fifty-one days in the tenth year of the war. For the wooden horse, see Homer, Od. iv. 271 seq.; Virgil, Aen. ii. 13 seq.
The Medieval Legend.—The medieval romance of Troy, the Roman de Troie, exercised greater influence in its day and for centuries after its appearance than any other work of the same class. Just as the chansons de geste of the 10th century were the direct ancestors of the prose romances which afterwards spread throughout Europe, so, even before Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, there were quasi-histories, which reproduced in prose, with more or less exactness, the narratives of epic poetry. Long previous to the Ἡρωϊκός of Flavius Philostratus (fl. 3rd century A.D.) the Trojan War had been the subject of many a prose fiction, dignified with the title of history; but to remodel the whole story almost in the shape of annals, and to give a minute personal description of the persons and characters of the principal actors, were ideas which belonged to an artificial stage of literature. The work of Philostratus is cast in the form of a dialogue between a Phoenician traveller and a vine-grower at Eleus, and is a discourse on twenty-six heroes of the war. A fictitious journal (Ephemeris), professing to give the chief incidents of the siege, and said to have been written by Dictys of Crete, a follower of Idomeneus, is mentioned by Suïdas, and was largely used by John Malalas and other Byzantine chroniclers. This was abridged in Latin prose, probably in the 4th century, under the title of Dictys Cretensis de bello Trojano libri VI. It is prefaced by an introductory letter from a certain L. Septimius to Q. Aradius Rufinus, in which it is stated that the diary of Dictys had been found in his tomb at Cnossus in Crete, written in the Greek language, but in Phoenician characters. The narrative begins with the rape of Helen, and includes the adventures of the Greek princes on the return voyage. With Dictys is always associated Dares, a pseudo-historian of more recent date. Old Greek writers mention an account of the destruction of the city earlier than the Homeric poems, and in the time of Aelian (2nd century A.D.) this Iliad of Dares, priest of Hephaestus at Troy, was believed to be still in existence. Nothing has since been heard of it; but an unknown Latin writer, living between 400 and 600, took advantage of the tradition to compile Daretis Phrygii de excidio Trojae historia, which begins with the voyage of the Argo. It is in prose and professes to be translated from an old Greek manuscript. Of the two works that of Dares is the later, and is inferior to Dictys. The matter-of-fact form of narration recalls the poem of Quintus Smyrnaeus. In both compilations the gods and everything supernatural are suppressed; even the heroes are degraded. The permanent success, however, of the two works distinguishes them among apocryphal writings, and through them the Troy legend was diffused throughout western Europe. The Byzantine writers from the 7th to the 12th century exalted Dictys as a first-class authority, with whom Homer was only to be contrasted as an inventor of fables. Western people preferred Dares, because his history was shorter, and because, favouring the Trojans, he flattered the vanity of those who believed that people to have been their ancestors. Many MSS. of both writers were contained in old libraries; and they were translated into nearly every language and turned into verse. In the case of both works, scholars are undecided whether a Greek original ever existed (but see Dictys Cretensis). The Byzantine grammarian, Joannes Tzetzes (fl. 12th century), wrote a Greek hexameter poem on the subject (Iliaca). In 1272, a monk of Corbie translated “sans rime L'Estoire de Troiens et de Troie (de Dares) du Latin en Roumans mot à mot” because the Roman de Troie was too long. Geoffrey of Waterford put Dares into French prose; and the British Museum has three Welsh MS. translations of the same author—works, however, of a much later period.
The name of Homer never ceased to be held in honour; but he is invariably placed in company with the Latin poets. Few of those who praised him had read him, except in the Latin redaction, in 1100 verses, by the so-called Pindarus Thebanus. It supplied the chief incidents of the Iliad with tolerable exactness and was a textbook in schools.
For a thousand years the myth of descent from the dispersed heroes of the conquered Trojan race was a sacred literary tradition throughout western Europe. The first Franco-Latin chroniclers traced their history to the same origin as that of Rome, as told by the Latin poets of the Augustan era; and in the middle of the 7th century Fredegarius Scholasticus (Rer. gall. script. ii. 461) relates how one party of the Trojans settled between the Rhine, the Danube and the sea. In a charter of Dagobert occurs the statement, “ex nobilissimo et antiquo Trojanorum reliquiarum sanguine nati.” This statement is repeated by chroniclers and panegyrical writers, who also considered the History of Troy by Dares to be the first of national books. Succeeding kings imitated their predecessors in giving official sanction to their legendary origin: Charles the Bald, in a charter, uses almost the same words as Dagobert, “ex praeclaro et antiquo trojanorum sanguine nati.” In England a similar tradition had been early formulated, as appears from Nennius's Historia britonum and Geoffrey of Monmouth. The epic founder of Britain was Brutus, son, or in another tradition, great-grandson, of Aeneas, in any case of the royal house of Troy. The tradition, repeated in Wace's version of Geoffrey, by Matthew Paris and others, persisted to the time of Shakespeare. Brutus found Albion uninhabited except by a few giants. He founded his capital on the
