CHAPTER IV

THE HELLESPONT AND HOMER’S TROY

_Now let_ _Us fly to Asia’s cities of renown!_ _Already through each nerve a flutter runs_ _Of eager hope, that longs to be away;_ _Already ’neath the light of other suns_ _My feet, new-winged for travel, yearn to stray._ CATULLUS, XLVI.

After awaking from a protracted reverie on the summit of Galata’s lofty tower I found, to my surprise, that I had spent much more time there than I had originally intended. Twilight, delicate and ethereal, was beginning to fall and to veil the mosques and minarets and cypress-crowned heights of solemn, crafty, mysterious Stamboul. An animated pageant was slowly wending its way through the Grand Rue de Pera--part of it on its way to popular resorts of amusement and relaxation; part returning from the cares of office and counting-room to the repose of homes on the tranquil banks of the palace-fringed Bosphorus.

But I could linger no longer in the contemplation of such fascinating scenes. The previous day I had made arrangements with a friend to take the steamer that very evening for Chanak Kalesi, on the Dardanelles. One of my long unrealized dreams had been to visit the site of ancient Troy. Several times I had been near it, but pressing engagements had always prevented me from gazing on the spot

_Where stood old Troy, a venerable name,_ _Forever consecrated to deathless fame._

A few moments after our steamer left her moorings in the Golden Horn, she began to round Seraglio Point. Galata and Pera twinkle in the gathering gloom. The domes and minarets of Stamboul rise like dark, shadowy monsters above the somber groups of low, wooden houses by which they are surrounded. Broken stars quiver in the swift-flowing waters of the Bosphorus and, while we are still gazing at the venerable, ivy-mantled walls and towers that so long guarded the City of Constantine, we enter the Sea of Marmora--known to the ancients as the Propontis--the sea before the Pontus or the Euxine of which Herodotus says “there is not in the world any other sea so wonderful.”

Early the following morning we were in the storied channel of the Thracian Hellespont--now more familiarly known as the Dardanelles. Like the Bosphorus, the Hellespont is replete with human and historic interest, and, as I contemplated its rugged cliffs, I recalled Lucan’s words that here

_Each rock and every tree recording tales adorn._

This is particularly true of that section of the channel at Fort Nagara, formerly known as the Strait of Abydos. For it was

_Here young Leander perished in the flood,_ _And here the tower of mournful Hero stood._

It was here that the venture-loving Byron swam across the Hellespont. And it was here that Xerxes spanned the Straits with the famous double bridge that enabled his vast army to cross over to the Thracian shore on his way to Greece, where “the barbarian despot sought to repress in the deadly bonds of Persian thralldom the intellect and the freedom of the world.” But the epoch-making victory of Salamis frustrated all his plans of conquest. Accompanied by his counted myriads the Persian invader, sure of his prey, entered Greece with all the wantonness and deadly hostility of barbaric pride; after his defeat by Themistocles, when army, fleet, and treasure were gone, he was forced to flee like the meanest fugitive. The Italian poet, Luigi Alemanni, tells in a single line the fate of the proud organizer of this widely heralded campaign when he writes:

_More than a god he came, less than a man he fled._

A century and a half after the flight of Xerxes, Alexander’s army, under Parmenio, crossed the Hellespont at the place where it had been bridged by the ambitious and vainglorious Persian despot. It was at, or near, this spot that Frederick Barbarossa crossed at the head of the Third Crusade. And it was at this same spot that Solyman Pasha, the warlike son of Orkhan, passed from Asia to Europe, where, in 1354, he planted the Osmanli standard and where it has ever since flown as a sign of Moslem faith and of Moslem victory over the hated Giaour.

We disembarked at the town of Chanak Kalesi, which Europeans usually call the Dardanelles. It is noted as being at the narrowest point of the Hellespont--the channel here is about fourteen hundred yards in width--and was until recently the headquarters of the general in command of the Turkish troops in the many forts which defended the Strait.

In the long-discussed plans of Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia, for joint dominion of the world, the Russian monarch always insisted on securing possession not only of the Bosphorus and Constantinople but also of the Strait of the Dardanelles. But the French emperor just as persistently refused to acquiesce in the Czar’s demands. For a while Napoleon seemed disposed to yield the Bosphorus and even Constantinople, but nothing could induce him to consider for a moment the granting to his ally of control of the Dardanelles--the key to the Mediterranean.

Alexander insisted that, owing to its geographical position, the Dardanelles should belong to Russia; that, having Constantinople, he should also hold the key to the Ægean. But Napoleon retorted that, if Russia possessed this important waterway, she would at once become mistress not only of the commerce of the Levant and of India, but she would also be a constant menace to Toulon, to Corfu, and to the commerce of the world.

But the Czar and his advisers would not take a refusal. They realized that they would never again have so good an opportunity of gaining possession of the long-coveted capital on the Bosphorus and of the channel connecting the Euxine with the Mediterranean as when Napoleon was counting on their coöperation with him in his great schemes of conquest in Asia. Negotiations continued without interruption from the conference of Tilsit to that of Erfurt, and nothing stood in the way of their successful issue except the possession by Russia of the narrow strait between the Marmora and the Ægean. In return for this Alexander was prepared to accede to Napoleon’s every wish.

In a letter of Caulaincourt, the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, written to Napoleon in 1808, the envoy declares that Russia, “once mistress of Constantinople and its geographical dependencies, will go with us not only to India, but to Syria, to Egypt, wherever we may judge it useful to employ her fleets and draw her armies. Besides this, she will leave the French Emperor free to organize the south and the middle of Europe as he may elect. Reserving for herself only the affairs of the north, she will abandon to him the direction of all the others, will not interfere with his gigantic operations, will renounce all jealousy and will consent that the partition of the Orient shall in fact become the partition of the world.”

Concluding his letter to Napoleon, Caulaincourt writes:

Let your majesty reunite Italy, perhaps even Spain to France; change dynasties, found kingdoms; demand the coöperation of the Black Sea fleet and a land army for the conquest of Egypt; demand any guarantees whatsoever; make with Austria any exchanges that may be expedient; in one word, let the world change place, if Russia obtains Constantinople and the Dardanelles, we shall, I believe, be able to have her consider everything without uneasiness.[64]

Could anything evince more clearly than this remarkable statement the supreme value which Alexander placed on the Dardanelles as a Russian outlet to the Mediterranean? And could a more tempting offer have been made to Napoleon, who was then the arbiter of Europe and seemed on the point of becoming the dictator of the world, than that which was dangled before his eyes by his ambitious ally? But the compact that Russia so eagerly desired was not to be made. For when both the Czar and the Emperor appeared to be near an agreement on their long-discussed plans of world domination, Spanish valor and patriotism and Austrian diplomacy were concerting to check the Corsican’s vaulting ambition and to prepare for his ultimate downfall at Waterloo.

In a preceding page reference has been made to the Arab name--_El Farruch_--Earth-Divider--of Constantinople. The same can with equal reason be applied to the Dardanelles. For during long centuries it, with the Bosphorus, has been an effective barrier between the East and the West and has constantly held in check Russia’s aspirations towards the Mediterranean. How much longer will _El Farruch_ continue to keep apart the nations of the earth, and how long will it prove to be the paramount _crux_ of the Near Eastern Question and the occasion of long and sanguinary wars? This is a question that only the future--and, apparently, the very distant future--can answer.

After inspecting the fortifications of Chanak Kalesi and Kilid Bahr and making a visit to the site of ancient Abydos, whence Xerxes is supposed to have surveyed his vast army as it crossed the Hellespont, and whence one has a splendid view of the narrowest part of the Strait, we prepared to continue our journey to the site of ancient Troy.

Our first objective was Eren Keui, a flourishing Greek village, where we purposed stopping over night. This short trip of about three hours we made on horseback. Our road lay along the edge of the Strait over wooded hills, well-cultivated valleys, and picturesque villages surrounded by numerous vineyards and olive groves. From the hills we had splendid views of the Dardanelles, the Thracian Chersonese, the distant Ægean, and “many-fountained Ida” beyond the Trojan plain.

On our way we passed the site of Dardanus--a town also known as Teucris--from which the Dardanelles takes its name. The epithet Hellespont, Sea of Helle--which has also been given to the Strait--is derived from the mythical Helle, who is said to have been drowned near the southern entrance of the channel that bears her name.

From an eminence near Eren Keui, which we reached under an overclouded sky, we were captivated by the fascinating prospect that burst upon our view. For some miles ahead of us, lying in a tremulous azure haze,

_We saw the dark outline of the Trojan plain,_ _Misty and dim, as things at distance seem_ _Through the fast waning light of summer eve._

We lost no time in reaching the spot which, for me at least, had been one of peculiar and ever-growing interest since, as a youth, I had fallen under the magic spell of the immortal author of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. And I was not long on the plain of Troy when I realized the full force of Byron’s words when he declares:

It is one thing to read the _Iliad_ at Sigeum and on the tumuli, or by the springs with Mount Ida above and the plain and the rivers of the Archipelago around you, and another thing to trim your taper over it in a snug library--_this I know_.[65]

But there is nothing in this historic region that will appeal to the ordinary tourist. It is a circumscribed plain about eight miles long by four broad, on which he will see little beyond a few bare hillocks and tumuli and occasional hunts or villages of the poor people who here have their home,[66] and hear little as he treads his way through the scattered brakes that cover much of the ground except the voice of a solitary bird which at intervals bursts into song and then is still.

Nor is there anything here to attract those self-satisfied iconoclasts who not only deny that Homer wrote the _Iliad_ but also deny his very existence. Neither is there anything here to impress the followers of Wolf and other so-called atomists who insist that the _Iliad_ is but a collection of ballads composed by a number of rhapsodists.[67] Still less is there here aught to interest those who not only maintain that Homer and his authorship of the _Iliad_ are myths but who also contend that there is no evidence whatever for believing that there was such a place as Troy or for supposing that the traditional Troy was located in this place, or that there ever was such a conflict as the Trojan War, which is so graphically described in the _Iliad_.

No. To be thrilled by a visit to the well-fought field of Ilium, one must share the sentiments which animated Byron when he contemplated what Catullus so well denominated:

_Troia (nefas) commune sepulchrum Asiæ Europæque,_ _Troia virum et virtutum omnium acerba cinis._[68]

He must share the sentiments of thousands of others---poets, artists, historians, kings, statesmen, commanders of vast armies---who, during the past twenty-five centuries, have found on the site of Ilium, once the

_City of unconquered men_

an inspiration in their work and an incentive to high achievement which they could not find in the same degree in any other place in the wide world.

When Xerxes, with his army, was on the way from Sardis to Greece he stopped at Troy, and “when he had seen everything and inquired into all

## particulars, he made an offering of ten thousand oxen to the Trojan

Minerva, while the Magians poured libations to the heroes who were slain at Troy.”[69]

And the first thing Alexander the Great did on arriving in Asia, previously to beginning his stupendous campaign against the Persians, was to make a pilgrimage to what was once the city of Priam. The famous Macedonian was a credit to his master, Aristotle, both as a scholar and as a philosopher. He was, moreover, a great admirer of Homer and slept with a copy of the _Iliad_ under his pillow. Ascending the acropolis of New Ilium, he, like Xerxes, sacrificed to Minerva and also to the shade of Priam, which he wished to propitiate before starting on his expedition into the heart of Asia. And, as an assumed descendant, through his mother, of Achilles, he offered an oblation on the tumulus of Achilles, beneath which, it was believed, the ashes of the hero, together with those of his friend Patroclus, were preserved in a golden urn. After this he made a careful topographical survey of the Trojan plain. And so convinced was he of all that tradition claimed for it that he promised to enrich and fortify the New Ilium,[70] but was prevented by premature death from carrying his project into execution.

Similarly Julius Cæsar, of the _gens Julia_, which traced its origin to Iulus, son of Æneas, and was proud of its legendary descent from Trojan stock, lavished honors on Troy,[71] as did also the Consul Livius, who offered sacrifice on the acropolis of Ilium, in the name of Rome, and not only exempted it from tribute but also gave it jurisdiction over that part of the surrounding country known as the Troad.

If then, one would come under the spell of Troy, if one would experience the magic influence of its _spiritus loci_, one must visit it as did Byron and Cæsar and Alexander--free from the withering doubts raised by modern atomistic criticism and with a reasonable belief not only in the existence of Priam’s city but also in the personality of Homer and in his authorship of the marvelous epic on the Trojan war. And we must remember that for nearly three thousand years there was no question regarding the identity of that Greek whom Dante calls _poeta sovrano_, the one, he tells us, who was

_Of mortals the most cherished by the nine_.[72]

We must recall the estimation in which he was held by the ancients, who never wavered respecting the identity of

_The blind old man who dwelt on Scio’s rocky isle_.

So paramount, indeed, were the reputation and influence of the immortal poet “whose genius had breathed inspiration into the national life of Greece” that it was said, when tradition respecting his sublime achievements was still fresh,

_Seven cities now contend for Homer dead_ _Through which the living Homer begged his bread._

The genius of Homer [declares a recent writer] was worshiped as god-like and temples were erected to his honor at Chios, Alexandria, Smyrna, and elsewhere; games were also instituted in his memory; Apollo and Homer were actually worshiped together at Argos, the one as the god of song, the other of minstrelsy.[73]

Filled with these thoughts and with a life-long love of the poet’s masterpieces, I visited every nook and corner of the Trojan plain and with unrestrained rapture contemplated the places which had so haunted my youthful imagination when I first became acquainted with the sublime pages of the _Iliad_. For the time being I forgot all about Wolf, Lachman, Hermann, and other advocates of the atomistic theory respecting Homer’s matchless epic and, like a child reading a fairy tale, I loved to picture before my eyes the wonderful events which Homer so vividly describes and which seemed to me almost as real as they were to the actual spectators three thousand years ago.

_Still in our ears Andromache complains,_ _And still in sight the fate of Troy remains;_ _Still Ajax fights, still Hector’s dragged along,--_ _Such strange enchantment dwells in Homer’s song._

Fancy was animated as I strolled along the storied Simois, which “sprouted ambrosia-like pasture” for the horses of Hera and Athena, and the serpentine Scamander--“fair-flowing with silver eddies”--which formerly entered a bay upon the shores of which the Greeks hauled up their ships, and as I stood before the reputed tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus, Ajax and Antilochus. But it was more vivacious far when I ascended the hill of Hissarlik, which Schliemann has identified as the site of Homer’s Troy. From the highest point of this elevation one has a view that is truly entrancing. On the north is the Hellespont--the road, as the ancients conceived, to the Cimmerians and the Hyperboreans--with all its myth and legend. To the west are the murmurous waters of the island-studded Ægean. Near the coast line is vine-clad Tenedos, whither the Greek fleet withdrew while the wooden horse was being taken into Troy. Further beyond is Lemnos, where Hephæstus is said to have fallen when he was hurled from Olympus. To the northwest is rock-ribbed Imbros, and further afield is Samothrace, from the towering peak of which Poseidon looked down upon Troy during its investment by the Greeks. To the northeast is the eminence of Callicolone, whence Apollo and Mars, the protectors of Ilium, watched the operations of the contending Greek and Trojan armies. To the eastward is snow-crested Ida--whence Zeus observed the combatants--whose lofty pines and valonas

_Wave aloft_ _Their tuneful, scented, dove-embowering shade,_ _And ’neath twilight broods as gray and soft_ _As when of yore the shepherd Paris strayed_ _With glad Œnone; while their bleating flocks_ _Grazed the wild thyme bright with ambrosial dew;_ _And lovers piping ’neath the o’ershadowing rocks_ _Laded with love the breezes as they flew._

It was on such panoramas that Helen was wont to fix her wistful gaze--fair Helen, who

_Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars_

* * * * *

_... launched a thousand ships_ _And burnt the topless towers of Ilium._

Yes, I dreamed as I had previously dreamed in Sparta, the famed abode of Menelaus and his faithless Helen; as I had dreamed in “gold-abounding” Mycenæ, the home of Agamemnon, “King of men”; as I had dreamed when contemplating desolate Delphi, Corinth, and Olympia, their glory gone and their temples in ruins; as I had dreamed on the summit of cloud-capped Parnassus, haunt of the Muses, and on the banks of the rippling Cephisus, where Plato taught and where

_Girls and boys, women and bearded men_ _Crowded to hear and treasure in their hearts_ _Matter to make their lives a happiness._

At all these places, as on the site of Troy’s citadel, I loved to recall the Greeks’ love of beauty and the marvelous mythopœic faculty of their poets, and it required no spur to fancy to imagine that I was, for the moment, in actual communion with the thoughts and feelings of the world’s masters of beauty in art and literature.

The plain of Troy [it has been said] has been a battlefield not only of heroes, but of scholars and geographers, and the works which have been written on the subject form a literature to themselves.[74]

This is true. But, however much students of the _Iliad_ may have disagreed about the location of the city of Priam, about the courses of the Simois and Scamander and certain minor details, all have been compelled to recognize the accuracy of the poet’s topographical descriptions and the appropriateness of the epithets which he applies to the most striking features of the enchanting landscape which he so graphically depicts. He does not, of course, give the numbers and distances, as some of his critics would seem to demand, that a civil engineer would require for a contour-line map. This would violate entirely the most elementary canons of poetical treatment. But he does use numbers and distances so far as they are necessary to give reality to the action of the poem. And though his realities are in the highest degree idealized, nevertheless, so fully do they meet the general exigencies of time and place that they prove almost to demonstration that Homer was thoroughly familiar not only with Troy but also with all the surrounding region.[75]

The epithets applied by the poet to the mountains, islands, rivers, and other natural features described in his matchless work show that he must have been intimately acquainted with them, not by hearsay but by personal inspection. Thus when he speaks of the “rapid current” of the Hellespont, of the “broad-flowing” and “eddying” Scamander, of “the peak of lofty Samothrace appearing over the intervening mass of Imbros,” thus enabling Poseidon to look down from its summit on the plain of Troy, we are convinced that the author of the _Iliad_ had carefully examined on the spot the objects he so vividly brings before our view. And so it is in his graphic delineations of “lofty,” “many-fountained” Ida, of “many-crested,” “dazzling”

_Olympus, the reputed seat_ _Eternal of the gods, which never storms_ _Disturb, rains drench, or snow invades, but calm._

So graphic and exact indeed are the epithets and descriptions of Homer that they far surpass those of the later poets of Greece. In this respect he constantly reminds one of Dante, that consummate master of epithet and of brief but most exact description, who had the rare faculty of expressing the import of a whole sentence in a single word. I was then more than ever before impressed with the truth of Gœthe’s words:

_Wer den Dichter will verstehen_ _Muss in Dichter’s Lande gehen._[76]

As we wandered along the willow-lined Mendere--the “divine” and “flower-fringed” Scamander--and threaded our way through clumps of tamarisk, agnus castus, and odoriferous Artemisia, frequently stopping in our course to admire a beautiful lotus or asphodel and to gaze on “spring-abounding” Ida’s heights, whence swift-footed Iris sped to sacred Ilium at the command of ægis-bearing Jove, the question arose as to the location of the Olympus, whence the “king of gods and men”

_Surveyed the walls of Troy, the ships of Greece,_ _The flash of arms, the slayers and the slain._[77]

The doubt was raised by the fact there are in Greece the islands of the Ægean and in Asia Minor nearly a score of peaks and mountain ranges that bear the name of Olympus, and the further fact that Olympus is almost a generic name in this part of the world for a lofty mountain or chain of mountains. On the confines of Mysia and Bithynia and visible from the summit of Ida, which overlooks the Trojan plain, there is a high mountain which is called Olympus, which many writers have declared to be the one on whose summit mythology placed the home of the gods,

_Where Jove convened the senate of the skies._[78]

But a single quotation produced by the Hellenist of our party sufficed to prove that the Olympus which Homer had in view was that located in northern Thessaly--the Olympus on which Hesiod placed the battle of the gods and Titans and on which mythology from the earliest time located “the residence of the dynasty of the gods of which Zeus was the head.” The quotation in question refers to the visit of Here to Zeus, who was then on Mt. Ida observing the belligerents on the Trojan plain, and reads:

_But Juno down from high Olympus sped;_ _O’er sweet Emathia and Pieria’s range,_ _O’er snowy mountains of horse-breeding Thrace,_ _Their topmost heights she soared, nor touch’d the earth._ _From Athos then she cross’d the swelling sea,_ _Until to Lemnos, God-like Thoas’ seat_ _She came._[79]

From Lemnos and Imbros, veiled in cloud,[80] skimming her airy way she passes, to “spring-abounding Ida.” Could anything indicate more clearly than this the relative positions of Olympus and Troy and fix more definitely the position of the home of the Olympian gods as conceived by the sovereign poet of Greece?

Although I had always been specially interested in Greek archæology I felt no inclination, during my short visit to Troy, to indulge my taste for archæological pursuits. I was satisfied to accept the conclusions of Schliemann and Dorpfeld and Virchow respecting the location of Ilium and the bearing of their discoveries on the reality of Homer and the Trojan war. And, as I roamed the plain on which the Greek army was encamped, I could not help hoping that further investigation would prove that the startling discoveries of Schliemann at Mycenæ would remove the last vestiges of doubt regarding the actual existence of Agamemnon and Cassandra.[81] This would be a tangible proof of the reality of at least one of Homer’s heroes. It would, too, be a most interesting contribution to the Homeric question and would be specially gratifying to those who, in spite of certain modern critics, have unfalteringly clung to the views concerning Homer, Troy, and the _Iliad_ which have universally prevailed since the days of Aristarchus and the Homeridæ.

The blind bard of Chios then is to-day, as he always has been, as he always will be so long as men shall love supreme excellence in letters, a living personality whose wonderful epics have exercised a wider and a more potent influence on the intellectual progress of our race than all other epics combined. No books, except perhaps those of the Bible, have been more frequently quoted nor have any received more attention from poets, orators, dramatists, and lovers of the noblest models of literary style.

Another remarkable fact is the gift of immortality which Homer, with Jovelike power, has conferred upon his heroes. Although but the creations of the poet’s genius, they stand forth to-day, men of flesh and blood, in all the vigor and freshness which characterized them thirty centuries ago. And there never have been among the children of men any who are better known, or whose names more frequently occur in song and story than the undying characters of the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_. These facts impress every lover of Homer as he surveys the plain of Troy from the spot on which stood the Pergamus and recollects the achievements of the blind bard’s heroes during the ten long years of the Trojan war.

And, like Achilles and Agamemnon, Priam and Hector, the Troy of Homer also is immortal. Notwithstanding the efforts of a jealous Demetrius or an ill-informed Le Chevalier to transfer the glory of Troy to some other locality, its claims, as Schliemann has shown, still stand on as firm a basis as ever. Yes, of a truth,

_Thou livest, O Troy, forever unto men._

* * * * *

_All to the magic of that world-sung song,_ _That god-breathed legend dost thou owe thy fame;_ _The golden weft the blind man wove so long,_ _Hath linked to immortality thy name._ _His tale to many another’s lyre hath given_ _Its stirring echoes; and in every age_ _What story more than of thy woes hath riven_ _Their hearts who dream upon the poet’s page._ _And though for long thou in the dust hast lain,_ _Still, still the visions of the mighty past,_ _The memory of thy struggle, and thy pain,_ _Thy god-built turrets,--these forever last._

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