href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45190@[email protected]#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[13] Two points are becoming clearer every day, the early existence of members of the Greek race on the shores of Asia, and the essential truth of those traditions about the Oriental influence on Greek civilization, which, within our own remembrance, have passed through the stages of uncritical acceptance, hypercritical rejection, and discriminating belief founded on sure evidence.

It would seem as if Troy, familiar to our childhood as the point of contact in poetry between the East and West, were reappearing in the science of archæology as a link between the eastern and western branches of the antiquities of the great Aryan family, extending its influence to our own island in another sense than the legend of Brute the Trojan. How great an increase of light may soon be expected from the deciphering of the Inscriptions found at Hissarlik may be inferred, in part, from the brief account, in the Appendix, of the progress thus far made. In fine, few dissentients will be found from the judgment of a not too favourable critic, that “Dr. Schliemann, in spite of his over-great enthusiasm, ... has done the world an incalculable service.”[14]

The decipherment of the inscriptions will probably go far to determine the curious question of the use of the terra-cotta whorls, found in such numbers in all the four pre-Hellenic strata of remains at Hissarlik. That they had some practical purpose may be inferred both from this very abundance, and from the occurrence of similar objects among the remains of various early races. Besides the examples given by Dr. Schliemann, they have been found in various parts of our own island, and especially in Scotland, but always (we believe) without decorations. On the other hand, the Aryan emblems and the inscriptions[15] marked upon them would seem to show that they were applied to, if not originally designed for, some higher use. It seems quite natural for a simple and religious race, such as the early Aryans certainly were, to stamp religious emblems and sentences on objects in daily use, and then to consecrate them as ex voto offerings, according to Dr. Schliemann’s suggestion. The astronomical significance, which Schliemann finds in many of the whorls, is unmistakeable in most of the terra-cotta balls; and this seems to furnish evidence that the people who made them had some acquaintance, at least, with the astronomical science of Babylonia.

The keen discussion provoked by Dr. Schliemann’s novel explanation of the θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη might be left “a pretty quarrel as it stands,”[16] did there not appear to be a key of which neither party has made sufficient use. The symbolism, which embodied divine attributes in animal forms, belonged unquestionably to an early form of the Greek religion, as well as to the Egyptian and Assyrian.[17] The ram-headed Ammon, the hawk-headed Ra, the eagle-headed Nisroch, form exact precedents for an owl-headed Athena, a personation which may very well have passed into the slighter forms of owl-faced, owl-eyed, bright-eyed. Indeed, we see no other explanation of the constant connection of the owl with the goddess, which survived to the most perfect age of Greek sculpture. The question is not to be decided by an etymological analysis of the sense of γλαυκῶπις in the Greek writers, long after the old symbolism had been forgotten, nor even by the sense which Homer may have attached to the word in his own mind. One of the most striking characters of his language is his use of fixed epithets; and he might very well have inherited the title of the tutelar goddess of the Ionian race with the rest of his stock of traditions. If γλαυκῶπις were merely a common attributive, signifying “bright-eyed,” it is very remarkable that Homer should never apply it to mortal women, or to any goddess save Athena. We are expressing no opinion upon the accuracy of Schliemann’s identification in every case; but the rudeness of many of his “owl-faced idols” is no stumbling-block, for the oldest and rudest sacred images were held in lasting and peculiar reverence. The Ephesian image of Artemis, “which fell down from Jove,” is a case parallel to what the “Palladium” of Ilium may have been.

The ethnological interpretation of the four strata of remains at Hissarlik is another of the questions which it would be premature to discuss; but a passing reference may be allowed to their very remarkable correspondence with the traditions relating to the site. First, Homer recognizes a city which preceded the Ilium of Priam, and which had been destroyed by Hercules; and Schliemann found a primeval city, of considerable civilization, on the native rock, below the ruins which he regards as the Homeric Troy. Tradition speaks of a Phrygian population, of which the Trojans were a branch, as having apparently displaced, and driven over into Europe, the kindred Pelasgians. Above the second stratum are the remains of a third city, which, in the type and patterns of its terra-cottas, instruments, and ornaments, shows a close resemblance to the second; and the link of connection is rivetted by the inscriptions in the same character in both strata. And so, in the Homeric poems, every reader is struck with the common bonds of genealogy and language, traditions and mutual intercourse, religion and manners, between the Greeks who assail Troy and the Trojans who defend it. If the legend of the Trojan War preserves the tradition of a real conquest of the city by a kindred race, the very nature of the case forbids us to accept literally the story, that the conquerors simply sailed away again.[18] It is far more reasonable to regard the ten years of the War, and the ten years of the Return of the Chiefs (Νόστοι) as cycles of ethnic struggles, the details of which had been sublimed into poetical traditions. The fact, that Schliemann traces in the third stratum a civilization lower than in the second, is an objection only from the point of view of our classical prepossessions. There are not wanting indications in Homer (as Curtius, among others, has pointed out) that the Trojans were more civilized and wealthy than the Greeks; and in the much earlier age, to which the conflict—if real at all—must have belonged, we may be sure that the Asiatic people had over their European kindred an advantage which we may venture to symbolize by the golden arms of Glaucus and the brazen arms of Diomed (Homer, Iliad, VI. 235, 236). Xanthus, the old historian of Lydia, preserves the tradition of a reflux migration of Phrygians from Europe into Asia, after the Trojan War, and says that they conquered Troy and settled in its territory. This migration is