Show 9 49 9 C vojt Q j m I 1 4 ahk ruins ruin of T troy roy prepared reil by the tha national geographic society Bo clety washington D C within the zone of the Str straits aLts the th strip ot of land bordering the darda nelles the BoBp horus and the aegean sen sea whose international control Is likely to be altered somewhat by revision of the treaty of devres lies the tha subject of one ot of the worlds world si greatest gr eanest epics troy where two nations fought for or the fair helen the trojan walls unvisited by the idle adl tourist are still in evidence those same walls that defied the onslaughts ts of agamemnon and menelaus of ajax ajar nestor diomed ulysses and achilles to fall at last by stratagem they remained as a ruined and abandoned stage minus its paraphernalia whereon was played so many centuries ago an insignificant little drama compared with modern events but it was waa a drama so big with human interest divinely told that the world has never known its equal to be sure it was all in the telling and what would troy have been without its homer still as the theater of the worlds greatest epic poem it deserves a visit any year every year in the thoughts and emotions it revives and stimulates in the aroused sense of indebtedness of all subsequent literature and art it richly repays a visit the classical student will leave it in a daze af of meditation upon things more real to him than the actual things he has seen and touched in visiting the ruins of troy one sets bets out from the village ot of darda nelles for a live five hours hot and dusty ride after a couple of hours travel through the plain the road grows rougher and begins to ascend into hilly country the traveler realizes that he should be nearing historic ground now and lie he glances around the horizon to see if he be can identify en y sit ida a tint and toward the sea for ft a first sight of Ten edos but no this Is only common soil rounding the summit of the next nest rise one sees the road leading down into kren iren koul ft a turkish village a convenient halting place for 1 coffee then the road begins to wind biti d through the village in a gradual descent until it makes a sudden jerky little turn into the open country and behold I 1 the plain of troy not the plain of the historic action but the drainage area which includes troy to the road leads straight toward a ridge in the distance the hill of ilium at the lower point of 0 which will presently appear the ruins it was down that identical ridge or so one ona tells oneself that the augry god oil apollo strode toward vengeance while the arrows in the quiver on LIS his shoulder clanged in ominous music yonder the summit of sit mt ida where the gods in sol solemn eirin conclave so often sat away over there skirting shirting the ridge of ilium Is rols stream or should be but the bridge across it shows allows upon approach that modern Is no more than a creek worse than that following its attenuated course less than a mile downstream one discovers dib covers that it ends in a morass instead of joining the scamander as of yore and the latter stream Is scarcely less disappointing for it Is no more dignified in size or appearance in fact their sluggish currents united can scarcely boast of banks except at occasional cas ional intervals for both streams lire are now only broad swales merging mith the adjacent plain with no continuous current toward the sea except in seasons of high water if such soch are ever known behold the ruins at last I 1 A long low ridge some gome tour four or five miles in length ends endi abruptly like a promontory projecting into the sea above which it rises about SO 30 feet the ridge la is the so called ifill hill of ilium the gea am is ig the flood floodplain plain of the and scamander historically known as the plain of troy and the promontory with its ita crown of ruins is troy itself ton mira walk around the ruins and make anke the discovery that it if the I 1 were wr lood good TOW too www easily do it in ten minutes astonishing Is this all there was of troy and did this little stronghold withstand a nine years siege and still remain unconquered by force impossible 1 the whole of ilium may have been for fortified rifled and to some extent populated otherwise how was ivas the garrison provisioned 1 details like the these se never troubled honter bottier Hot tier so why bother about them unearthed by Sehl lemann every student knows of the remarkable work of Sehl lemann in unearthing these ruins and establishing their identity as those of the veritable troy of homer of the indefatigable zeal the determined search for the lo location catlon the half willin willing consent of the turkish government and nd the financial and physical obstacles to be bc overcome but the work did begin at last and the first walls to appear beneath the spade were strange walls not those described by homer and the order was to dig deeper still further ruins of city after city were unearthed till homers troy all that ts Is left of it was laid bare only the antiquarian can see the tha significance of all these things as he scrambles up and down within and among these disordered piles of what once was masonry but even an uninformed tourist can see the difference between the rubble nibble walls of a later date and the worthier structures which preceded them there are walls too which show the tha marks of a mighty conflagration and these it is opined opened tire the same ti whence hence aeneas did from the flames of troy upon lis his shoulder the old bear on that last terrible night of destruction one instinctively looks for the gap in the wall through which the wooden horse was introduced but he looks in vain earthenware cisterns of some 20 gallons capacity for holding oil or wine were built into the walls while bits of iridescent glass preces of pottery cobblestones and clay were filled tn te around them wall of priam still stands but there Is still left one precious bit of homeric architecture it if the tha archaeologists are correct raising its ita crown cronin as high as any of the walls of subsequent date it is ie port of a bastion facing toward the hill of ilium and known as the wall of priam it was meant to stand throughout the ages whoever was its builder and one ardently wishes to give the credit for its construction to those times it Is a noble wall well pointed well laid well preserved capable yet of withstanding such assaults as when ajax strives some stones vast weight tot brow from its corner overlooking the plain of an outside stairway descends toward the river possibly a later feature could this have been the corner of the wall stood the gate where the venerable father priam brought the beautiful helen in order to show her the one ene my mya her own countrymen and kindred on the plain below where he pointed out the lenders leaders naming them individually and there Is menelaus llene laus th thy y former husband it may well have loon been the same and romance at least will have it so scattered nebout are bits of sculptured marble the remains perhaps of roman or alexandrine occupation off in the dreamy distance lies denedos sinister denedos Ten edos not discernible except tit in the clearest weather and by the shore near where the dardanelles Darda nelles meets the sea whence thetis might tit it any moment arise la Is a tua tumulus tulus enoi known n as the tomb of achilles and nearby another the tomb of patro patra clus aclus the excavations at troy have re veiled that no no less than nine layers layer exist upon at various times during the past years yeara human habitations have been built |