above Bounar-bachi, and on which it has been attempted to trace the contour of the walls of ancient Ilium and of its citadel, is more than 3200 toises in circumference.
But it is difficult to conceive how, at so distant a period and among a people half savage, a space of ground so large and without water could be entirely occupied by a town, whose power scarcely extended beyond 25 leagues. On the other hand, as the exterior circuit of this mountain is more than 5500 toises, it is not to be conceived how Homer, so exact in his description of places, should have represented Achilles and Hector, already fatigued by a long-continued battle, as making an uninterrupted course of about seven leagues round this mountain, before commencing in single combat. It appears to me therefore that the Troy of Homer must have covered a much less space of ground than is generally supposed, and according to all appearances this space was bounded by a hillock, on which is now the village of Bounar-bachi. This hillock is about 700 or 800 toises in circumference; it is isolated from the rest of the mountain; and warriors in pursuing one another could easily make the circuit. This would not prevent Pergamus from being the citadel of Ilium, but it was separated from it by an esplanade, which served as a means of communication between the town and the fortress.--Gossellin.
[1421] This paragraph, according to Kramer, is probably an interpolation.
[1422] Herod. viii. c. 85.
[1423] Thucyd., b. iii. c. 50, does not use the word Troad, but says “all the towns possessed by the Mitylenæans.”
[1424] Poets and mythologists subsequent to Homer supposed Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, to have been violated by Ajax, the Locrian; that as a punishment for his crime this hero perished by shipwreck on his return from Troy, and that three years afterwards Locris was visited by a famine, which occasioned great destruction to the inhabitants. The oracle consulted on the occasion of this calamity advised the Locrians to send annually to Minerva of Ilium two young women chosen by lot. They obeyed and continued to send them for 1000 years, until the time of the sacred war.
[1425] Il. xiii. 363.
[1426] Il. vi. 448.
[1427] Od. iii. 130.
[1428] Il. xii. 15.
[1429] Il. vi. 92 and 273.
[1430] Il. ix. 455.
[1431] Il. vi. 305.
[1432] The corrupt passage replaced by asterisks is εἶθ’ ἱκετεύοντες τε φρένας, which is unintelligible.
[1433] The following is a translation of the passage, as found in the speech of Lycurgus, still preserved to us:
“Who has not heard of Troy, the greatest City of those times, and sovereign of all Asia, that when once destroyed by The Greeks it remained for ever uninhabited?”
[1434] Modern maps place the Cotylus, and consequently the sources of the river which Demetrius calls Scamander, at more than 30,000 toises, or nearly eleven leagues, to the S. E. of the entrance of the Hellespont, when the source of the Scamander should be near Troy; and Troy itself, according to the measurement adopted by Demetrius, ought not to be more than 3400 toises, or a league and a quarter, from the sea. There is therefore a manifest contradiction, and it appears, as I have already remarked, that the river called Scamander by Demetrius, is not the river so called by Homer, but the Simoïs of the poet.--Gossellin.