Schliemann, Heinrich: Troy and its remains: a narrative of researches and discoveries made on the site of Illium, and in the Trojan Plain (London, 1875)

Ch. VIII. 1872.] DATE OF TROY'S FOUNDATION. 123

still six weeks before vis, with the precaution of taking
quinine to guard against fever.

I have cleared out the Roman well, which has been
repeatedly mentioned, to a depth of 20 meters (6$i feet),
and I find that it is walled only as far as 52J feet
below the surface of the hill, and then runs into the lime-
stone rock which forms the native soil. I have caused
Georgios Photidas to make a small tunnel in this rock
from the well, and have now become quite convinced
that the ground—upon which, according to Homer, the
Trojan king Dardanus, who had up to that time lived at
the foot of many-fountained Ida, built the town of Dar-
dania (Troy) in the Plain*—is covered with a layer of dibris
about 16 meters, or t,i\ English feet, thick. I must here
remind the reader that the ruins of the Greek colony, which
settled on the spot, scarcely extend to a depth of 6\ feet; that
consequently if, with Strabo (XIII. 1, 43) we suppose the
establishment of this colony to have taken place under the
Lydian dominion, that is about 700 B.C., and calculate the
duration of the reigns of the six kings (Dardanus, Erich-
thonios, Tros, Ilus, Laomedon, and Priam) who, according
to the Iliad (XX. 215-240), preceded the destruction of
Troy, at 200 years, and thus presume the town to have
been founded about 1400 years before Christ, the accu-
mulation of debris must in this place have amounted to
14 meters, or 46 feet, during the first 700 years.

I am firmly convinced that, on a glance at my excava-
tions, every one of the remaining advocates of the anti-

Iliad, XX. 216-218:—

KTicrcre S« AapHaAw eVe! oinu "IAios ipi)
'Ex Tretiitp 7reir<(Ai<rro, iroAis nep6irav avBpumaii',
'AAA* eff vvupzias $K?ov Tro\vni$aKos "iSrjs.

" By Dardanus, of cloud-compelling Jove
Begotten, was Dardania peopled first,
Ere sacred IHon, populous city of men,
Was founded on the plain; as yet they dwelt
On spring-abounding Ida's lowest spurs."