robert wood and the problem of troy in the eighteenth century

7/29/2019 Robert Wood and the Problem of Troy in the Eighteenth Century

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/robert-wood-and-the-problem-of-troy-in-the-eighteenth-century 1/35

Robert Wood and the Problem of Troy in the Eighteenth Century

Author(s): T. J. B. SpencerReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (Jan. - Jun., 1957),pp. 75-105Published by: The Warburg Institute

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750152 .

Accessed: 28/01/2013 16:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Warburg Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=warburg

http://www.jstor.org/stable/750152?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


http://www.jstor.org/stable/750152?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=warburg



ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEM OF TROY IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

By T. J. B. Spencer

I

Thename of Robert Wood, in so far as it is remembered at all, survives

for two achievements: first, his publication of pioneer archaeologicalexplorations, Ruinsof Palmyra 1753) and Ruinsof Balbec(1757) ; and secondly,for being a kind of grandfather of the Homeric Question, because his was thefirst serious and scholarly discussion whether the art of writing was known toHomer. Possibly his name survives better in Germany than in England: forGoethe was interested in his views on Homer and in a well-known passageexplained how Wood's book was one of those which helped his mind tounfold.1

But Wood was a man of varied talents, and he started a good many thingsin the world of classical learning. He was not a professionalscholar. He wasa gentleman, of modest birth, who was early seized by a desire of seeing theclassic lands. His portrait by Mengs (P1.8a) was painted in about 1753, whenhe was in Rome, but already in 1742 and 1743, when he was in his middletwenties, he was sailing among the Greek islands and reached Egypt, Syria,and Mesopotamia.2 In 1749 he met James Dawkins, a young man of greatwealth, and John Bouverie, an ardent dilettante; and the three agreed on anexpedition to the Levant together. A ship was commissionedfrom London andmet them at Naples. It was well stocked with a library of classical authorsand historians, the relevant travel-books, treatises of antiquities, and mathe-

matical instruments; and they were accompanied by their own draughtsman.There was something of the scholar's dream about it-this ship, with its excel-lent classical library, sailing about the Grecian seas at will, picking up, orbuying up, any inscriptions or statuary that were conveniently portable,permitting the leisurely inspection and investigation of all places of classicalimportance.

In 1750 they landed on the Troad and explored the whole region. Afterthat, they proceeded to the coast of Syria, and visited Palmyra and Baalbec,returning to Athens in May I751. There Stuart and Revett were busy onthe Antiquities f Athens(which was to be one of the epoch-making works ofthe Society of Dilettanti); and Revett has left an

engraving3 showingthe

four of them standing before the monument of Philopappos, near Athens(P1. 8c). Dawkins is in the middle of the group; Stuart and Revett standon the left in Greek costume: and Wood is transcribing an inscription.

When they returned home Wood settled down to the preparation of thegreat folios on Palmyra and Baalbec, which made a profound impression ontheir contemporaries throughout Europe. He was about 36 when Palmyrawas published, and Balbecappeared four years later. Wood's reputation washigh; and praise was (I believe) unanimous. "Every preceding account,"

1Dichtungund Wahrheit, ii.

2 RuinsofPalmyra,p. 18; Essayon... Homer,

1775 edition, pp. 40, 55, 0o9.

3Included in TheAntiquities f Athens,III,1794.

75

This content downloaded on Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:26:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions






76 T. J. B. SPENCER

wrote Gibbon, "is eclipsed by the magnificent description and drawings ofMM. Dawkins and Wood, who have transported into England the ruins of

Palmyra and Baalbec."4 Horace Walpole was equally emphatic in the prefaceto his Anecdotesf Painting n England(1762) :

Of all the works that distinguish this age, none perhaps excell thosebeautifull editions of Balbec and Palmyra. .... When I endeavour to do

justice to [them], I would not confine the encomium to the sculptures;the books have far higher merit. The modest descriptions prefixed arestandards of writing: the exact measure of what should and should not besaid, and of what was necessaryto be known, was never comprehended inmore clear diction, or more elegant stile. The pomp of the buildings hasnot a nobler air than the simplicity of the narration-but I must restrain

myself.. .5

Dawkins and Wood had caught the imagination of the time. And the painterGavin Hamilton in 1758 gave the public a powerful rendering of the momentof their first sight of Palmyra (P1.8b), full of fascinating vestiges of the tradi-tion of historical painting.

Wood, therefore, expected to publish his book on Homer (which was tobe the really important result of his travels and investigations) at a time whenhis reputation was very high, amid widespread admiration for his work andachievement; when his opinions would be treated with respect. But by oneof those unfortunategood intentions of the Great-by that system of patronagewhich occasionally thought it proper to reward literary merit by a lucrative

positionin

publicaffairs-the elder Pitt in

1756, justwhile Wood was

engagedupon his Homer, made him an under-secretaryof state. It was an importantpost for such a man as Wood, and this instance of the patronage of literaturedrew some attention at the time. Gray wrote to Mason about "Mr. Pitt'sWood" with a touch of ironical or plaintive envy." James Ralph in The Caseof Authorsby Profession r TradeStated(1758), a pamphlet on the decline ofthe patronage of men of letters, regarded Wood's case as altogether excep-tional: "Mr. Wood,so much to his Honour, distinguish'd by Mr. SecretaryPitt, is a Writer by Accident, not by Profession; and was already secur'dagainst any Reverse of Fortune, by the Gratitude and Generosity of formerFriends" (p. 37).

Wood, however, had been given no sinecure; and he held various appoint-ments during several changes of government. To reward literary talent by a

post which prevented the recipient from continuing to exercise his literarytalent cannot arouse our admiration, whatever Wood's contemporaries mayhave thought. It did not always fall out like that. James Thomson, theauthor of TheSeasons,was in 1744, for his literary merits, appointed Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands. He refrained from surveying the Leeward

4 DeclineandFall, chapter li (ed. J. B. Bury,I896-1900, v, 4310).

5For Walpole's private praise of Palmyra,with its "admirable dissertation," see a letter

to Richard Bentley, 19 December 1753

(Letters, ed. Toynbee, III, 202).6 Correspondencef ThomasGray,ed. Paget

Toynbee and L. Whibley, Oxford, 1935, II,526, 558.







8

a-Raphael Mengs, Portrait of Robert

Wood, c. 1753, Earl of Ellesmere's Collec-tion (p. 75)

b-Gavin Hamilton, 'James Dawkins and Robert Wood

Esqrs. first discovering sight of Palmyra', 1758; from the

engraving by William Hall, 1775 (p. 76)

c-Stuart, Revett, Dawkins and Wood by the Monument of Philopappos near Athens in 1751; fromThe Antiquitiesof Athens, 1794, III (p. 75)







ROBERTWOODAND THE PROBLEMOF TROY 77

Islands. He never saw them. But Wood laboured energetically and entered

fully into the political events of the time.7 From 1761 onwards he was alsoa Member of Parliament. Horace Walpole says that "his general behaviourwas decent, as became his dependant situation; but his nature was hot, and

veering to despotic."8 Under Bute's administration he seems to have pro-ceeded against Wilkes over-zealously; for in 1763 Wilkes succeeded in obtain-

ing a verdict of 1,000oooamages against him for acting on a warrant wrong-fully issued for the seizure of his papers.9 He is reported to have showngreat spirit in his own defence at the trial and during the discussion in theCommons.o1 It is pleasant to know that he was one of those who encouragedthe young Edmund Burke" and James Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller.12

Wood was elected to the Society of Dilettanti in 1763. Why his electionwas so long delayed is not clear. (Dawkins had been elected in 1756, onStuart's proposal.)13 But he immediately became one of the most active and

responsiblemembers. He wrote the instructions of the

Society,dated

17 May1764, to Chandler, Revett, and Pars for their expedition to the Levant at theSociety's expense,14 and the address "To the Reader" before the resultingIonianAntiquities 1769). His official duties took him to Paris, and there hecame into contact with Barthelemy and Pierre-Jean Mariette, who respectedhis erudition.15

He seems to have prospered. For in August 1769 he acquired a house andestate in Putney for ?8,500. It was the house in which Edward Gibbon hadbeen born in 1737, and Wood bought it from the executors shortly after thedeath of Edward Gibbon senior.16 But two years later he died there, rathersuddenly. Horace Walpole wrote an inscription on the tomb (a fine sar-

cophagus of white marble by Joseph Wilton) which was erected by his widow,confirminghis high estimate of Wood's literary achievement: ". .. The beauti-ful Editions of Balbec and Palmyra, illustrated by the classic Pen of Robert

7The account of Wood by W. P. Courtneyin the Dictionaryof National Biographygivessome information and useful references.

8 Memoirsof the Reign of King GeorgetheThird, 1845, I, 364.

9 "The case of John Wilkes, esq. againstRobert Wood, esq. in an Action of Trespass"in Howell's State Trials(1813), XIX, I I53-76.See also Mark A. Thomson, The SecretariesfState,1681-1782,Oxford, 1932, pp. 118-21.

10 William Mure, Selectionsrom theFamilyPaperspreservedt Caldwell,Glasgow, 1854 (pt.II), I, p. 239; see also pp. I53-4, I79, andII, p. 58; Walpole, loc. cit.

11See a letter dated 25 September 1759from William Markham to Pitt, recommend-

ing Burke for the consulship at Madrid, in

Correspondencef WilliamPitt, Earl of Chatham,I840, I, 432.

12 See a letter dated 2June 1769 fromJohnPringle to Michaelis in LiterarischerBrief-wechselvon

JohannDavid Michaelis,ed.

J.G.

Buhle, Leipzig, 1794-6, II, 224-5.

13 Cust and Colvin, Historyof theSocietyofDilettanti, 1898, pp. 260 (Wood), 79, 258(Dawkins).

14Printed by Chandler before his Travelsin Asia Minor,Oxford, 1775-

15Horace Walpole's CorrespondencewithMadameduDeffandandWiart,ed. W. S. Lewisand W. H. Smith, I, 375-

16Letters fEdwardGibbon,d. J. E. Norton,1956, I, 253, 4o6. An engraving of the house,dated I8oo, is reproduced in Gibbon'sournal,ed. D. M. Low, 1929, p. xxx. Mrs. Wood wasstill living there in 1793, when Joseph Faring-ton and the antiquary Samuel Lysons visitedher and walked in her grounds. "She talks ofletting her house, and asks C?,I,ooo year forthe use of it, furniture included" (TheFaring-tonDiary, I, 6). It came to be called LimeGrove, and stood at the bottom of PutneyHill, at the south-east corner of the UpperRichmond Road. It was demolished to-wards the end of the

19th century.







78 T. J. B. SPENCER

Wood, supply a nobler and more lasting Monument, and will survive thoseaugust Remains."'17

It was not in order to describe the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec thatDawkins and Wood began their travels. Those publications came about

incidentally, and were only part of a more comprehensive scheme for theexploration of the Levant for the light that could be thrown upon ancientcivilization and literature. The new principle was that "the present face ofthe country was the best comment on an antient author."18 "We proposed,"declared Wood, "to read the Iliad and Odyssey in the countries, whereAchilles fought, where Ulysses travelled, and where Homer sung."19 YetWood proceeded to make known his views about Homer with almost anexcess of caution. He firstly wrote out his ideas in the form of a Letter (aconventional tentative or exploratory literary form) addressed to Dawkins.Dawkins died in 1757, which was the year of the publication of Ruins ofBalbec; and Wood tells us that he was preparing this Letter for the press

when he was appointed under-secretary of state (I756). By the advice ofJohn Carteret, the Earl of Granville (who died I763), he recast it into theform of a regular dissertation, instead of epistolary form; and a few copies ofhis "little farrago of Classical Conjectures" (as he called it) 20 were privatelyprinted, anonymously and without the printer's name. There were two ofthese private editions. That of 1767 was a fine folio of 28 leaves, with the title,A ComparativeiewoJ'fheantient ndpresenttateof the Troade. To which sprefixedan EssayontheOriginalGenius f Homer. In this, however, the Comparative iewof the Troad was not included, nor, indeed, was the part of the essay which

suggested that Homer's poems were originally unwritten. "I think it prudentto make an experiment of public taste, before I venture upon a work of more

labour and extent," he wrote. Two years later (1769) there followed anamplified version (including the discussion of writing), a quarto of disagree-able appearance, entitled simply An Essayon theOriginalGenius f Homer.

These private editions were, he told J. D. Michaelis of G6ttingen when

sending him a copy, "only intended to be shown to particular friends and

only Six Copies were printed in that hasty and cheap manner, lest I shouldlose the thread of the subject during my attendance upon duties of another

kind, which make it absolutely impossible for me to look into my Journal or

papers relative to my travels."21 It is clear that the copies had a very smallcirculation, and were mostly sent to those who could give the author advice.

Among the scholars, Jeremiah Markland said he was "much pleased" withthe book.22 Horace Walpole, too, "liked it," and acknowledged the gift ofa copy by a letter to the author, dated 23 November 1769, containing detailedcriticism.23

17 Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London,1792-6, I, 413-4, 42 I.

is Ruins of Palmyra, To the Reader.19

Essay on ... Homer, To the Reader.20 In a letter printed in John Nichols,

LiteraryAnecdotesof theEighteenthCentury,1812,III, 84.

21 From a letter dated Io April 1770, pre-

served in the University Library at G6t-

tingen; printed in part by Hans Hecht inT. Percy, R. Wood und J. D. Michaelis, einBeitrag zur Literaturgeschichteer Genieperiode,Stuttgart, I1933,p. 25-

22John Nichols, op. cit., IV, 35I.23 HoraceWalpole'sCorrespondanceith Wil-

liam Mason, ed. W. S. Lewis, et al., I955, I,212 and note.







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEM OF TROY 79

On Wood's death in 1771 the manuscript of the Essaywas entrusted forpublication (apparently at Wood's own request) to Jacob Bryant, a vigorousand disputatious scholar, somewhat inclined to unusual opinions. But therewere still several years' delay, due to the editor's preoccupations with his own

literary labours.24 On 27 October 1772 he wrote to a correspondent:I have been much importuned to revise Mr Wood's account of Homer,and his whole treatise, which he styled The Troyade: and I am not certainbut it was his own request that it might be printed under my direction.But I am myself so deeply engaged in the Press, and shall be in this situa-tion for so long a time, that it is impossible for me to give a satisfactoryanswer concerning the publication of Mr Wood's Work. It may possiblybe near two years before it will be undertaken, unless Mrs Wood couldbe persuaded to let somebody less engaged collate and adjust what is tobe overlooked. My great esteem and friendship for the author would

induce me to do every thing in my power in honour of his memory: butat present I am totally engaged.25

At length, in July 1775, the book appeared, a fine quarto: An Essay on theOriginalGeniusand Writingsof Homer: with a comparativeiewof theancientandpresent tate of the Troade. Bryant does not seem to have done much in the

way of editing; there are one or two occasions when he has not troubled toremove confusions caused by the reprinting or to elucidate some crypticreferences. He wrote to Michaelis: "The latter part of Mr. Wood's Treatise

upon the Troade was defective: on which account I have added a page ortwo, in order to render it compleat: so that the conclusion is mine.""26This

statement is of some importance, as it shows that Bryant made contributionsto the book where he was least qualified to do so, without giving the slightestindication to the reader that another hand was responsible. His interpolationof the words "and Writings" into the title, in defiance of one of the mostinteresting propositions advanced by Wood, is difficult to explain or justify.The Gentleman'sMagazine, however, when reviewing the book, describedBryant as "an editor in every respect such as Wood or Homer would have

chosen."•27Wood's preliminarycaution was perhapsjustified. When William Bowyer,

Wood's printer, showed a copy of the book to his friend William Clarke, the

antiquary, he commented with candour: "I thank you for the sight of thiscuriosity. It is like an Oriental Novel, wild and entertaining. The Authoris certainly a man of genius and diligence, and is possessed of a spirit ofenthusiasm, very proper for his subject, and agreeable to his readers ..."28Wood's views received some severe treatment from Thomas Howes in his

anonymous CriticalObservationsnBooks,Antientand Modern 1776), especiallythe opinion that Homer was illiterate: "The whole of these remarks are such

24 Bryant published his bulky work A NewSystem,or An Analysisof AncientMythologynthree volumes in 1774-6.

25Printed by Hecht, op.cit., pp. 8o-8I. He

wrote in similar terms to Michaelis on Io De-

cember 1772 (LiterarischerBriefwechsel,ed.Buhle, III, 208).

26 Buhle, II, 506-7.27 XLV, 1775, P. 487.

28John Nichols, op. cit., III, 83. 6







8o T. J. B. SPENCER

a continued paradox, as are to be only equalled by that of a German author,who published a thick latin volume to prove Homer to have stolen his poemsfrom the Jewish scriptures, or of an English writer who has not long sincemaintained them to be a translation from the Celtic; a thief Homer certainly

must have been, if the reputed author of such a poem of merit could neitherread nor write.""9 Historians of ideas rightly see the importance of "primi-tivism" in the eighteenth century. But it should not be forgotten that, for

many intelligent people, the suggestion that Homer was illiterate for longremained ridiculous and offensive.

Wood's book suffered from several misfortunes. It was overshadowed bythe RuinsofPalmyra nd Balbec;and these, moreover, had arousedexpectationswhich were not to be fulfilled. For all his praise of the earlier works of Wood,Gibbon, when it came to Homer and Troy, could only describe him as "anauthor who in general seems to have disappointed the expectation of the

public as a critic, and still more as a traveller."30 The Essay on the OriginalGenius fHomerwas a provisional and imperfectwork, and practicallyspeaking,a posthumous one; it was only a fragment, or "contracted specimen," of the

"general Commentary upon Homer" which he intended to write from the

copious materials he had collected, if his preliminary essay were well received

by the public. Moreover, it was published many years later than it shouldhave been. By some, his opinions were regarded as wildly eccentric (as Wood

feared). But, in fact, several of its more remarkable ideas were already gettinginto the air.31 Rousseau himself in his Essai sur l'originedes langues(written1755-64) had suspected that Homer had been ignorant of writing and thatthe art of writing was unknown in his time. Unfortunately he was brought

up againstthe

ab'c u

pof

Bellerophon'sletter.

Trustingin the translators

that the words implied the use of writing, he could not prevent himself from

regretting that this episode deranged his system, and felt strongly tempted to

regard the story of Bellerophon as being a careless interpolation. Rousseau

29I, 6o.30DeclineandFall, Chap. xvii (ed. cit., II,

145). But the particular errorwhich annoyedGibbon-the identification of AlexandreiaTroas with the Ilium of historical times--was probably due to the untravelled Bryant'srevisions; it is very unlike Wood.

31 For Homeric criticism in the I8th cen-

tury see Georg Finsler, Homer n derNeuzeit,von Dante bis Goethe,Leipzig, 1912, which

exaggerates the importance of the antici-

pators of Wolfian ideas; D. M. Foerster,Homer n EnglishCriticism. The HistoricalAp-proachn theEighteenthCenturyYale Studies in

English No. 105), New Haven, 1947; and thefirst chapter of Richard Volkmann, Geschichteund Kritik der Wolfschen rolegomenau Homer,Leipzig, 1874. There were a good manyhints, before Wood, of the notion that theHomeric poems were transmitted orally; the"authority" was a famouspassagein osephus(ContraApionem,I, ii). The passage was

quoted, discussed, and dismissed by J. A.Fabricius in his BibliothecaGraeca, 708, I, 269-270. Frangois H6delin (Abb6 D'Aubignac)expounded a kind of Wolfian hypothesis, not

very seriously, in his ConjecturescadimiquesuDissertationur l'lliade; H6delin died in 1676,but his Conjecturesere not published until

1715, at the time of the renewed Homeric

controversy aroused by Antoine de Lamotte.He was followed by Charles Perrault in hisParalliledesanciens t desmodernes,688-96, III,whose Homeric theories were refuted byBoileau in the third of his Reflexionsritiquesur

quelquespassages de Longin, 1694. TheseFrench paradoxes were not forgotten duringthe I8th century and were occasionally re-vived; for example, by Louis S6bastienMercier in a lively article in 1775 in the

Journaldes dames December, pp. 315 ff.; re-

printed in Mon Bonnetde Nuit, Neuchatel,1784, PP. 140-8).








summarized his opinions about the Iliad and the Odyssey:"Ces poemesresterent long-temps 6critsseulement dans la m6moire des hommes; ils furentrassembl6s par 6crit assez tard et avec beaucoup de peine . . .Les autres

poetes 6crivoient, Homere seul avoit chant6."32 And some ingenious argu-

ments began to be advanced in favour of an illiterate Homer. There was noclear mention of writing, it was agreed, in the Iliad and the Odyssey.Nor, itwas pointed out, was there any mention of writing in the Aeneid. This wasnot, of course, evidence of Virgil's ignorance of writing; but it was evidencethat Virgil thought writing the invention of times later than the events of his

poem.33 William Mitford, in the first volume (1784) of his Historyof Greece,which was to be a standard work for more than a generation, declared thatWood's arguments "seem scarcely controvertible."34 Richard Cumberland,the dramatist and not unworthy grandson of Richard Bentley, praised Wood'sbook in his periodical The Observer1785),as particularly approving the theoryof the oral transmission of the Iliad;

beinga man of the theatre, he was not

greatly impressed by the feat of memorizing such a large quantity of verse.To serious scholars, in fact, Wood's treatment of the Homeric problems

was quite different from the casual, amateurish, or paradoxical speculationsof most of his predecessors. His book rapidly became a European possession.It was translated into German (Frankfurt, 1773), French (1777), Italian, and

Spanish; and it was promptly pirated in Dublin. In Germany, in particular,it soon became well known and was sponsoredby some of the leading classicalscholars of the day.36 A copy of the 1769 edition was sent by Wood toMichaelis at G6ttingen,37where it was approvingly reviewed by Heyne (I770)and soon translated by Michaelis's son, Christian Friedrich (I773); and this

translation was reviewed by Goethe (1773) in a Frankfurt ournal, briefly butwith high praise and perceptivenessof what Wood had done.38 The followingyear (I 774) Goethe describes how a young friend of Werther, fresh from the

university, "displayed his whole stock of literature from Batteux to Wood,and from de Piles to Winckelmann."39 Wood has obviously risen to be oneof the fashionable critics, about whom Goethe can be ironical (but we knowfrom other sources how important Goethe believed Wood to be). The bookwas thus familiar in Germany before it had really been published in England.After Bryant's edition appeared in 1775, a new version of the German trans-lation, incorporating the revisions, was soon available (I778).

The publication by Villoison of his AnecdotaGraecan 1781, and especially

his edition of the Venetian Scholia in 1788, gave new support to Wood'snotions. Johann Bernard Merian read papers in February and March 1789to the Royal Society of Science and Belles-Lettres in Berlin, "Examen de la

32 Chapitre vi ("S'il est probable qu'Ho-mere ait su 'crire"); Oeuvres, aris, 18oi, X,pp. 147-8.

33John Maclaurin in the Transactionsof the

Royal Societyof Edinburgh, I, 1788, pt. ii, p. 43,printing a paper read in February 1784.

34 1820 edition, I, 144, 151.35No. 122.

36 Thomas Blackwell'sbook, AnEnquirynto

theLife and Writingsof Homer,1735, admiredby Herder and Winckelmann, was also trans-lated into German about the same time

(1776).7 Sent 16 November 1769 with a letter by

John Pringle, printed in Buhle, op. cit., II,233-41, especially p. 238.

38Jubiliums-Ausgabe,

XXXVI,15-17.39Letter 6.







82 T. J. B. SPENCER

question si Hombre a 6crit ses poemes" ;40 he provided a thorough study in

support of Wood's hypothesis. The connexion between Wood and Wolf isclear. It was at Gottingen that Wolf spent his student days, until 1779; andlater he candidly acknowledged his debt to the critic of Homer who was

fashionable among the professors: in the Prolegomenaf 1795 he writes of theingeniosa udaciawhich he found in the celebratissimusiberof Wood,41referringto the English edition of I775.

But the question whether Homer knew the art of writing was only a small

part of Wood's book and only an incidental one. His work contained muchelse, and sowed the seeds of other Homeric controversies, more violent, and

perhaps ultimately more fruitful, than Wolf's. As first published, the Essayonthe OriginalGeniusof Homerwas an introduction to a Comparative iew of theAntientandPresentStateof the Troade.Paradoxes about Homer's illiteracy wereall very well. But geography was fact.

II

The Greeks and Romans had had, on account of Homer and the whole

body of Trojan legend, a very special interest in Troy and the surroundingcountryside. Many curious things took place there, in later centuries, basedon a kind of sentimental antiquarianism, which were well known in Renais-sance and later times. The distinguishedvisitors to Troy had been numerous.Xerxes arrivedin the springof B.c. 480, listened respectfullyto the guides, andordered the sacrificeof a thousand sheep to Pallas Athene. By the time of Alex-ander (B.c. 334) the romantic and commercial interest was stronger. Curiousrelics were available. One of the Ilians offered to show Alexander a lyre,saying that it was the lyre of Paris. But this was a false step; the offer exposeditself to Alexander's retort that he valued little the lyre of Paris, but wouldhave been delighted to see that of Achilles, to which he sang the xxoc avapovin the ninth Iliad.42 In the temple of Athene were exhibited some consecratedsuits of armour, preserved from the time of the Trojan war. Alexander tookthese for his collection and had them borne before him in solemn procession.43

Cicero, in a famous passage in his speech Pro Archia, old of the honorificconduct of Alexander at the tomb of Achilles.44 Lucan drew a movingpicture of Julius Caesar among the ruins of Troy, epigrammatically pressingthe moral of the contrast between imperial pretensions and the triumph oftime.45

Germanicus,a

romantic tourist,visited the chief

placesof

celebrityin Greece and the Near East in A.D. 18, and among the attractions was Troy,varietateortunaeet nostriorigineveneranda.46 eside the tomb of Hector, Ger-manicus wrote a poem telling him that the Romans, descendants of TrojanAeneas, had avenged his death.47 It was translatedinto Greekby the emperorHadrian, who was there in the second century A.D.48 The curious sage

40Printed in the Memoires de l'Acade'mie

Royale .. 788 et 1789,Berlin, 1793, PP- 513-544.

41 1855 edition,p. 24.42 Plutarch, Alexanderv; Iliad, ix, I89.

43Arrian, I, xi, 7-8.

44 ProArchia,x.

45Pharsalia, x, 964 if.46 Tacitus, Annales, ii, 54-47AnthologiaLatina (Teubner edition, I,

pt. ii, No. 708).48 AnthologiaPalatina,ix, 387. In fact, the

authorship of the poem and that of the trans-

lation are not certain.








Apollonius of Tyana spent a night on the tomb of Achilles in order to com-mune with the spirit of the hero, successfully."4 The emperor Caracalla

organized a kind of historical pageant at Troy. As a substitute for Patroclushe celebrated the funeral of a favourite freedman called Festus, who had

opportunely died or been conveniently poisoned. A pyre of wood was erected,animals were slain, libations were poured, the winds invoked, and a lock ofhis hair thrown into the flames (a difficulty, as Caracalla was nearly bald-but what hair he had he threw); and games were held, and prizes bestowed.50

Homeric geography, moreover, had already become a serious subject in

antiquity. Demetrius of Scepsis, partly from local patriotism, instituted amethod of inquiry by interpreting Homer's geographical statements and

assumptions in comparison with the observable facts of nature. Demetriushad his critics, who went over the same ground, with Homer in hand; but hewas Strabo's principal, possibly only, authority for his account of the Troad,though Strabo does not have much confidence in him, finding inconsistencies

and contradictions with Homer.51 It seems that Strabo did not visit theTroad himself; nor did Pausanias, who unfortunately had practically nothingto say about Trojan sites.

The surviving geographers, it had to be admitted, were not very satis-factory on the subject of Troy. But the Latin poets made up for their defi-ciencies. They, indeed, had many brilliant and unforgettable things to sayabout Troy, where etiamperiereruinae.52 These poetical fancies, in pre-archaeological days, had a profound effect on the imagination of topographers.Horace in his famous poem deploring the suggestion of rebuilding Troy and

removing the seat of empire had emphatically spoken:

Priami Paridisque bustoinsultet armentum et catulos feraecelent inultae .. .53

Ovid was more gracefully sentimental:

nunc humilis veteres tantummodo Troia ruinas

et pro divitiis tumulos ostendit avorum.64

But most famous of all were his lines in the Heroides:

iam seges est ubi Troia fuit, resecandaque falceluxuriat Phrygis sanguine pinguis humus.

semisepulta virum curvis feriuntur aratrisossa; ruinosas occulit herba domos.55

In England these lines came to form part of a popular ballad, The WanderingPrinceof Troy,which can be traced from the early seventeenth century, withthe refrain:

49 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, iv, II-12.50 Herodian IV, viii, 4-5.51 See Walter Leaf, Straboon the Troad,

Cambridge, 1923-

52 Pharsalia, x, 969.53Odes,III, iii, 40.54Metamorphoses,v, 424-5-

)5i, 53-56.







84 T. J. B. SPENCER

Waste lie those walls that were so good,And Corne now grows where Troy Town stood.56

It was a song of the people. The milkmaid offers to sing it in Isaac Walton's

CompleatAngler 1653) ;57 and in Gay's burlesque Shepherd'sWeek 1714) it is

in the repertoryof the rustic minstrel, Bowzybeus.58Moreover, the writing of epitaphs on the heroes of the Trojan War was

a familiar exercise in antiquity. There were some clever ones devised, ortranslated, by Ausonius (EpitaphiaHeroumquiBello Troico nterfuerunt).

Hectoris hic tumulus; cum quo sua Troia sepulta est.Conduntur pariter, qui periere simul.

This, and the epitaphs on Priam and Hecuba,59had already in the seventeenth

century been inscribed on tomb-stones and placed on the Troad by someFrenchman.60 An anonymous Roman poet of the age of Augustus actually

describes the Grand Tour of a cultivated gentleman to places made interest-ing by their associations with ancient art and history; and one of the placeshe visits is, of course, Troy.

miramur Troiae cineres et flebile victis

Pergamon extinctosque suo Phrygas Hectore: parvumconspicimus magni tumulum ducis: hic et Achilles

impiger et victus magni iacet Hectoris ultor.61

There was, in fact, a large body of allusions to Troy among ancientauthors much read in Renaissance times. The place was obviously there,andmuch of the sentimental attraction was inherited by Renaissance writers,

provoking a desire to see the Mother of the Nations of Europe, a place madetragically glorious by Virgil. The very thought of Troy prompted strongcuriosity and aroused warm sensations. And from the sixteenth century on-wards every traveller in the Levant was eager for the experience of visiting it.

Carryingtheir load of poetical information about Troy, the early travellersnot surprisingly identified the then magnificent ruins of Alexandreia Troasas Ilium. Est in conspectu enedosnotissimaama insula . . Virgil had written.And while the voyager waited for the favourable wind which would enablehis ship to negotiate the current of the Dardanelles, he generally had an

opportunity of visiting, with deep emotion, the stupendous remains of the"Palace of Priam"

(a publicbath of the Roman

period).Pierre Belon62

in1546 and Pietro della Valle63in 1614, and several others, less or more learned,of various nationalities, spread information about the ruins of Troy, whichfulfilled all the expectations derived from reading the Roman poets. GeorgeSandys, however, in 1610orejected Alexandreia Troas as the city of Homer's

58 TheRoxburghe allads, ed. W. Chappelland J. W. Ebsworth (I869-99), vi, 547. Itwas entered in the Stationers' Register inI603 and may be older. The earliest surviv-ing text is dated about 1620.

57 "The Third Day."58"Saturday,"20.

59 iv,xxiii(or xxiv),xxv.

60 So says Aaron Hill, A Full Account f thePresentStateof the OttomanEmpire,1709, PP.205-6.

61 Aetna, 90-3.62 Les observations e plusieurssingularitez t

chosesmemorablesrouveesnGrece,Asie,Jude ...,Paris, 1553, livre ii, chapitre 6.

63 Viaggi,Brighton, I843, I, 13.








poem because he thought the ruins were "too neere the navall station toaffoord a field for such dispersed encounters, such long pursuites, interceptionof scouts, (then when the Trojanshad pitched neerer the navie) and executedstratagems, as is declared to have hapned between the Sea and the City."This is a significant statement, because it shows the beginning of the methodof checking identifications against the topographical details to be found inthe Iliad. But Sandys had nothing convincing to suggest as the "Seate of oldTroy" on his little map of the Thracian Chersonese,Dardanelles, and northernAsia Minor, which he inserted into his travel book.64 The identification ofAlexandreia Troas with Troy was gradually abandoned during the seventeenthcentury, and the writers on ancient geography began to sort things out. Butvery little clarification of the Homeric geography of Troy and its surroundingswas made.65

When Alexander Pope was planning the publication of his translation ofthe Iliad

(1715-20)he intended to make the work a

compendiumof informa-

tion for the general reader. Besides a life of Homer, a critical estimate of hismerits, an essay on the battles in the Iliad, and so forth, he wanted a map toclarify the description of events around Troy. But no map was available andlittle help was, he found, forthcoming from the geographical authorities. So,with Homer's text, Pope settled down to make his own map to illustrateeventsin the Iliad.

Pope was rather proud of his achievement, as he reveals in letters to hisfriends;66 and the results of his labours are certainly interesting (P1. 9a).He provided a bird's-eye view, or rather a perspective, of the city and itsenvirons: Troy, with its domes and spires (as they appear in his translation);

the Scaean gate, with its beech nearby and the hill of wild fig-trees; the twosprings of the Scamander higher up; Callicolone, a hill by the Simois, on theother side of the city; the tombs of Bateia, Ilus, and Aesytes in the plain-thelast of these being nearest the sea and commanding a good prospect of theGrecian fleet; the two riversflowing on each side of the city andjoining beforethey reach the sea; the Grecian wall and the station of the fleet. Furthermore,Pope worked out, and indicated on his map, where Diomedes achieved hisexploits, where Achilles fought the Scamander, and where Hector was slain.67

Pope's topographical elucidations were entirely derived from the poem;Homer's Troy is a city built to music, removed from geographical reality.But that is not to say that Pope was indifferent to geography or to the pleasureof relating the poem to the sensations of visiting Troyland. As a matter offact, he had, or could have had, some interesting information and impressionsfrom one of his friends who visited the Troad shortly after he had publishedhis map. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was at Constantinople 1716-I8,

64 A Relationof a JourneybegunAn. Dom.r6so, 1615, pp. 22-24.

65 Anselmo Banduri, ImperiumOrientale,iveAntiquitates Constantinopolitanae, Paris, 171 ,has a bird's eye view of the Dardanelles, Seaof Marmora, and Constantinople, whichshows some "Ruines de

Troye,"ill-deter-

mined.

66 Letter to EdwardBlount dated 27August1714; Works,ed. Elwin and Courthope, VI,360 ff.

67 Pope's comments on the map and theseidentifications are contained in "An Essay onHomer's Battels"which he prefixed to book 5of his translation.







86 T. J. B. SPENCER

when her husband was British ambassadorto the Porte, and exchanged letters

with Pope. She tells him:

I read over your Homer here with an infinite pleasure, and find several

little passages explained, that I did not before entirely comprehend thebeauty of; many of the customs, and much of the dress then in fashion,being yet retained.68

Pope replied in a tone of badinage, affecting a humility he certainly did notfeel: "It is never to be repaired, the loss that Homer has sustained, for wantof my translating him in Asia." And in another letter he adds:

I make not the least question but you could give me great eclaircissements

upon many passages in Homer since you have been enlightened by thesame sun that inspired the father of poetry. You are now glowing under

the climate that animated him; you may see his images rising more boldlyabout you, in the very scenes of his story and action; you may lay theimmortal work on some broken column of a hero's sepulchre; and readthe fall of Troy in the shade of a Trojan ruin.69

On her way home from Constantinople, Lady Mary and her husband visitedthe Trojan plain, Homer in hand.

I saw the point of land where poor old Hecubawas buried, and about a

league from that place is Cape Janizary,the famous promontory of Sigceum,

where we anchored. My curiosity supplied me with strength to climb tothe top of it, to see the place where Achilleswas buried and where Alexanderran naked round his tomb in honour of him, which, no doubt, was a greatcomfort to his ghost. I saw there, the ruins of a very large city, and founda stone on which Mr. W[ortle]y plainly distinguished the words of SigcenPolin. We ordered this on board the ship ... There is some pleasure in

seeing the valley where I imagined the famous duel of Menelaus nd Parishad been fought, and where the greatest city in the world was situated.'Tis certainly the noblest situation that can be found for the head of a

great Empire, much to be preferred to that of Constantinople ... WhileI viewed these celebrated fields and rivers I admired the exact geography

of Homer,whom I had in my hand. Almost every epithet he gives to amountain or plain, is still just for it .. .70

Nevertheless, during the greater part of the eighteenth century the onlymap illustrating the geography of Troy and its surroundings was that pre-

68Lettersand Works,ed. Lord Wharncliffe,revised W. Moy Thomas, 1893, I, 302-3.Although she was in the Levant in 1716-18,her Letterswere not published until 1763 (anunauthorized edition) and were not the cor-

respondence actually written at the time.

They were arranged for publication by Lady

Mary in the latter part of her life (she died in

1762), from her diaries and correspondence.We cannot be sure that anything in the textof her Letterswas actually written as early as

1716-18. I quote the text of the 1763 edition.69 Works, d. cit., IX, 397, 382.70 Ed. cit., I, 376, 377-8.







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEMOF TROY 87

fixed to Pope's translation. This was widely circulated, of course, and there-fore commonly supplied ideas of the geography of the Troad. At first

sight, perhaps, his bird's-eye view may seem to be fanciful. The Scamander,it is observed, flows into the Aegean sea, instead of the Hellespont-an error

due neither to ancient geographers nor to modern travellers nor to the poethimself nor to his translator. But the map is not merely fanciful; Pope had

knowledge and he had studied his authorities; it was a not inconsiderable

piece of scholarship. But the fact is that it is baffling when read in closeconnexion with Homer's text or Pope's translation. So many things seem tobe in quite the wrong places. Robert Wood explained the confusion bysuggesting that an error was made between the original drawing of the mapand the engraver's impression. The engraver has negligently given "a mapwhich reverses the drawing from which it was engraved, and of course changesthe respective situation of all the parts, from right to left, and from left to

right; so that the Sigeum stands where the Rhoeteum should be, and the

Scamander runs on that side of Troy which belongs to the Simois."71It wasunfortunate that the most widely known map of Troy, almost the only avail-able map, should be marred by such a curious and inconvenient error.

Wood proved and explained, so he supposed, the absurdity of Pope's map.But what had he himself to offer in its place?-he who had explored theTroad, he who had read his Homer in the land where the Greeks and the

Trojans fought, he who claimed that "the Iliad has new beauties on the banksof the Scamander."72

Wood produced a good map (P1. 9b). He says he spent a fortnightmaking it on the Trojan plain. It was a great improvement on any existingone and showed

many interestingdetails based

upon personalobservation.

But it had one defect: it omitted the really important thing: the city of Troy.Wood's conclusions, based upon his comparative study of the ancient and

present state of the Troad, were far from encouraging. He said that he couldfind no trace of Troy and did not know where it had been.73 He doubtedwhether the details of Homer's descriptions could be adjusted to modern

geography, as earthquakes had changed the appearance of the countryside.The revolutions of Time and Turks had obliterated human landmarks.

For although Wood was, in his way, a Romantic, he was an earlyRomantic, sceptical of excess, too intelligent to allow his emotions to directhis sense of topography. His pioneer account of the Troad is careful and

valuable. Yet it was nothing but disappointing to hungry imaginations.Andrew Dalzel, Professor of Greek at Edinburgh, a little later wrote withalmost personal resentment about Wood's book:

Instead of elucidating the subject, he seemed to have involved it in greater

7' Essay, 1775, pp. 87-89.72Ruinsof Palmyra,To the Reader.73 As a matter of fact, Richard Pococke,

who had travelled about 1740, correctly re-

garded the hill Hissarlik as "old Troy"; A

Description f theEast, andSomeotherCountries,1743, II, pt. ii, pp. Io6-8.

The map of the Hellespont, prepared byBarbi6 du Boccage and dated May 1782, inthe "Recueil de cartes g6ographiques" whichaccompanied the Voyage u euneAnacharsisnGrdce1787) of Jean-Jacques Barthelemy wasmerely fanciful.







88 T. J. B. SPENCER

obscurity than ever; and he, who had the highest admiration of Homer,and who found that great Poet agreeing with Nature everywhere else, wasreduced to the mortifying necessity of acknowledging that he could findscarce any resemblance betwixt the pictures in the Iliad, and that part of

a country which we may suppose the Poet would have been careful todescribe with more than ordinary precision. Such a publication, bythrowing a thick cloud over this portion of classic ground, had the effectof exciting in the mind of every elegant scholar nothing but sensations of

disappointment and regret.74

These sensations of disappointment and regret which had been excited inthe mind of every elegant scholar, this appetite for the discovery of Troywhich Wood had stimulated but failed to satisfy, made it unlikely that thematter would be left in abeyance. The world was waiting. It looked forwardto the pleasure of reading (as Pope himself had said) the tale of Troy in the

shade of a Trojan ruin.The French ambassador appointed to the Porte in 1785 was a young

man of distinction and classical enthusiasm: Marie-Gabriel-August-FlorentChoiseul-Gouffier, who had recently (1782) published a sumptuous folio

Voyagepittoresquede la Grece. He attached to his embassy an interesting groupof friends and followers: the Abb6 Delille, a poet of reputation; Villoison,soon to be a great name in Homeric studies for his publication of the VenetianScholia (1788); Fauvel, later to be consul in Athens, an eager and (by thestandardsof the age) skilfulexcavator, the cicerone of every cultivated travellerin Attica in the early years of the nineteenth century, including Byron;75

Cazas,an architect and

draughtsman;and

Jean-BaptisteLechevalier, a man

of scholarly tastes and apparently of amiable character. Choiseul-Gouffierintended work to be done for a second volume of his Voyagepittoresque,and it

is clear that his was the originating mind behind the Troy-discoveriesof 1785and 1786; the travels and excavations were made at his expense. But it wasLechevalier who, for many years, while Choiseul-Gouffier was a royalistexile in Russia, became the spokesman to the world.76

A piece of evidence which seemed to be of importance for determining thesite of Troy was the sources of the river Scamander; or, rather, one of thetwo contradictory sources. On several occasions Homer states that theScamander rose in Mount Ida. But in a famous passage in the twenty-second

Iliad, describing Achilles' chase of Hector around Troy, the poet says that

74Prefaceto Lechevalier'sDescription,791,

pp. vi-vii.75There is a biography of Fauvel by P. E.

Legrand in the Revue Archeologique,er. 3,XXX and XXXI, 1897.

,7 Lechevalier's appropriation of the mat-

erials, without any acknowledgment, drewfrom Choiseul-Gouffieraccusationsof ingrati-tude; see a letter quoted by L6once Pingaudin Choiseul-Gouffier;a France en OrientsousLouis XVI, Paris, 1887, pp. 271-2. He was

snubbed in the second volume of the Voyage

pittoresque (dated I8o9), where Choiseul-Gouffier calmly described all the discoveriesas his own (II, 229-31). Lechevalier wasrather hotly defended, and Choiseul-Gouffiercharged with bad faith, by A. F. Mauduit inhis Decouvertesdans la Troade (published Parisand London, I840, but apparently writtenmuch earlier) and in his DefensedeLechevalier,I844. The biography of Lechevalier byGuerard in Michaud, XXIII, 516, emphati-cally takes his part against Choiseul-Gouffier.







iiiiiiii~iiiiiii i i i i i•''

.............i.............•""..............................................................A•• •"i•(........•ii~iiiii~i~i•i•ii!i!!iiii~iii~i~ii~i~ii~iiiii~iiii~iiiii i i~~ii~i!!ii~i~iiiiii~iii!,,•A

-At• •

• ,:iii•!•i~•~iii•ii ii~ii~i:!•i• • •• ••:• !•i•!iil•!•i•i••iii••ii!!iiii!!i!ii~i~!!•ii~iiI

L

IE•il•

i::N

..... 4a•

a-Alexander Pope, Plan of the City of Troy and its Environs; fromThe Iliad of Homer, II, 1716 (p. 85)

......w...

...."low

:rt,

b-Robert Wood, Map of the Tr

OriginalGeniusand Writingsof Hoancient andpresent state of the Troad








they came to "two lovely springs that are the sources of Scamander's eddyingstream. In one of these the water comes up hot; steam risesfrom it and hangsabout like smoke above a blazing fire. But the other, even in summer, gushesup as cold as hail or freezing snow or water that has turned to ice. Close

beside them, wide and beautiful, stand the troughs of stone where the wivesand lovely daughters of the Trojans used to wash their glossy clothes in thepeaceful days before the Achaeans came.""

Near to Troy, therefore, we are required to find two springs-one hot, andone cold-one steaming like a caldron, one chilling to the bone. About nineor ten miles from the coast of the Hellespont, to the south of the Ilian plain,is the village of Bunarbashi. When Lechevalier was exploring the region, hisguides near Bunarbashi told him that one of the springs nearby was hot. Thesudden thought struck him (so he says) that this must be one of the sourcesof the Scamander; that the hill behind Bunarbashi must be the site of Troyand the rocky promontory above (Bali Dagh, about 400 feet) the Pergamonitself; that the little stream which was fed by these springswas the Scamander;and that therefore the river (called the Mendere) which ran to the east ofBunarbashi was not the Scamander, as had long been supposed, but theSimois. Homer said that the Simois and the Scamanderflowed together. Thatcould be explained by the fact that the stream from Bunarbashi had beendiverted into the Aegean by an artificial channel; originally it joined theother river and they together flowed into the Hellespont.

The really striking and convincing evidence was that of the hot and coldsprings. The news soon got around among travellers in the Levant, evenbefore any account of the "discoveries" appeared in print; Thomas Watkins,when he was on the Troad in

September i788,went

unquestioninglyto

Bunarbashi and sought out the fountains of the Scamander.78 Other travellersarrived, plunged their hands in, and were more precise than Lechevalier.J. B. S. Morritt reported that, on 13 November 1794, "in that part of thebason where the water enters, the temperature is scarcely of less heat thanthat of the warm spring at Bristol."79 The Turks of Bunarbashi (no doubtthey were soon aware of this strange enthusiasm of the Franks) confirmed, ofcourse, that "the water was considerably warmer during frost, and steamedvery visibly."80 In March i8oI Edward Daniel Clarkearrivedwith a thermo-meter. And he, alas! demonstrated that all the springs (it was possible tocount nearly forty of them around Bunarbashi) were the same temperature,

about 620 Fahrenheit.81 But this did not much unconvince the champions ofBunarbashi. William Gell, also in 18oi, heard tell of the Homeric steamcoming from one of the springs and not from the others.82 It could be ex-plained that, although the temperature of all the springs was the same, yet

7xxii, 147 ff.

"8But he was unlucky: "I put my handinto them, and found either Homer in anerror or their nature changed, for they arenow both cold." He saw where Choiseul-Gouffier had cut into the tomb of Achilles.Travels throughSwitzerland,Italy, Sicily, the

GreekIslands, to Constantinople .. in the rears

1787, 1788, and 789, 1792, II, 197-202.

79 Vindicationof Homer, 1798, p. 92.80sobid.

81 Travelsn VariousCountries(I8Io ff.), 2ndedition, Pt. II, sec. i, pp. 109-12.

81 Topographyof Troy and its Vicinity, 1804,p. 75-







90 T. J. B. SPENCER

one that was enveloped with trees, and therefore covered by moisture-ladenair, would condense the vapour from the spring more rapidly than one in an

exposed position, so that it might appear steamy, especially in winter.Moreover, there was not only the steam, but also the women. Homer had

said that the Trojan women had washed their clothes there. And, surelyenough, the travellers saw the women of the village of Bunarbashi washingtheirclothes there. "If I were not afraid of appearing romantic (romanesque),"wrote Lechevalier, "I would add, in describing the plain of Troy, that I foundthe Turkish women of the village of Bounarbashi washing their garments atthe sources of the Scamander, as the wives and daughters of the Trojans werewont to do when they enjoyed the sweets of peace, before the arrival of theGreeks."83 And neither was Edward Daniel Clarke (who had brought his

thermometer) "afraid of appearing romantic"; he observedceremoniesworthyof Achilles's shield:

The women of the place bring all their garments to be washed in thesesprings, not according to the casual visits of ordinary industry, but as anantient and established custom, in the exercise of which they proceed withall the pomp and songs of a public ceremony.84

It is clear, from the narrativesof these learned persons, that the corroborativeevidence of the washer-women of Bunarbashiwas of some weight in determin-

ing the identification of Homer's Troy.One further difficulty presented itself. Hector and Achilles ran round

Troy three times. The nature of the country makesit impossible to run roundBali

Dagh,because one side (south and south-west) is precipitous to the valley

of the Mendere. The resourceful Lechevalier, therefore, supposed that theheroes did not actually encompass the city in their flight, but ran round incircles before the walls of Troy. (This involves a troublesome meaning forthe preposition kpL, which is used five times in speaking of Hector's flight.)The more sober English critics, however, dismissed this suggestion, and were

prepared to attribute greater athletic prowess to Homeric heroes; havingfound that theythemselves could just about scramble round Bali Dagh, theywere inclined to believe that Achilles and Hector actually ran.

It was among the English that these novel ideas first became well known.For Lechevalier spent six months in Edinburgh in 1791, made known his

travels in the Troad, and was invited to read his account of them before threemeetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. These lectures were subsequentlyprinted (in French) in the Society's Transactions,85ut they had already beentranslated into English and published as a book by Andrew Dalzel, professorof Greek in the University, with notes.86 "It naturally excited a considerable

degree of commotion among the higher regions of literature," declaredWilliam Vincent in the BritishCritica few years later. "A work, professingtomake discoveries so striking, touching, by its subject, the finer fibres of our

83 Lechevalier, Descriptionof the Plain ofTroy, 1791, p. 128; Transactionsof the RoyalSocietyof Edinburgh, III, 1794, II, 81.

84 Travels, ed. cit., p. 112.

85 III, I794, II, pp. 1-92.86 Description f thePlain of Troy, translated

from the originalnotyet published,Edinburgh,

1791.







10

u~*b?II-~~ i:

L-~Li~a~LL ~6~81t~ ~il~l~t?~:: ~~1::-::::II:11:: _l-__::li_::::::i-:?i:(;:(::l---tii:::~ :.

~,:r--i :-----~i~r:

i:

r~?~i

i

,~1??7 ,,*I~i)P Zi-e

g.?l'f~ts~ Fno nl:i L ;i*0?~'~- ~9aItt'~~~ P~~

-:--1:-1:1 ? i t -:itla~:::-::

:::9; 96?- u;:y?_-?::tjXY~N

~i~Enk~4i?-i,: i. i?r?;I ~T~tcCA~i' -1:-1~

,?

f;N2r S?L "~iug'f?

:1:Bc; I? t: : : A

~.:i-i:-i-ii

:3?: f? I.

~" :-;-;---r : ::,t6: - 8:

L':~nt~ m-.aa'=.- ~ ';" t"6?, i-` S" I:t

ab~~"" TB~, * ,'$B p?3PJP ~b î

i~ZShiiitdC~ P:IL~"??,~f~~?E P 1::

,rXn~R~ It J4.mh~rrhi _J :gI

":: ".??tfj 115 ?h~

L-_)m~B ?

z .419?ai~

-.-

t~.

s: : : : : : : :: : : : : - : : ~A K `r) g ~?~ f`S~-~ iii:- -i

a-'M. Chevalier's Map of the Plain of Troy' (1785-6); from Transactionsof theRoyalSociety f Edinburgh,II, 1794 (P- 93)

":::::':':'-':-. iiii:iii:ii?i:i:iii:iiiii;ii--i-:iiii-:;i-:-l:":''lil:i:l:l:'::i'ii_:i'i:i:(::i:(::_:-:::-:-8i:::i:i:-:::::i:i:?-iii:i:.~.~i~'l~:-:i:'iiiiii.i~ii~iiFei~iiii-:iii-::::;i:i:iiipjjL8~iii-iiii..i:iiiiiili.i;iii:i-:i:i?:?r:::?:::?i?:liiiiiii:i:ii:i-i-i:-:i-:i:i-i:i-:i:iiB:i:i:icii9i~ii-%:-:::i:::-:::::?::-::::::1:::::::::::::::::i:::-:::i:'::i::-::::::'::::':"'':-:::::?:):::::::(:-i::::::i:iiiiiiiiiiiciiiiii;iiii-iiiii:i:ii:i:::i:i:::::i:-:i::::'i'i'i'i;'i':ii;ii'iiiiiiii:i:i~ii:iai:iiiii:i:--i-:iii:--i:-iiiii:iiil~:?::i::::;:i:i:i:-:ii:i:-:i-:i-::-::::i::i:i:i::i:i:i~':il~iii:iii-:_-:c:iiiii;)iiiiiiii:-:::;::i-:::I::::,ii':i::i::-i..:':-:.-':'-:-':'i:ai:i-i-iii.i:i:::::::::::::::::::::-::iiiiiliii:iiii:iiii:iiii::::::::::.::-::iii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii:i:;i:i:i:i::i:i~ci-i:iii-i-:i:i:iiiii:::::::::::iii:i*ilrliiii'i'i-::::-:i-ii:i:i-i-i-i-i:8:i--i:i:-i:i:i:i:::,::iii.. ii-i:i-i:i'iiiii-ii.i:iiiii:i~:i:i:i:i:i:::::. iiiiliiiiiiiii~:iiiiiiiiiiii:?i-:-i:i::'iiii~iiiiiiiiii:iiiiiiiiiii:i:i:i:lr:iiiiiiiii:iiii:i-i:?:i:c-i-?:l:::::i:-i::-:::::-::::::::::::ii:i.i:iliiidlil?i.i:j:iiii::::jiiiijiijirjiijjjiijjiii-iii:i:i:i-iiiii:.::::i:iliiiiili:i_iii::liiii::-.. ?i:c:?:i-::_:::-:i:i:i::::ii::::iii?:_i::_-::::-:::i::i:i:i:-:i:::::iiii:::::::iii:ii$i~ii:iiiiii-i?-?iiii(iiiiiiiiir;iiiii?iii-iiiiiiiiiiiii?ii':::?iiiii?iiiiiii?ii-i.i:~liii~iil:8i?: ????-i.'l:ii:'.?i?:?.i::i'?:i:i?:'::::::':'':':i::iil:':'::':::':':':::':-'::':''''''''li':'''iii;'''''''''ZI: : ::::_:-::::::::1:::::-::: :: -:_i::::l.:?::.i::i-iiii i:i'i-i:i- : i-iii:::::-:_-----:_-.-:-.:i:i:::;:;::::::::: :?::::::::::::::::::::::: -:.:.-.-.:::::::il:::j:::::i::::::::?:?::?:i:i:i:i:i:i:-.:::?::l::- i:::-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii..:::i::: :̀. :,:::-::::::::::-:::::::j::::l::l:i:;:i:::i;il':ii'i:i:::-::-'-::::-:i:_:_:,8j/:/:/:/:/:/::/:/:/:I:/:/:/:_:/::::i::::::~:::::-:::::::::::::::/::::~:/:.:/:/:::::/:::I:/:I:_:/:::::::I:::i. i:ii:iiii:i?i:i:i-::::i::::::::::::::::::::::::::i:ii:8-:::--:::i:-:-:?::._-:?:i:i.iii:i:iii:::.i-i:::il:i:_-:"~ii(liiii-:ii~;''i-~i:r~i'i:iii:i:::-::':::::::j:::::::?::::::::::::i:l:::::: :::::,::::::::_:::i:::-::::i':i;:_-X::'-::----------T-:..:,::::::`::i: iiiii-i.:;a:liii:ii:-iii'~':ii~:ii"i:ì-i::i:-iiiii-:iiii"-'-'~:j-::::::::i:-;:::::::i::::;i:-;:::::::i::?,.,:i::i:ai:i:::i:x.s::-:-:-::?-:::-:_-:::::--: ::::':iiiii.'-::''l:i-i''li:i~:i:i:i-i:i--i-i:hii

:,::j-:-............._ii~i:i~i-i-i:i:ii~i:i?i-i::i--ii:~?-::--:-?:i--~-,ic-izii;:i:~i~i~i~i~ii '~-

ii~~:~i-is:ii~iii:i?i. iiiiiiiii:iji:is:l-~~~:~::ii:iiitiiiiliii-iiiiiiBi:::::::::::j::li:-jj:j::::_:::r:i:-'':':-r_:::-:---ail:Il'-:'i:-:-iiiil:i.~-:::::~:i::\j::::::::::i:::::ii

"::""'~: ia~ai-r-Liii--iijiiii

iiiii'iiil~ii

:::::::::ib-i:i: : .' '::'i'l'::',,,,,,l,,.-:ii'(iii:i-:iii:iiii~iiiiiji_-iisii:?:::-:iii(jili:ii:?ii?iiiir?:??.??:ii?iiiii:iiiii-:i~i:: il : iii:ii~i~i~::::::i-:l:liliiii'ii,;~i-~iiiiiii. i---iiiì:iii'i;i:i'?'-i''::i: iiiiiiii:::-::iiiiiiii-i:i:ii:iiii:i:i-ii?i.aiiiiiii:i:iiili:i:::::::::::::.:::i:i-i:i:i?::i::::l:::::::i:ii ?:::::.:.:._i:ii:i::, :i:i:::i:i:-::::'iiiiiiiiiiiii"i?iiiii:':-:-'-:::::::i?i-i-iii.:.::.::::(iiliii?ii?i?:ii-i-ii:i::::.:L::i-?iiiii?i`:i-i-i:iii-i:iiii?i:i:i:i:-l::::: :: ::::;:;:i:,:::::::.::i-:::::_:i:::-:i:i:: i::i:i: :::-:-::-:_:.:--:-:-:i:_ni:iii;'iiii:iiii:-:??ii:iiiii:i:i8i-iiiiiii:''l:'':::::::::::::":.::::::.:: i-i-.ai~i~-iii;iii:i:i.-i~iii:i:iii:i~ji.i'iiiii-:::':'::':':'iiiiiiii-?:i:_i: ~:i~,Zzii$ ,jj:::i:::::::i::::ii~iii~a i:;??li~li~iz~~si:li~iiii--i:i~

PiFSi?iisb

i;-:-:::::i?--~i:l:~'~l:'"i-i ini-i:i-i'i:i-i-i:i-i~-i-i;i:"i:i~iii:,:,:::-:::::i:i::?

:i ?e isai~ :--.~~l~i-8?iE.i*":a~I`:i:r:::::.:::::;::::::::::: -iiiiiiiiiiii.iiiiiiiiiiiiii?iiiii:i?:iii;i:iiiiii : : -::i:l'''"?:iiiiiiiiiiiii::-:x-:-:::-::ii--:i,::::-.v..:---:i:iiii.l'..ii'ii:;?iii"~ii~ii i::::::::::::::::-__::::::~ iiiciiii-i-i:i:-ili:~:i:iiiii-.:i:i:c:;:::ii:_:_:-:i?:-:::-ii:::i: :?::::::-'::i-ii:.ii"-i-ilii:iiiii::i , ::-?-:::::ifi'i'ii'''''"iiiiiii::`:'?:`:;:':':]*:'~:-:::-:-::: i:?liiiiiiiii;l::::::ii-:::::':':':::::::::;':':-':::':-:::'::i'cii:i?iiiiiiiia

?i::_::::,::::::-:-:i::i:::-i:--:i::;. iiiiiiiiiiig :-:-::i::.:?-::.::*:::.:::::;~:i?:-::-'gl,:i::-:i:ii :::::::::::::i:::::::::::::::::::::::-:i:i:::-::?:::::: ::i:i::i:-?-:::::::Ii~~i?iEiii:liiiiii:il:iiiiiiiiiiiii-ii:iiii;iiiii:~ii/~ iiiiiiiii~iii~iiiiiiiiiiiiii::::-i~

-:i:::;i:i:i:ic;:::::i:ii-.i:i':ii'ii::iiiic:i~i:si:::i:--:::: ~i:w-~---------:-::::.:::iiiiiiil'iiiiii:iiiiiiiiiii-:::::::::_:::,i_-^2-::.:_:-::r:---_:-'::::::::::::::::ii:iiiiil''-l'i' i::j:i::~-:?:?:-i:i::::::--:i::::' ?:??:::Bi'9-i.-i-iii,-if~ ijiiiiiiii8i:ii~_~p-ii,:i:i:ili;,-?~:ji:::s?*:i::--:j;::::-;:-:_l:j:-i:i:::::::"::?:i:l:_:i:i;::-~::-:::

i:~i~-?~-ae-a-i~i%:~:as~iii?~:~.g .::::::::~::?:::;;:?--:---::?:i:----"-----~

ii~.iii~i~iili~ii.Fi'i~-,::-:-:-il-l:-----8::::I-:_-`:_ i:i:i--:ii-i:i-1-~i:i ,i_;:-:::9::ii:i:ll-:li-:::::ill---l--:-_::----:-:::--::--:::?1::::I::::.:::??:?:??::?;;;::: :-r-:-:l-:i:::--:.::-:-:-

.- :':-:-:::-""::::'::::::(:i :::'::::::i:r:-:i:_;,_:i-::-:(:_;:_:)-i:.-:_:::::::::::.:::......i.~i-i;iii?i--i~iiiiiii~ir:iiiiiii-;.:8 iiii;:iiiiira-:':i:-:i:-::::'-:i:-:i:i::::':i:?::'~::::i::::::::::::1::::::::::::::::::::::-:i:-:i:::?::::::-:.'::~~:l::::::i:..:::_:::: lilii ii?iiiii :: iiiiiiiii-iii-~,-a?iiiii:ìil:::I:-:-::::" iair:iiiiii?i?i':1I?i:'i?:B'::;:~::"-''"??~F'??:ii.i:jii:i.?:./?:.::j:?.i:iiiiiiBlij:j:i.i-i?_iii?iii:i:i:i:i

i.iiiii?lpl-??iri:i:j:ili(j: .-?ic:iiii?iiii:,ii iiiiiiiiii-i-:iiii~i-iiiiiiiii::isc:?:iiis:i:i:iii:ifiiiii:iiili-i-i::i-iiiiiiii

i~-iliiii:a~ii::i:ii?iiii-ii.i~,:.?:?:i'i'i'iii:''''''''':''-i':'-''':''':::::ii:i:ii'ii':ii:::"?:::::':-::::':'''-ti'i:ii'i'i?i-i?i'iai'l,::?::

i-~i-i~-ìii:.i-?iii;iiil:iiii'. ii'rii:i:i:i:'::::';::::':i:::'i:i:::::::::.ii'::i'iiiiiiili?iii::iiiii-:i::l::::::::I'll;j-:i:j:i:i;:i:ii:i:iiiii-i:.ì.:i.iiii?ii:iii::iliiiiii::: ::'j::':::?:::i:lli.:i:,i~~i:r-;iir-iii:i:i:i::iiiiiii-:iiiiiii:jil:iiiiijiiiiiijij~::~-iii:-i~;_l:~giiiijlii'li-iiii:i:::i:ii:::.:::::t.,j::;,:,,i?,:'e:'-~25~::::::::i:i:::c::l":::::""bB::?'l~iEiiss~;s:;;--:::-:j::i:i:i:?::::::i::il:i?':i:i:::i:i:iliili'i'i:iibSiiii:~jl::.i':::_1

i

ZLlil~ ::,,:,:::,:: ,i:siiiiiiiiiii i::::~::::i::c:i:i:i?~i~i-ii-;i,:iii?i-ri.I:-;i:i:i-iiiiiiiiii?.i:-s:iai:iiliiii-i:i-:iiii~iiiaiii--.i~i.~i:--i::i:iii*~i?ri'idiiii .::-i:i-ii.::,:::.iiiii::::i:-:::-:-:::-::::::..::-ii:~iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaiiiiiiiiiii:l:c-i::.iil-i:iiiii:;?i:ii'~i?i?!:i?i~i.i?iiiii li:iiliiii-i(iii:i:iiiiiiii?i:iiiii:iii:i:i;?i;~..:.:..:..j?;?-~i~:i?.-i?i:::iiiii:::::::::c:iiiiiiii.i!.;:iii.i?ii::iiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii;iiiiiiiii:iiiiiiii(iiii::iii~i;~:~?:?i?:'i':~`':'iii:-iiiiii-- ~:i:i:iii:ilii:iiiiii:ili::ilili:ii:i:_iii.i:i::.iiiii:lli:i:?:i:i:-::::.::iiiiiili:ii:i:i::-:cl,:-::::-i?i'ili?ilii:i; i::;:i:::,::i:i:_:i:::i:,;:::i;:-i:::::i:i:i:i:i:i:_:-i::;:?::::::i::::::::-::::-:iiiiiiilliii:'''':':':':'?:::::?:::':i:i:ii::,iii~iiiii:iiii -:i::,::::::::::,.:::i::-:::::::::- ii:iiii;iiiliiiii:i:i:iiiiiii:i:l''?'''l:':':-`::'`:::':::::':":':::iiiiiiiii?i:iiii':::?:'i~iili:i:':i:-::::::::?:?:::?i:::l:::i:-:i:i:l:iiii:-c:::i:i:i:i:::::: isi;iiii:ii:i:::i::::::ii?i:::::?::-::i:.::i:i::::::::::~:::::-:::i::::i:::i:;:ii:i?-:i:ii:i::::::::::ii:~i:i:ii:':iii:,:,i::i::;::::: :::i:::::::l::li:lil:i'i-:'i':'::2::i:::iii':i:iii'_iiiijiiiiiii:ili;i:iii)Bi:jj?ii-jli:j:i:i:ii::i:j::i::::9:5i:i-::':~I/::':/:/:::::/:::~:i:i:::i::ii-iiiii:'iilii::i:iil:i:i: iiiii:.iji.i:iil:ii:~iiii::ii8ii?lii::.:j::%^:1:I:~~i~~~g?:llgs~?r.~?;;i* r.;;~:~-".i ::'"""""':".'i"i"6g~iFii?~i~ ??~~~L~D

-:ss-:?~:a:::???::-s:~:~::~:~:iI:~~~::~~::i~:,-:,-:~:m_:~::4-:~:-ij~~::~~i:~:-~_--:-:-:-~--~~~il:.::::::

iiiii-iiiiiiiiiii~a~D:~ilil)i i::::~:::-:i:i~:i:~i:~~i-i~~~iii~.ili?;-i:i:iisiii--,i.cii:iiii:iiii5~-~i:iii:iii:i-ii?-i:iii:~i-:i--~i-~i-:iiiiiliiii._iii'i?ii:?L ~"::'-Eii"-:i::::/:-:j/:/:_::::j:/:-:/:/:/:::::/:::/:::-:/i/i/i.ii?i.ii?ji/i iiii:ij-iiiiiiiiiiijiii~iiTi:i':iiiiiiii

~~_l?I:i:i:?.:?.;;-rl.?'i~ii:iii;ii::iii,,-:.::::iiii-:li:il:ii:i:I:i:::lli::-::::-:::::::::?::?:'::::::::::::::::i:::i:i:i:i:i:;::: :iiiiiiiiiiijiiiiiiiiiiiiliii' i'i'iiii::::::-:i:i::::s_:i--:i:::i:i:i:i:i-i

~-:::_:~::_:~:.:::~::::_'ii;?oiiii:iiiiiiiii:i:liii-':'.:':::-:'::-:-:'::::::::':::::::::'iiiiiliiiiii:Lii:.:'i'ili'i'jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.i:::::::-i:i:i :ii'iiiiiiii~iiiiisiiiiiiiiiiiiii?,i -':':'-':':-iiiLiiiiii-i:i:i'''?' Eli??:.i:i.?ii?'i'i?::::-::(::i:c:::::i:::i:::i::-:i:i:::-:i:-l:::?::?:::??::::iii??:ii-:iiii:-iii-ii:iiiii:iiiiiiiii i;i~ii-i~~?i:-iiiiliiii--ii:li ij:i:i'i?iiiiiii:i;ii::iì:ii:ilsiiii?:iaii:ii-:i:`::il?_.i':`:,'i::i:?i:ii:::::::-:::::::::::-:::i::ii:::j:~i ::?i:::i:i:::i:::::i:i:i:':l;_-,-i~?ii,il8:iii"`'c~iiii':iii:i:':i:::':::::':i`:?:::::i~i:i:i:':::'::::~i~di:iiii'iii:i.i;iQiiii'iiii~?::::-i:i'-:::-i"

b-'Carte de l'ancienne Troie et de ces Environs' (ibid.) (p. 93)







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEM OF TROY 9I

hearts, and bringing all the visions of our youthful hours in such historicalrealities before us, was sure to take a strong hold upon the soberest enthusiasmof genius."87

The English testimony, authentic and enthusiastic, in favour of Leche-

valier's views was soon, indeed, formidable. On 6 November 1794 therelanded from Lesbos an English party who proceeded to make a careful surveyof the scene. These included J. B. S. Morritt,88a wealthy young man, the

squire of Rokeby, later to acquire some fame as a friend of Scott and a col-lector of Velasquez; and James Dallaway, chaplain to the British ambassadorto the Porte, who published his account of the investigation in his book

Constantinople,ncientand Modern,with Excursionso the Shoresand Islandsof the

Archipelagond to the Troad(1797). They carried Lechevalier's treatise in theirhands and gave their testimony that they "found him every where a faithfulrelater of facts."89 William Gell arrived in 18oi, and spent as much as three

days there, making numerous sketches and assenting to Lechevalier's theory.

He published his Topographyf Troyand ts Vicinity, fine folio, in I804. Byron,who was as yet untravelled, affected to ridicule him in EnglishBards,andScotchReviewers1809) :

Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell,I leave topography to coxcomb Gell.90

But meanwhile he became acquainted with the object of his satire and hastilychanged "coxcomb Gell" to "classic Gell." Later he cooled off and in thefifth edition (1816) changed "classic Gell" to "rapid Gell," adding in a note:

"Rapid, indeed! He topographized and typographized King Priam's domin-

ions in three days !"91Gell was accompanied by Edward Dodwell, who, inthe preface to his much-delayed Classicaland Topographical ourthroughGreece

(1819), gave emphatic testimony to the correctnessof Lechevalier's opinions.One or two of the veterans of antiquarian exploration were roused to con-tribute their views on the fascinating modern controversy. Richard Chandlerhad, a quarter of a century before, issued with his Travelsn Asia Minor(1775)an advertisement: "Speedily will be Published . . . An Essay on the Troad;Or, a Reviewof theGeography, istory,andAntiquities f theRegionof Troy." Itfailed to appear. But in 1802 he published his Historyof Iliumor Troy,a partof the intended work, resuscitated for the controversial occasion. It was awork which, as Chandler states in the preface, he had long ago been en-

couraged to write by Robert Wood, and which he intended to make availableto him for use in his book on Homer. James Rennell, who had once upon atime been magnificently complimented by Gibbon in a footnote ("If heextends the sphere of his inquiries with the same critical knowledge and

sagacity, he will succeed, and may surpass, the first of modern geographers

87 IX, 1797, P. 535, in a review of Bryant'sObservations.

88 Morritt gave his views as a second partof his Vindicationf Homer,1798, and in hisAdditionalRemarks,8oo; his family letters are

printed in TheLettersof John B. S. Morrittof

Rokeby, ed. G. E. Marindin, I914.89Morritt, Vindication, . 78.90 lines 1033-4.91Poetical Works,ed. E. H. Coleridge, I,

379.







92 T. J. B. SPENCER

[D'Anville],"'2 at the age of 72, and as late as 1814, produced his ObservationsontheTopographyf thePlainof Troy... ShewinghattheSystem f M. deChevalier,so longupheld,sfoundedona mosterroneousopography.

There were, however, very few dissentients from Lechevalier's theory.

Robert Wood's credit rapidly sank. "I have not the smallest hesitation todeclare, for I will presently prove it, that Mr. Wood was quite bewildered inthe Troad," wrote Lechevalier, confidently drawing attention to his "errorsand absurdities." In making a mistake in identifying the Rhoetean promon-tory, his conduct, continued Lechevalier, was "culpable and unjustifiable.""When in open contempt of every guide, we wander far away from the truth,we then forfeit all title to mercy, and become obnoxious to the rigour ofcriticism."'9

Moreover, one of Wood's staunchest and most influential supportersdefected. Heyne had reviewed Wood's Essaywith some enthusiasm in

1770o,and a few years later, 1783, he wrote a paper "De acie Homerica et de

oppugnatione castroruma Trojanis facta,"94based upon Wood's topography.But he got into difficulties, as he later interpreted it:

Had I kept by HOMER I should have fallen into fewer mistakes: but

unfortunately, from confidence in such a man as WOOD, who had visitedthe country with his Homer n his hand, I took him and his chart of theTroad for my guides, and thus allowed myself to be entangled in such alabyrinth of errors, that I strove in vain to extricate myself.95

Heyne thereupon decided to lay aside all secondary guides and "to attempt,from the descriptions given in the poem itself, a sketch of the Topography of

the Iliad, such as Homer exhibits it." Lechevalier, touring Germany, metHeyne at Gottingen, and impressed him by the coincidence of his own views,formed on the spot, with those of the scholar who had worked solely on thepoem. Heyne thereupon gave his wholehearted approval to Lechevalier'stheory and to his condemnation of Wood. He obtained a copy of Lechevalier'spaper from Dalzel, and had it translated into German by a young scholarnamed Charles Friedrich Dornedden. It was published at Leipzig in 1792,with a preface and with further notes of Heyne's own, almost as soon as the

English version appeared;96 and with it he published his revised essay "Deacie Homerica." In his great edition of the Iliad (1802) he confirmed his

adherence to the theory about Bunarbashi.97 Lechevalier's triumph inEurope was established for almost a century.98

92DeclineandFall, chapter xl; ed. cit., IV,232.

93Lechevalier, Description, 791, pp. 56, 59,75, 79-81, 100oo.

9 Printed in CommentationesocietatisRegiaeScientiarumGoettingensis,VI, 1783-4, pp. 137-163.

95Transactions f the Royal Societyof Edin-burgh, IV, I798, ii, 77.

9 LechevaliersBeschreibungder Ebene von

Troia, mit Anmerkungenon Dalzel, aus dem

Englischen. Part of Heyne's preface to this,but not the critique of Wood, was translatedand included in an appendix to Dalzel's"M. Chevalier's Tableau de la Plaine deTroye illustrated and confirmed," printed inthe Transactionsf theRoyalSociety fEdinburgh,IV, ii, 75 ff., in 1798.

9 Excursus ad librum vi, V, pp. 298-309.98The dissident voices deserve to be heard.

The Earl of Aberdeen, fresh from his tour of

the Greek lands and aged just 21, reviewed








Moreover the map of the Troad which Lechevalier offered was helpfuland plausible and encouraging.99 It was the sort of map that was wanted,showing clearly and unhesitatingly where things were (P1. i oa); it was a

great contrast to the meagre and disappointing efforts of Wood. Here was

Troja Vetus, with the Pergamum and the Fontes Scamandri (Fons Calidusand Fons Frigidus); the "ancien lit du Scamandre" showed plainly where thetwo rivers ran together; and the canal (in straight lines of artificiality) nowa-

days prevented this junction. The detailed plan of the city of Troy itself was

equally impressive (P1. iob).The advantages of this satisfying faith in the topographical authenticity

of Homer were many. The traveller (in reality, or in imagination) couldtread confidently on classicground and relish the emotions which were arousedin him. And it could be remembered that Homer himself, too, trod the sameclassic ground and felt comparable emotions as he surveyed the scene of greatevents which he was eventually to make the subject of his poem. Lechevalier

exclaimed (among the pedantries and sophistries of his discussion):

METHINKS I behold the great HOMER, at his first arrival on that

Gell's book in the Edinburgh eview,VI, 1805,pp. 257-83, ridiculing the pretensions ofLechevalier and his admirers. "The whole ofM. Chevalier's speculation is no more thanthe gay dream of a classical enthusiast....He and his followers have been just as success-ful in ascertaining the site of ancient Ilium,as any of the meritorious inquirers who have

amused themselves in determining the truelongitude and latitude of the garden of Eden"

(p. 271). In this scepticism he was followed

by John Cam Hobhouse (Byron's fellow-

traveller) in his book, A Journey hrough lbaniaand otherProvinces f Turkeyn Europe ndAsia,to Constantinople,uring heyears 8og9andi8io,1813. Edward Daniel Clarke, after spending"fourteen days in the most incessant research,traversing the plain of Troy in all directions"

(letter begun II March 18oi, printed inWilliam Otter's Life and Remainsof EdwardDanielClarke,1825, II, 97), full of enthusiasm

for the Bunarbashi-theory on the spot, even-tually rejected it, and decided on the villageof Chiblak (two miles east of Hissarlik) as thesite of Ilium (Travelsin VariousCountries,d.cit., Pt. II, sec. i, pp. 102-5). In this theoryhe was followed by Philip BarkerWebb, whotravelled in 1818 (his account was publishedin a Milanese journal in 1821, translated intoGerman (1822) and into French (1844), butnever appeared in English). Alone amongthem all, an untravelled Scot bravely claimedthat Hissarlik best satisfied the conflictinginformation about the site of Troy; Charles

Maclaren modestly published his views in

TheScotsMagazinein I820, New Series, VI,195-2og and 313-328, and then revised thetwo articles into a little book in 1822 asA Dissertation n the Topographyf thePlain ofTroy. Eckenbrecher, in an article "Ueber die

Lage desHomerischen Ilion" in the RheinischesMuseum n 1843 (Neue Folge, II, pp. 1-49,with two maps of the ancient and modern

Troad), and Grote, when he published thefirst volume of his History(I846), were stillalmost alone in accepting the historical Iliumas the site of the Homeric city of Troy (I,436 ff.), though they were followed byLeonhard Schmitz in Smith's DictionaryofGreek ndRomanGeography1857) s.v. "Ilium"(II, 34) ; thisreference-bookhere went againstthe usual opinions of contemporary scholar-ship. As late as I887, and after Schliemann,Jebb still supportedBunarbashiin his popularhandbook, Homer; An Introductiono the Iliadand the Odyssey pp. I48-51); also in his em-

phatic article "Troad and Troy" in thewidely-circulated ninth edition (I888) of theEncyclopaediaritannica XXIII, 580-2), andin articles in the EdinburghReview,FortnightlyReview, and Journal of HellenicStudies. Hisobstinate conservatism was assailed by A. H.

Sayce of Oxford and J. P. Mahaffy of Dublinwith an acrimony resembling that of earlierHomeric controversies.

99It was made by the architect Cazas, saysC. G. Lenz in Die Ebenevon Troia, nach demGrafenChoiseulGouffier,Neu Strelitz, 1798,p. xii.







94 T. J. B. SPENCER

famous coast, doing the noblest of all homage to the shade of ACHILLES.I see him walking with a grave and thoughtful mien, between the banksof the Simois and the Scamander. His eye, "in a fine frenzy rolling,glances" over all the surrounding objects; a thousand scenes at once occur

to his recollection; his heart melts; his imagination catches fire; the planof the Iliad is formed.100

This is a new Homer. It is the Man of Feeling, the poet of sensibilite.

The image of the tombs of great men has something affecting in it which

always interests the heart. HOMER, who was well acquainted with allthe sourcesof sensibility, failed not to avail himself of a circumstance fromwhich he had reason to expect the most powerful influence upon the heartof his readers. Observe how often he recalls the remembrance of thesemournful monuments, and with what effect he describes them. He seems

to behold in distant prospect the burning of the incense in the sacrificeswhich were to be offered there; to hear the sighs breathed, and to see thetears shed by the travellers who were one day to visit them.x'0

This is the poet of historical associations who derives poetic vivacity from

topographical sentiment or "local enthusiasm" (as it was called). It is thekind of poet we recognize in Chateaubriand and, most of all, in Byron.Lechevalier was writing twenty years before ChildeHarold'sPilgrimage. Butwhat he is describing is approximately Childe Homer's Pilgrimage to scenesmade glorious by courage, sorrow, and virtue, where, prompted by "local

enthusiasm,"his

poetic sensibilitywas stimulated. It

impliesa view of the

poetic consciousness which was something deeply felt, something veryplausible, in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

III

It was just at this time that Homer received an onslaught which raisedsuch fire and fury that Wolf was temporarily left in obscurity. Of course,there was hardly any time, from the Middle Ages onwards, when Homer wasnot the subject of some kind of severe censure. His veracity was suspect toChaucer and other mediaeval writers because he was supposed to be favour-able to the Greeks and to tell his story with an anti-Trojan bias, unlike those

reliable witnesses on the right side, Dictys the Cretan and Dares the Phrygian.To most of the Renaissance critics Homer's lack of decorum, his vulgarity,gave pain. It was detestable to find Ajax compared to a mule, or the Greek

Army to a swarm of flies around the milk-cans 102 and it was disgusting toread Phoenix's account of the way the infant Achilles was sick all over him.103Achillisequi loquuntur;quidpraeterea xpectamus? as Scaliger's sneer.'04 This

100ooDescription, 1791, p. 41; Transactions,III, ii, 33.

o101Description, p. 145; Transactions,pp. 87-88.

o02Vida, Poetica, 1527, II, 286-97, refer-

ring to Iliad, xi, 558-62; ii, 469-71 and xvi,

641-3.103Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, 1561, III,

cap. xv (p. 97), referring to Iliad, ix, 490-I.104 V, cap. ii (p. 216); Iliad, xix, 404 ff.

Scaliger points out the superiorityof Musaeus

(p. 217).








sort of thing led to a good deal of depreciation of Homer. In the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth centuries there was a vigorous literary controversyabout Homer's merits, which was one of the by-products of the quarrel of theAncients and the Moderns.

But the tendency became strong, in some quarters, in the eighteenthcentury not so much to deplore Homer's bad taste as to impugn his credibility.According to official calculations, of course, the fall of Troy took place on the

night of 11-I2 June 1184 B.C., though the great Sir Isaac Newton arguedlearnedly and astronomically for the year 904.105 But there were admittedlygrave difficulties in the story of the Trojan War, inexplicable variations andcontradictions in the narrative. These were well known in antiquity. Therewere the jokes of Lucian and other ancient writers about Homer's fabulosity.There was Dio Chrysostom's entertaining discourse (xi) maintaining thatTroy was never taken by the Greeks; Dio grants all that Homer says, andthen infers, from his suspicious silences, that the Greeks had in fact been

repulsed by the Trojans-a national disgrace which Homer wrote his poemto conceal. Of course, there was a basic and a priori mprobability about thehistorical events described by any Greek. "Mirum est quo procedat Graecacredulitas: nullum tam impudens mendacium est ut teste careat."106 Thenation was notorious for the perversions of its history:

quicquidGraeciamendaxaudet in historia...

This was not merely the reproach of a Roman satirist; Thucydides andDiodorus themselves could be quoted to show how doubtful any serious-

minded Greek felt about the authenticity of his early history. Homer wrotefrom report.He says so himself in his invocation to the Muses.'07 He derivedhis materials (as Robert Wood described it) from "oral tradition, the onlymode of recording events then known."'08s

The chronological difficulties in the narratives of Homer were indeedconsiderable. Take the matter of Helen's age, for example.'09 As the twin-sister of Pollux, who went on the Argonautic expedition (seventy-nine yearsbefore the taking of Troy), she must, when Paris fell in love with her, havebeen ratherpasse. Perhaps, one wit suggested, she was like Ninon de l'Enclos,who made an assignation on her eightieth birthday. This sort of problem wascomplicated by grave discrepancies in the story of the Trojan war, difficulties

which had been partly inherited from antiquity: for example, Herodotus'sstory that Helen never went to Troy at all, but was kept in Egypt. To explainthe difficulty of the two Helens, it had been suggested that Aphrodite hadmade a counterfeit, exactly like Helen, which Paris took with him to Troy,believing it to be the celebrated beauty herself. The learned Samuel Mus-grave, in his edition of the Helenaof Euripides (which turns upon this episode),boldly conjectured that the story had been contrived by the wily Helen

herself,in conjunction with the Egyptian priests, in order to re-establish her character

10o The Chronology of Ancient KingdomsAmended, 1728, p. 29 et al.

106 Pliny, Hist. Nat., VIII, xxii.

o107liad, i, 486.1o8 Essay, 1775 edition, p. 235.

109See Bayle, Dictionnaire,.v. "H1lene."7







96 T. J. B. SPENCER

after her return to Greece.110 It is an interesting belated example of the onceprevailing (but now weakening) sense of the factual nature of the traditionaltale of Troy.

In many instances the discrepanciesin the narrative which the nineteenth-

century disintegrators revealed by their toothcombing of the Homeric textwere derived from the eighteenth-century rationalists and sceptics; though, ofcourse, many of them were already in the scholia. The Abbe Fourmont, for

example, in 1718 tried to show that the "siege" of Troy did not take ten

years :111 it had begun only three or four weeks before the outbreak of the

quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles; the ten years counted from the

assemblyat Aulis. This will explain certain discrepanciesor apparent absurdi-ties in Homer's narrative: why Priam is ignorant of the names of the Grecianleaders and needs Helen's help in pointing them out; and why Diomedes andGlaucon had not got acquainted. Otherwise, one has to confess that Homerhad an imperfect sense of verisimilitude and so render him obnoxious to

censure. The Abbe Banier replied, and demolished his arguments, explainingthat the poet, with great artisticskill, had, by means of haranguesand episodes,managed to incorporate into the poem a good deal of the story of that part ofthe siege before Achilles retired from the army-although, to be sure, his

subject was solely the anger of Achilles and its dire consequences.112JohnMaclaurin read a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 16 February1784 seriously reviving Dio Chrysostom'shypothesis about the failure of theGreeks. Maclaurin maintained "that (if ever there was at all a Trojan war)Troy was not taken by them, but that they were obliged, by those whodefended it, to raise the siege, and retire with loss and disgrace."113xs

But there was also a more thorough scepticism, impatient of the whole

fantastic yarn or eager to explain it away in terms of early fabulosity. Amongthe earliest infidels was Pascal:

Ces historiens fabuleux ne sont pas contemporains des choses dont ilsecrivent. Hombre fait un roman, qu'il donne pour tel et qui est requ pourtel; car personne ne doutait que Troie et Agamemnon n'avaient non plusete que la pomme d'or. Il ne pensait pas aussi

'en faire une histoire,

mais seulement un divertissement.114

This radical scepticism was expressed most clearly by the eighteenth-century

mythologists, who were inevitably prone to dissolve the whole Trojan storyinto allegory (or into whatever was the basis of each system). Antoine Joseph

110 Musgrave's words are worth quoting."Mihi tamen in mentem venit Helenam,postquam in gratiam cum Menelao redierat,cumSacerdotibus.AEgyptiisquorummaximatestimoniodefenditearnHerodotusLib.II. c.

I112ad 120.) cumiis igituragere potuisse,utfabulamde SpectroHelenaeParidemcomi-tante concinnarent,quae, militum prim6credulitate devorata, eorum postea opeGraeciae in se odium universae placaret.

Talis certh fallacia nec foeminae, qualis

Helena erat, nec Sacerdotum Ethnicorum

ingenio indigna erat." Euripidis quaeextantomnia,Oxford, 1778, III, 442.

111Mimoires de l'Acaddmiedes Inscriptions,I718-25, V, I729, pp. 53-6I.

112Op. cit., VI, 1729, pp. 425-44; a goodpiece of criticism.

113 Transactionsf theRoyalSocietyof Edin-

burgh, , 1788, ii, pp. 43 if.114Pensees ed. Brunschvigg, no. 628).







ROBERTWOODAND THE PROBLEMOF TROY 97

Pernety, in his book Les FablesEgyptiennest Grecquesivoilieset riduitesaumlme

principe,avecuneexplication eshidroglyphes,t de la guerrede Troye(Paris, 1758),dealt carefully in his sixth section with the "Histoire de la guerre de Troye,et de la prise de cette ville" and then offered a series of "preuves contre la

realiti de cette histoire.""5 It was interpreted as a mere allegory, not anhistorical event, by Antoine Court de Gibelin in his massive work Le Monde

Primitif (g vols., Paris, I1775-84). Jacob Bryant, who edited Robert Wood's

Essayin I1775, was himself one of the industrious eighteenth-century scholarswho endeavoured to subsume all mythologies into a system, generally Egyptianin origin. He produced his New System,or An Analysisof AncientMythologyn

1774-6, in three large quarto volumes. This preoccupation made him, in

many respects, a very unsuitable editor of Wood's work. He wrote candidlyto Michaelis on io December 1772:

I will do all the justice in my power, though what I must publish will be

in some degree contrary to my opinion. I cannot help having manydoubts about the war of Troy, as well as about the Argonautic Expedition.They seem each of them to have been a fiction, at least they were events,which have been misrepresented, and did not originally belong toGreece..

.116

And when in June 1775 Bryant sent Michaelis a copy of his edition ofWood's book, he was more emphatic:

The world would think me the least proper person of any, to publish aTreatise

concerning Troy,and its history, if they were apprised of my

private opinion. For I doubt very much about the Trojan war: and amconfident, that the city Troy of Homer never existed. The very Book,which I here present You, and the Map, with which it is accompanied,confirm me in my notions.117

But Bryant refrainedfrom apprisingthe world of his private opinions aboutHomer and Troy, until he was aroused to do so by the claims of Lechevalierfor the authenticity of Homer's description. These would be a strong argu-ment against his theories and he thereupon wrote a little book, Observations

upona Treatise, ntitledA Description f the Plain of Troy, by Monsieure Chevalier

(Eton, 1795), in order to demolish obstructions and clear the ground, asit were, for his greater work. And he concluded his Observationsy summariz-

ing the opinions with which he was threatening the world: that the poems ofHomer concerning the expedition of the Greeks were mere fables, and thatthe Trojan city, so zealously sought after, never existed.118

The following year (1796) Bryant came out with A Dissertation oncerningthe Warof Troy,and theExpedition f theGrecians, s describedyHomer;Shewingthat no suchExpeditionwas everundertaken,ndthat no suchCityof PhrygiaExisted.In his preface he writes with moderation about the prejudices he expects to

5II, PP. 476 ff.11xx6Literarischerriefwechsel, d. Buhle, III,

2o8-9.

11x Op.cit., II, 506.18 p. 49.







98 T. J. B. SPENCER

encounter and the opposition he will arouse. But he intends no aspersionsupon Homer himself; "whatever I may say about the truth of the history,the work itself will not be in the least affected. The character of the Poet,and the beauty of the Poem will still remain unimpeached. Their excellence

can never be diminished."119Bryant's positions in these two books were: first, that Lechevalier was

wrong in his archaeological identifications; and secondly, that he was wastinghis time anyway, because the whole of the Iliad was a fiction. His grounds for

rejecting the Homeric story are mostly those of improbability: the combina-tion of so many independent chiefs to avenge the honour of one; the greatsize of the fleets and armies; the long duration of the siege; and (followingthe archaeological testimony of Wood) the lack of any remains of the sup-posedly great and famous city. Now, most of this, apart from the absence ofthe ruins of Troy (and even that was confirmed by Lucan's etiam eriere uinae),was of course old stuff; most of it could have been derived from ancient

writers, and in fact the opinions which Bryant collected from antiquity arenumerous. Still, they had never been combined and collated with so muchlearning and plausibility, and they make a formidable array. Unfortunatelyhe weakened his case by expounding a peculiar theory of his own concerningthe origins of the story. He supposed that, as there was a small place of thename of Troy in Egypt, not far from Memphis,120Homer had found someverses in an Egyptian temple relating to a war which took place there andthus provided himself with the basis for his poem.

These two publications of Bryant aroused an astonishing amount of in-

dignation. Gilbert Wakefield, always rather impetuous, hastily produced a

pamphlet,A Letter to

Jacob Bryant, Esq. (1797),in which he addressed the

sceptic in scarcely temperate language:

I am compelled by the strong incitement of my feelings to declare, that Ihave no where read a more gratuitous, fanciful, and unsolid perfor-mance, as a piece of reasoning, in opposition to everything venerable andauthentic, than your Dissertation on the War of Troy, except only the

production of a man, whose company you will not be fond of encountering;I mean TomPaine's most profligate, rash, audacious, and ignorant attackon Revelation.1'1

Scepticism about the authenticity of Homer's narrative is analogous, clearly,to scepticism about the Holy Scriptures. J. B. S. Morritt of Rokeby, freshfrom his adventurous tour in the Levant (1794-6), leaped to Homer's defencewith A Vindicationf Homer ndof theAncientPoetsandHistorianswhohaverecordedthe Siegeand Fall of Troy (York, 1798). William Vincent reviewed Bryant'sbooks (unfavourably) and Morritt's Vindicationfavourably) in the British

Critic,'22 expressing the wish that Mr. Bryant had youth and strength to take

119p. vi.120 Strabo, xvii, 1, ? 34; Diodorus Siculus,

i, 56, ? 4.121p. 17.

122 The British Critic, IX, f797, PP. 535,

591, 604 (reviewing Bryant); XII, I798,p. 632, and XIII, I799, p. II6 (reviewingMorritt). The last two were published to-gether, with an appendix, as a pamphlet.








the voyage to the Troad (he was now 84). To which invitation Bryantretorted, "I would as soon go in quest of Utopia, or of the Carib Island ofRobinson Crusoe, and his Cabin; and I should return with equal emolu-ment." He replied to all his assailants, often with great bitterness of tone, and

republished the Dissertationn 1799 with corrections and additions. In thesame year he wrote an angry Expostulationddressedo The British Critic(Eton,

1799), where he made the mistake of supposing his opponent Vincent to beWakefield; and he attempted to quell Morritt with SomeObservationspon heVindicationof Homer (Eton, 1799).123 Farewell, cried an ironical newspaper-bard,

Farewell, old Homer's Troy,The song of man and boy!

How cruel are thy fates, how fickle!For ten long years by Greeks oppos'd,Then to corn-fields metamorphos'd,

And now mow'd down by Bryant's sickle.124

It is interesting to observe that, in spite of their acrimonious disagree-ments, Lechevalier and Bryant and the rest of them are essentially in accordabout the kind of poetical character possessed by Homer. It is probable thatmost of us, when we think of the views held about Homer in the later

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, have in mind the followers ofVico, and Wolf and Herder, with their primitivistic Homers, or balladist-Homers who wrote Lays of Ancient Greece. But there was another kind ofHomer who had a more powerful hold on the imagination: that was merelythe Romantic Poet. Bryant gives a very entertaining picture of Homer the

man. He was a great traveller and a sensitive observer.

He had a great curiosity, and exquisite feelings: and all uncommon

phaenomena made strong impressions upon his mind. All ancient loreafforded a rich repast, upon which he fed with extacy and with this turnof mind he was strongly inclined to superstition . . . We may judge that

123Further aspects of the controversy canbe seen in: James Dallaway, Constantinople,Ancient ndModern,withExcursionso theShoresand Islandsof theArchipelago nd to the Troad,1797; Thomas Falconer, Remarks on some

Passages n Mr. Bryant'sPublications espectingthe War of Troy, 1799; William Francklin,Remarksand Observationsn thePlain of Troy,made during an Excursion in June 1799, I8oo, in

company with Henry Philip Hope, brotherof the author of Anastasius; . B. S. Morritt,AdditionalRemarks ntheTopographyf Troy, nanswerto Mr. Bryant'slast publications, 8oo;J. B. Lechevalier, Voyagedansla Troade,con-tenant a descriptione la plaine de Troie,Paris,I8oo, which was promptly translated (fromthe second edition) by C. G. Lenz as ReisenachTroas,oderGemdhldeerEbenevonTroja n

ihremgegenwadrtigenustande,18oo, with ap-

pendices, etc.; Lechevalier's work was ampli-fied in the third edition (3 vols., Paris, 1802)as Voyage ela Troade,aits dans es annies1785et 1786, in which volume III consists of atranslation of Morritt's Vindication f Homer;

Edward Daniel Clarke, letters in vol. II ofhis LifeandRemains y William Otter (2 vols.,1825); William Gell, The Topographyf Troyand its Vicinity, I8o4; and others. LaterChoiseul-Gouffierhimself delivered a lectureto the Institut de France (24 April I816)entitled "Consid6rations sur Hombre, in-

spirees par l'aspect des lieux qu'il a rendus sic616bres."

124Copied from some English newspaperor journal (which I cannot trace) by theTeutscherMerkurn 1796; see Lenz, Die Ebenevon Troia, 1798, pp. xx-xxi.







o100T. J. B. SPENCER

he was of an humane disposition: but at the same time tinged with

melancholy.125

In these respects Bryant's theory of Homer concurred with contemporarynotions of the

poetical process. Bryant rejectedHomer as an historian of

fact,but accepted him as an historian of the heart. Troy and the Trojan war,Helen and Hector and the rest, were condemned as improbable fictions. But,for the sensitive reader, the truth of the emotions described depends on their

being the experience of the poet. Homer wrote from the heart; his Odysseuswas a kind of substitute figure for the poet himself.

Under the character of Ulysses, he has given us some traits of his own

person, and natural endowments: also of the many sufferings, and adven-tures which he had experienced . . . [His] piety, patience, magnanimityand wisdom are set off to great advantage: more particularly the mildnessof his

manners,and attachment to the

placeof his

nativity,and his love

for his parents, and people. These tender passions are greatly enhancedby his being for so many years separated from the chief objects of his

regard. In consequence of this we have a melancholy, but pleasing, dis-

play of those emotions, which arise in a great and exalted mind fromtrouble, and disappointment, and a series of cruel adventures. These areattended with a mournful retrospect towards lost happiness, and hopesstill cherished of being restored to the scene of his wishes. The whole isdescribed in so particular, and so affecting a manner, that, as I have saidbefore, I am led to think that in the history of Ulysses, we may trace thelife and adventures of Homer. The sufferingsof the one were copied from

what the other had experienced: and all the sorrow,and anguish displayed,and all those melancholy emotions, originated in the poet's breast.126

So ineluctibly was the sceptical Bryant embedded in the spirit of the age thathe naturally and plausibly thought about Homer, the great poetic genius, asthe sort of poet into which the young Byron was even then growing up, pre-paring to bear around Europe the pageant of his bleeding heart.

The nostalgia for Ithaca was Homer's own nostalgia for a place to which,when he was long separated from it, all his views and wishes were directed.These views, and the sorrows, with which they are immediately accom-

paniedcome so

immediatelyfrom the

heart;and are describedin a manner

so affecting, that we may presume, they were not fictitious, but the genuineoffspring of the Poet's breast. All, that is attributed to Ulysses, was firstfelt by Homer.127

Even Wakefield, in his fierce retort to Bryant, admitted128 the probabilitythat Homer, in his account of the loves, wanderings, and sorrows of Ulysses,made tacit reference to his own experience-"invigorating both his plaintiveand jocund strains with the zest of personal sensibility."129

125Dissertation, . 54.126Op.cit., pp. 113-14.

127Op. cit., p. I36.

128Letter to Jacob Bryant, Esq., p. 23.129 It is one of the ironies of this Homeric

discussion that Bryant's belief in Homer's







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEM OF TROY 1o0

The subject of Homer and Troy was still very much in the air when Byronarrived on the Troad in 18io. His friend and companion, John Cam Hob-house, took the Homeric problems seriously, inclining to the sceptical attitude,and wrote about them at some length in his subsequent travel-book, A Journey

throughAlbaniaandotherProvincesf Turkeyn Europe ndAsia (1813).130

I have stood upon Achilles' tombAnd heard Troy doubted: Time will doubt of Rome.131

was Byron'sblunt comment at a later date. At the time he was more facetious."The Troad is a fine field for conjecture and snipe-shooting," he wrote in aletter home;132 and he alleged that, out of bravado and in order to ridiculethe seriousness of his companions, he read, not Homer, but the Virgiliantravesty of Scarron. Byron was frequently in a mood to jeer at the archaeolo-

gical interests of his companions in the Levant. When he was invited to

explore the antiquities of Ithaca (Trelawny reports), he turned peevishlyaway, saying, "Do I look like one of those emasculated fogies? Let's have aswim. I detest antiquarian twaddle. Do people think I have no lucid intervals,that I came to Greece to scribble more nonsense?"133But, in spite of all thesedisclaimers, there is no doubt that, during his several weeks in the Troad, hefelt the fascination as deeply as anyone; there is a large number of allusionsin his writings to prove it.

Beautiful shadowOf Thetis' boy!

Who sleeps in the meadowWhose grass grows o'er Troy . . . 134

And when Thomas Campbell suggested that we don't really care about the

authenticity of the tale of Troy,135he was provoked to an indignant outburst:

We do care about "the authenticity of the tale of Troy." I have stood

upon that plain daily, for more than a month in 18io; and if any thingdiminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugnedits veracity . . . I venerated the grand original as the truth of history...and of place; otherwise it would have given me no delight.136

sensitive heart, expressed in the person ofOdysseus, was taken up by his principalopponent. In 1829 there appeared in Paris alittle book with the title Ulysse-Homere,u duveritable uteurde l'Iliade et de l'Odyssie. Theauthor was given as one Constantin Koliades,who alleges himself to be a native Ithacan anda descendant of one of Ulysses'sown retainers.This was, however, only a pseudonym ofLechevalier himself; and a very amusingjeud'esprit he book is.

130 Chapters 38-41.131 DonJuan, IV, ci.132

To Henry Drury, 3 May x8Io.

133

Recollectionsf theLastDays of ShelleyandByron,I858, I923 edition, pp. I36-7.

134 The Deformed Transformed, I, i.135 Campbell was writing about the Oriental

Eclogues 1742) of William Collins, which, he

says, the poet came to undervalue as "defi-cient in characteristicmanners; but surely no

just reader of them cares any more about thiscircumstance than about the authenticity ofthe tale of Troy." Specimensf theBritishPoets

(7 vols.), 1819, V, 311 .

1s Diary, ii January 1821; Letters and

Journals,ed. Prothero, V, 165-6.







102 T. J. B. SPENCER

And, carrying Scarron or not, he fed upon that special "local enthusiasm"which comes from reading a great work of literature in the environment towhich it belongs.

It is one thing to read the Iliad at Sigaeum and on the tumuli, or by thesprings with Mount Ida above, and the plain and rivers and Archipelagoaround you; and another to trim your taper over it in a snug library-this I know.s37

It is the reborn Troy-sentiment-and the rebuttal of scepticism-which pro-vided one of the most telling poetical localizations in Byron's poetry:

The winds are high, and Helle's tideRolls darkly heaving to the main;

And Night's descending shadows hideThat field with blood bedew'd in vain,

The desert of old Priam's pride;The tombs, sole relics of his reign,

All-save immortal dreams that could beguileThe blind old man of Scio's rocky isle.

Oh! yet-for there my steps have been;These feet have pressed the sacred shore,

These limbs that buoyant wave hath borne-Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn,

To trace again those fields of yore,Believing every hillock green

Contains no fabled hero's ashes,And that around the undoubted scene

Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes,Be long my lot! and cold were heWho there could gaze denying thee!1381

Scepticism was scarcely possible for those who made the pilgrimage to theEastern Mediterranean in order to read the Iliad and the Odysseyn thecountries where Achilles fought, where Ulysses travelled, and where Homer

sung. The old tag iamsegesest ubi Troia uit now had new meaning.

High barrows, without marble, or a name,A vast, untill'd, and mountain-skirted plain,

And Ida in the distance, still the same,And old Scamander, (if 'tis he) remain;

The situation seems still form'd for fame-A hundred thousand men might fight again

With ease; but where I sought for Ilion's walls,The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls.139

The sceptics stay at home; and, fascinated by the minutiae of the text andits relation to other historical materials, they miss the experience of feelingthat

x'"ChildeHarold'sPilgrimage, anto iii, note

i9; PoeticalWorks,ed. E. H. Coleridge, II,

301-2.

1s8 The Bride of Abydos,canto the second,ii-iii

(50o2-20).139 Don Juan, IV, lxxvii.







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEMOF TROYo103

The ghost of Homer clingsRound Scamander's wasting springs.140

"Whatever opinion a man may form in his closet, on the side of old Jacob,"wrote Edward Daniel Clarke in

i8o i,"it will be annihilated

bythe

evidencethe country offers."'141And so, for several years, the delightful argument raged, and revived in

poetry. The books and pamphlets were reviewed at length in the periodicalsof the time. Many of them were translated into German, and several intoFrench. Accusations of bad faith were flung to and fro; for much was atstake. If the publication of Wolf's Prolegomenad Homerum,ive de operumHomericorumrisca et genuina orma variisquemutationibus t probabili rationeemendandin the spring of 1795 was a momentous event too little noticed inEngland, the explanation is simple: the wits of those interested in Homerwere fully occupied by a much more thrilling controversy than Wolf or his

followers could arouse.142 The Homeric Question was archaeological, notphilological; it was the problem of Troy. And this was no ordinary race-towin such as are men's prizes for swiftnessof foot-that the proto-archaeologistsran round in circles before the supposed city of Troy; it seemed to be for thesoul of poetry itself.

The future was with the spade; and this fact was well known before theend of the eighteenth century. It was not owing to a lack of desire thatexcavations were not carried out. The difficulties were very great in the landsruled by the Turk. Choiseul-Gouffierhad enough political influence to beginexcavation of the tumuli,which naturally were the first objects to attractattention. He began with the Tomb of Achilles, and gave instructions for it

to be excavated in 1787, entrusting the work to one Solomon Ghormezano,son of the French consul at the Dardanelles.a43 A shaft was sunk from the

140Shelley, Lines Written mong heEuganeanHills, I8i8, 194-5.

141 The Life and Remainsof Edward DanielClarke,by William Otter (2 vols.), 1825, II,95.

142With one exception, there is no hint ofthe spread of Wolfian ideas among these con-troversialists. Gilbert Wakefield, however,managed to combine a hostility to Bryant'snotions with what appears to be an accept-ance of those of Wolf. He is explicit in a letterto Charles James Fox dated February 1798giving "an outline of my theory respectingHomer"; this is based on the supposition that,since Homer's life, character, parentage, andbehaviour are unknown, "we are at liberty,therefore, to frame any hypothesis for thesolution of the problem concerning his poems,adequate to that effect, without danger ofcontravening authentic and established his-tory." This turns out to be a theory ofmultiple authorship to explain differences oftone and

language.But Fox remained

scep-tical of this theory. "I am sure the inequality

of excellence is not greater than in 'ParadiseLost,' and many other poems written con-fessedly by one author." (Correspondencef . .GilbertWakefield... with... Charles amesFox. . . 1796-i801, chiefly, on subjects of classical

literature, I813, pp. 27-8, 36-7.) Apart from

this, the hypothesis of Wolf made little pro-gress in England for some time, thoughColeridge was an early adherent. Sir WalterScott in his Diary (22 April 1828) tells of a

dinner-party at which Coleridge expoundeda theory of multiple authorship; but Morritt(who had become one of Scott's best friends)"a zealous worshipper of the old bard, wasincensed at a system which would turn himinto a polytheist, [and] gave battle withkeenness" (II, 164).

143 The information about these excava-tions is contained in James Dallaway, Con-stantinopleAncient and Modern, 1797, PP- 350-3;Transactions f the Royal Societyof Edinburgh,IV, I798, ii, 64; Carl Gotthold Lenz, DieEbene von

Troia,nach dem

GrafenChoiseul

Gouffier,Neu Strelitz, I798, pp. 60-4; J. B.







104 T. J. B. SPENCER

top to a depth of 29 feet. A small chamber, four feet square, was found, andinside were some bones, an iron sword, crude pottery, and a bronze figureseated on a chariot with horses.144 Such was the account given to Choiseul-Gouffier by those whom he employed; and he repeated it in good faith. But

the conduct of Solomon Ghormezano, this pioneer of archaeological excava-tion on the Troad, was somewhat suspicious. The antiquities recovered fromthe tomb filled a large chest and were brought to Choiseul-Gouffier,who paidhim for his trouble (it was said) only with thanks.145 Therefore, Ghormezano

explained, he felt entitled to retain some furtherobjects in his own possession;and these he afterwards displayed and interpreted. But unfortunately no

trustworthy person was present at the time of the excavation. It seems likely(as was suspected from the first) that the objects found in the tomb had been

put there by the excavator for the purpose of discovery; and that some ofthose afterwards displayed had not even been put there. Consequently thewhole affair was discredited.

But others tried, too, to unearth evidence. J. B. S. Morritt in 1794 madeefforts to begin digging at likely sites. He was particularly anxious to explorethe alleged "Tomb of Hector," above Bunarbashi. "You will not wonder,"he wrote in his family-letter on 12 November, "that I have set a negotiationon foot for permission to open these tombs. I dare not hope to succeed, butthere is at least no harm in trying." A day or two later, however, he adds:

We were disappointed in our hopes of opening the tombs at Bunarbashi.The Aga gave us leave to work, indeed; but as he ran a risk in so doing,would only let us try in the night, and would not furnish us with morethan two men for fear of

committing himself;he could

only giveus

per-mission for one night; and on such terms it is easy to conceive we shouldnot have been able to make much progress in a structure of earth and

great stones, which these are. We gave it up on this account and came

away.146

In his Vindicationf HomerMorritt made it clear how the assistance of the

spade was denied to the learned explorer of the Troad.

When in the country, I attempted repeatedly to obtain permission of

digging in different parts of the plain; but as I was not authorized by the

Porte itself, the Agas, who always suspected that we wished to look fortreasure, were too ignorant and too fearful to permit us.147

Lechevalier, Voyage ela Troade, hird edition

(3 vols.), Paris, 1802; J. C. Hobhouse, A

Journey throughAlbania and otherProvincesofTurkey, 1813, 1855 edition, II, 129-32.

144 See engravings in Lechevalier's Voyagede la Troade, he Atlasof plates which accom-

panied the third edition (I802); also inChoiseul-Gouffier's Voyage pittoresquede laGrace, 1809, II, pt. ii, facing p. 323, where the

objects are described as having come from

the tomb of Festus (Caracalla's freedman),

with which on mature reflexion Choiseul-Gouffier identified the tumulus.

145 The suggestion of Choiseul-Gouffier's

parsimony was emphatically rebutted by theeditor of the second volume of his Voyage it-toresque,p. 325.

146 The Letters of John B. S. Morritt ofRokeby, ed. G. E. Marindin, 1914, pp. 142,

145.147 Vindicationof Homer, p. x 6.







ROBERT WOOD AND THE PROBLEM OF TROY10o5

During the next half-century poradicefforts at the excavationof likelysites in the Troad were made. It wasJ. G. von Hahn, the Austrianconsulat Syra,and FrankCalvert,Britishand Americanconsul at the Dardanelles,who seriouslybegan excavations. At firstthey were adherentsof the Bunar-

bashitheory. But theirexcavations here (von Hahn in I864) werefruitless;such ancientremainsas they foundwere clearlyof later date. Calvertpub-lished an article in the Archaeologicalournal, n 1864 ("Contributions towardsthe ancient geography of the Troad"),148sdisproving Lechevalier's theory;and then turned his attention to Hissarlik. "I purchased a field comprisingpart of the highest mound, or acropolis," he tells us, as part of his countryestate near the Dardanelles, and there excavated a city wall and a temple.But the expense of removing the vast amount of debris made the work difficultto continue. "I suggested to the British Museum the advisability of makingexcavations in this promising field, but my proposal was declined."'49 WhenSchliemann arrived on the Troad, Calvert was his friendly adviser; and

(according to Calvert's own account) it was he who convinced Schliemannthat Hissarlik was the site of Homer's Troy, allowing him to consult hiscollection of books and pamphlets on the problem, especially recommendingthe Dissertation n theTopographyf thePlainof Troy 1822) of CharlesMaclaren,the lonely champion of Hissarlik in his time.150 (The pair subsequentlyquarrelled over the ownership of a valuable object discovered by Schliemannin a field belonging to Calvert.)

The work was undertaken with better fortune and more money by Schlie-mann in 1870. One should not think of him as an inspired amateur, one who,with a flair for archaeology and brilliant guess-work, astonished the world byhis success at

Troy.He was

doingwhat those who knew the Troad now

wanted to do: to dig up Hissarlik. And only lack of funds prevented Calvert,who was perhaps a better archaeologist and certainly a more conscientiousone, from succeeding in doing it before him. Schliemann brought bothsplendid energy and ample money. In the autobiographical sketch which hewrote as an introduction to Ilios he has left an account of the motives for hisdevotion to Homeric exploration, his passionate dream of demonstrating theveracity of Homer. The sentiments he expressedwould have been intelligibleto most of those who were warmly interested in Homer during the two orthree generations before he turned the first sod on Hissarlik in April 1870.Schliemann certainly knew about his predecessorsand read their books with

care, as his bibliographies reveal. Behind him were the many lovers of Homerwho were filled with "local enthusiasm"; both poets and pedants; the greatLord Byron, as well as the assailants of the unlucky (but stimulating) JacobBryant; and Choiseul-Gouffier and Lechevalier; and, behind them all, anunsuspecting pioneer, Robert Wood.

148sXXI, pp. 48-53.1,49See Calvert's two articles in the

Athenaeum,No. 2454 (7 November I874), pp.

6Io-Ii, and No. 2455 (I4November 1874),

pp. 643-4.150See page 93, note 98 above.

robert wood and the problem of troy in the eighteenth century

Documents