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The Site and Antiquity of the Hellenic Ilion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
There is an interesting question in relation to Dr. Schliemann's Trojan excavations, which seems yet unsettled; it is this: when was the historical Ilion really founded? and the answer to this question involves another of considerable interest: was the historical Ilion on the site of the mythical Troy? If its foundation be recent, and in historical times, there is room for doubt as to the identity of the sites, and accordingly the ancient inquirers who denied this identity also denied the antiquity of Ilion. I propose, therefore, to review the evidence as briefly as possible by the light of recent discussions, and beg leave for this very brevity's sake to be allowed through the following argument to call the heroic city Troy, and the historical Ilion, without further specification.
Both Dr. Schliemann and I had come independently to the same conclusion on the seeond question just stated. He was led by his excavations, and I by a critical examination of the historical notices of the ancients, to assert the identity of the two sites, and we advanced from this to the further conclusion, that the alleged foundation of Ilion in historical times on a new site was not true, and that probably Ilion succeeded to the site and traditions of Troy without any considerable interruption. This was the general opinion throughout Greek history, till a very learned man, Demetrius of Scepsis, undertook to destroy the claims to a heroic ancestry of the Ilians, then rich and insolent through the favour of Lysimachus.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1882
References
1 In arguing a very strong case I am willing to concede that Lycurgus really intended by ἀνάστατος and ἀνοίκητος the total ruin and complete desertion of an inhabited site. But it is certain that ἀνάστατος is used rhetorically for mere political destruction, and I think it likely that as οἰκίζειν constantly means not to people a deserted spot, but to make a new (Hellenic) polity on a spot inhabited by barbarians or villagers, so ἀνοίκητος may have been used by Lycurgus to signify not the complete desertion of the site, but its disappearance from among the catalogue of Greek independent πόλεις. As a matter of fact even the site advocated by Demetrius, the 
was inhabited, and probably at Lycurgus' time, for had it been lately occupied, Demetrius would not have failed to mention it. I think therefore that had Lycurgus been attacked for gross inaccuracy, he would have defended himself in this way, and replied that he was only speaking politically, and not in the absolute sense of the words.