CHAPTER XXI.

Discovery of a street in the Pergamus--Three curious stone walls of different periods--Successive fortifications of the hill--Remains of ancient houses under the Temple of Athena, that have suffered a great conflagration--Older house-walls below these, and a wall of fortification--Store, with the nine colossal jars--The great Altar--Objects found east of the Tower--Pottery with Egyptian hieroglyphics--Greek and other terra-cottas, &c.--Remarkable owl vase--Handle, with an ox-head--Various very curious objects--A statue of one Metrodorus by Pytheas of Argos, with an inscription--Another Greek inscription, in honour of C. Claudius Nero.

Pergamus of Troy, April 16th, 1873.

Since my report of the 5th of this month I have had, on an average, 160 workmen, and have brought many wonderful things to light, among which I may especially mention a street of the Pergamus, which was discovered close to my house, at a depth of 30 feet, in the Great Tower. It is 17¼ feet broad, and is paved with stone flags, from 4¼ to 5 feet long, and from 35 inches to 4½ feet broad. It runs down very abruptly in a due south-western direction towards the Plain. I have as yet only been able to lay bare a length of 10 meters (33-1/3 feet). It leads, without doubt, to the Scæan Gate, the position of which appears to be accurately indicated, on the west side at the foot of the hill, by the direction of the wall and by the formation of the ground; it cannot be more than 492 feet distant from the Tower. To the right and left of the street there is an enclosure 28½ inches broad and 11 feet long. The slope of the street is so great that, while on the north-east side, as far as it is there uncovered, it is only 30 feet below the surface of the hill, yet at a distance of 33 feet it already lies as low as 37 feet.[246]

This beautifully paved street leads me to conjecture that a grand building must at one time have stood at the top of it, at a short distance on the north-east side; and therefore, seven days ago, when the street was discovered, I immediately set 100 men to dig down the north-eastern ground lying in front of it; this cutting I have made 78½ feet long, 78½ feet broad, and 33 feet deep. The removal of these 7600 cubic yards of huge masses of hard _débris_ and stones is rendered much easier by the fact that it joins my last year’s great cutting, which runs quite horizontally from the northern declivity as far as the Tower, and is therefore very well adapted for the use of man-carts. In order to extract from this excavation all the objects of the greatest use to archæology, I am having the walls made perpendicular, as in fact I have had them made in almost all of the other cuttings. As the work of removing this gigantic block of earth is carried on both from above and from below, I confidently hope to have finished it in twenty days’ work.

In this great bank of earth there are three curious walls, built one above another, of small stones joined with earth. They have been built at very different periods, and even the uppermost and latest of the three, as is clear from the material, must be considerably older than the foundation of the Greek colony about the year 700 B.C. This uppermost wall is about 5 feet thick, built up from a depth of 11½ feet to within 1¾ foot of the surface, a circumstance which I do not at all understand; for, as the ruins of the Greek colony reach down to the depth of 6½ feet, the wall must, for many centuries, have stood high above the earth. Still the Greeks may have used it as a foundation for a building, and it may thus have been preserved. Below this wall there is a stratum of earth 11½ inches thick; and then comes the second wall, projecting about 11½ inches, and 6½ feet high; and this again rests upon another and much older wall. The last runs in an oblique line in a south-western direction parallel with the Tower-road, and furnishes a second proof that the surface of the hill, which is now quite horizontal here, did not slope down very abruptly towards the Plain at this part.

Thus the opinion which I have previously expressed, that only the first inhabitants of this hill had walls and fortifications, is now proved to be erroneous. For these three walls, which at one time stood at the edge of the declivity, and the three which I cut through at the south-east side of the hill, can only have been walls of fortification, and they evidently belong to the various tribes who inhabited this locality after the destruction of the first nation up to the foundation of the Greek colony.

As my further excavations have shown, at a depth of 8 meters (26 feet), immediately below the Temple of Athena, and at a distance of 131 feet from the above-mentioned street, a large wall runs out from the Tower in a southern direction. I have had 6½ feet of this wall laid bare to the south. But how far it extends in this direction cannot be ascertained without making new and enormous excavations. It is also impossible for me to ascertain its breadth without breaking down the curious pre-Hellenic house. It also appears to me that the Tower ends here, for in my investigations at the foot of that ancient house I no longer found any trace of it. Instead of it I came upon very ancient houses, the walls of which, still partially covered with a coating of clay and white colour, all bearing traces of a terrible conflagration, which has so completely destroyed everything that was in the rooms, that we only occasionally find charred fragments of pottery among the red wood-ashes with which the spaces are filled. Curiously enough we again find, below these very ancient houses, other house-walls which must certainly be older; and these too show indications of having been exposed to a terrible heat. In fact, the labyrinth of very ancient house-walls, built one above another, and found in the depths of the Temple of Athena erected by Lysimachus, is unique, and presents the archæologist with the richest materials for his investigations. But what is most inexplicable to me about this labyrinth of walls is a wall of fortification, 11¾ feet high, running through it from W.N.W. to E.S.E. This is likewise built of stone joined with earth, and is 6 feet broad at the top and 12 feet broad at the foot: it does not stand directly upon the primary rock, and was not built till the rock had gradually become covered with a layer of earth 1¾ foot in thickness. It appears therefore to be somewhat less ancient than the Great Tower, which stands directly upon the primary rock. Running parallel with this wall of fortification, only 2½ feet from it and at the same depth, there is a wall 2 feet high, which is likewise built of stones joined with earth.

The room at the greatest depth which I have excavated is 10 feet high and 11¼ feet broad; but it may have been higher; its length I have not yet ascertained. One of the compartments of the uppermost houses, below the Temple of Athena and belonging to the pre-Hellenic period, appears to have been used as a wine-merchant’s cellar or as a magazine, for in it there are nine enormous earthen jars (πίθοι) of various forms, about 5¾ feet high and 4¾ feet across, their mouths being from 29½ to 35¼ inches broad.[247] Each of these earthen jars has four handles, 3¾ inches broad, and the clay of which they are made has the enormous thickness of 2¼ inches. Upon the south side of these jars I found a wall 26 feet in extent and 10 feet high, built of sun-dried bricks, which, however, had become really burnt bricks through the conflagration. This wall, which likewise appears to me to be a fortification and very thick, I have had broken down to the perpendicular line of the foundations of the Temple of Athena.

I am in great fear lest the Turks should make off with the large stone altar, the upper part of which forms a crescent, to use it for building a minaret in the village of Chiplak; therefore, without moving it from its place, I shall have it carefully split in two, so that it will be useless for building purposes. This stone and its pedestal are daubed over with a white crust of clay, which upon the pedestal is nearly an inch thick.

I have continued the excavation on the south-east side of the Pergamus, and I have found that the great wall, which I regarded as a continuation of the Tower, is part of a very ancient and large wall of enclosure.

Since my last report we have not found any kind of interesting antiquities worth mentioning on the whole of the east side of the Tower; but in the large new excavation to the north-east of the Tower-road we have discovered a great quantity of exceedingly curious articles. The ruins of the Greek colony here extend exactly to a depth of 6½ feet, and there I found a fragment of pottery with painted Egyptian hieroglyphics, of which I give a drawing. Three other pieces of pottery were found at a depth of 10 feet. One of these represents an owl’s face, a 卐 and the impressions of the four nails for fixing it; the second fragment has a 卐 in which each of the four ends again terminates in a square; the third fragment represents a wheel in a state of rotation. At a depth of 6½ feet we also came upon a terra-cotta idol with the owl’s face and the upraised arms, which are broken off, but appear to have been longer. This idol, like all the others, has a human figure: the owl’s beak and eyes project from the head and have been carefully wrought; there are indications of hair on the forehead, and two lines on the neck seem to denote armour. At the same depth I found the bottom of a dish, upon which there is a representation in high relief of two youths embracing and kissing each other; this is a most masterly piece of work. At a depth of 5 feet we found the upper portion of a vase with a pretty owl’s head; the rim of the mouth forms a kind of helmet. A little deeper than a foot we met with a good-looking head of a man in terra-cotta; at 2 meters (6½ feet) down, a Greek lamp with a foot 2¾ inches long, and at the same depth some very pretty vases and jugs, and a terra-cotta flattened on one side, with two perforated holes and a stamp, in which there is a very pretty picture of the head and shoulders of a woman. At a depth of 3 and 4 meters (10 and 13 feet) were twelve marble idols without owls’ faces; upon one of these idols there are four horizontal lines on the neck; further, at a depth of 10 feet, a fragment of a serpent with two horns; at a depth of 16½ feet, a piece of diorite in the form of a bell, beautifully polished, and twice perforated; at the same depth, a quantity of beautiful terra-cotta vases and jugs, prettily ornamented, ivory needles for knitting or embroidering, and a very neat perforated terra-cotta cylinder 1¼ inch long, covered with engraved symbolical signs. But the most curious article, found at a depth of 5 meters (16½ feet), is an idol of the Ilian Athena with an owl’s head, which is rounded off in front and at the back; the eyes are very large and beautiful, but the beak is small and roughly made; on the neck there is a cross line, and above it ten upright lines, which are probably intended to denote armour; the whole of the rest of the body is covered with lines, in which, more especially on the back, the bird’s feathers are unmistakable; and there is a peculiar ornament on the abdomen. This idol, like all the others, has a human figure.[248]

At a depth of 6 meters (20 feet) I found two splendid brilliant red vases with representations of the Ilian Athena with the owl’s head, a kind of helmet, two upraised arms, two breasts, and the large circular’ prominent elevation on the abdomen.[249] At the same depth I found an idol of the usual form, made of bone; and upon a handle of black terra-cotta, which has probably belonged to a large cup, the head of an ox, executed in high relief with great skill;[250] this involuntarily reminds one of Homer’s Βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη ("Our Lady Hera, with the head [or eyes] of a cow”). Among many other remarkable terra-cotta vessels, at this depth, I also found a small but really splendidly ornamented vase, the surface of which is divided into fourteen alternate compartments, larger and smaller.[251] In each of the larger compartments there are three circles of little stars and a star in the centre; in each of the smaller compartments there are triple zigzag lines; this vase has little holes in the small handles for hanging it up by a string. Among the other curious articles from this depth there is a silex saw, 4 inches long and 1¾ inch broad, also one of those round, twice perforated terra-cottas flattened on one side and with a large stamp which represents a swan and an antelope. A similar terra-cotta, the stamp upon which represents the head of a warrior with a helmet, was found at a depth of 8 meters (26 feet). These two are the first terra-cottas of this kind which I have hitherto discovered below a depth of 2 meters (6½ feet).

At a depth of 7 meters (23 feet) I found a small tripod with a projecting owl’s face, also a pretty red terra-cotta cup (cover) with the owl’s face of the Ilian Athena and her helmet; a knife and a long copper instrument; a piece of bone 3¼ inches long, ornamented with very artistically engraved symbolical signs, and among other exceedingly curious terra-cottas, the handle of a cup with a cross and the marks of the four nails for fixing it; further, a fragment of the upper portion of a large urn, which is ornamented with three encircling stripes: the upper and lower stripes consist of peculiarly interwoven crooked lines; the middle one contains small circles, in each of which is a cross.

At a depth of 8 meters (26 feet) we discovered a marble idol with the owl’s head of the tutelary goddess of Ilium, and a brilliant red terra-cotta idol of the same goddess, which, curiously enough, has on its head a small, but very pretty vase with two handles; the owl’s face of this last-mentioned idol has enormous eyes, and is very expressive. Of terra-cotta vases and dishes we found an especially large number in these depths. I can, however, only give drawings of a few of them, for most were brought out in a broken condition, and I cannot have them repaired till I return to Athens. Of those terra-cottas which were got out unharmed, a small vase with two holes in the mouth, for being hung up by a cord, is especially deserving of attention; it is surrounded by figures in the shape of hearts with crosses; then saucer-shaped pots with large handles; other little pots in the form of salt-cellars, and several vases round at the bottom with three feet or without feet; terra-cotta scoops in the form of cups with large handles; then a large terra-cotta lid with a handle; it is of a very curious shape, and weighs 730 grammes. We also found several implements of copper.

At a depth of 9 meters (29½ feet) we found a copper lance and a dozen very large vases, brown and black. At the same depth I found a pretty brilliant brown cup in the form of a flower-pot, with two large handles. At a depth of 26 and 29½ feet I have found, since the 5th of the month, eleven beautiful sling-bullets of loadstone and two of porphyry. We met with very few stone implements, only two beautiful axes of diorite, at the depths of 29½ and 33 feet. At the latter depth I again found one of the brush-handles of terra-cotta, which are often found, and some vases with three feet and rings at the sides for hanging them up.

During the last eleven days I have collected 991 of the terra-cotta whorls, 581 of which have symbolical signs, but only 79 have engravings which are new to me. Long thin copper nails with rounded heads, which must have been used as dress or hair pins, were met with at all depths. During these eleven days I have found 20 exquisitely polished axes of diorite.

At a depth of 1 meter (3¼ feet), we yesterday found in the Temple of Athena, beside an inscribed pedestal of black slate, 3 feet 8 inches high and 20¾ inches broad, the statue of a man, of fine white marble, nearly 4 feet high. As is proved by the inscription, it was made by Pytheas of Argos, and was erected by the Ilians in honour of Metrodorus, the son of Themistagoras, of whom it is a representation. The figure was in the position of an orator, as is proved by the footmarks on the pedestal. The head and the feet are unfortunately wanting.

The inscriptions run as follows:--

ΟΔΗΜΟΣΟΙΛΙΕΙΩΝ ΜΗΤΡΟΔΩΡΟΝΘΕΜΙΣΤΑΓΟΡΟΥ

And lower down, on the same side of the pedestal--

ΠΥΘΕΑΣΑΡΓΕΙΟΣΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ

Ὁ δῆμος ὁ Ἰλιείων Μητρόδωρον Θεμισταγόρου Πυθέας Ἀργεῖος ἐποίησε.

There were in antiquity many men named Metrodorus, but only two of them were especially celebrated, and both were natives of Asia Minor. The one, born in Lampsacus, was a pupil of Epicurus;[252] the other, a native of Scepsis, was a philosopher, orator, and statesman, and was held in high esteem by Mithridates VII., Eupator,[253] who afterwards had him put to death in a horrible manner.[254] The name of the father of this Metrodorus of Scepsis is unknown, and whether he was called Themistagoras, or otherwise, is uncertain; but it is extremely probable that the inscription and the statue were raised in honour of the Scepsian orator, philosopher, and statesman. I find no mention whatever of the sculptor Pytheas of Argos. Only one Pytheas, a silver-chaser, is named by Pliny,[255] as being a contemporary of Pompey the Great: Pliny, however, does not state his birthplace. Another Pytheas was a wall painter and a native of Achaia. Neither of these can therefore be the Argive sculptor who made the statue and put his name on the pedestal. But as my learned and much esteemed friend, Professor Stephanos Kummanudes of Athens, has remarked, it is not astonishing that the name of an insignificant sculptor should be forgotten, seeing that the names of so many great kings are lost.

In the same part of the Temple of Athena we found the fragment of a marble slab, which has evidently been very long, with the inscription given on the opposite page.

The Proconsul Caius Claudius Nero, the son of Publius, who is praised in the above inscription, ruled over the province of Asia from 674 to 675 after the foundation of Rome. Hence he lived at the time of Cicero, who mentions him in his orations against Verres.[256]

The Pœmanenians (Ποιμανηνοί) are the inhabitants of the fortress of Pœmanenon, to the south of Cyzicus.[257]

To judge from the form and thickness of the stone, this inscription must have been very long and have contained more than 70 lines. But even the fragment is of historical value, and all the more as we know for certain that it comes down to us from the year 80 B.C.

ΕΠΕΙΤΟΥΑΝΘΥΠΑΤΟΥΓΑΙΟΥΚΛΑΥΔΙΟΥΠΟΠΛΙΟΥΥΙΟΥΝΕΡΩΝΟΣΕΠΙΤΑΞΑΝΤΟΣ ΤΟΙΣΠΟΙΜΑΝΗΝΩΝΑΡΧΟΥΣΙΝΕΞΑΠΟΣΤΕΙΛΑΙΠΡΟΣΗΜΑΣΕΙΣΠΑΡΑΦΥΛΑΚΗΝ ΤΗΣΠΟΛΕΩΣΣΤΡΑΤΙΩΤΑΣΚΑΙΕΠΑΥΤΩΝΗΓΕΜΟΝΑΣΠΟΙΜΑΝΗΝΩΝ ΟΝΤΕΣΗΜΩΝΦΙΛΟΙΚΑΙΕΥΝΟΩΣΔΙΑΚΕΙΜΕΝΟΙΠΡΟΣΤΟΝΔΗΜΟΝΗΜΩΝ ΕΞΑΠΕΣΤΕΙΛΑΝΤΟΥΣΤΕΣΤΡΑΤΙΩΤΑΣΚΑΙΕΠΑΥΤΩΝΗΓΕΜΟΝΑΝΙΚ 5 ΔΡΟΝΜΗΝΟΦΙΛΟΥΥΙΟΣΚΑΙΠΑΡΑΓΕΝΟΜΕΝΟΣΕΙΣΤΗΝΠΟΛΙΝΗΜΩΝ ΤΕΕΝΔΗΜΙΑΝΠΟΙΕΙΤΑΙΚΑΛΗΝΚΑΙΕΥΣΧΗΜΟΝΑΚΑΙΑΞΙΩΣ ΡΟΥΔΗΜΟΥΚΑΙΤΗΣΕΑΥΤΟΥΠΑΤΡΙΔΟΣΤΗΝΤΕΤΩΝ ΕΑΥΤΩΙΝΕΑΝΙΣΚΩΝΕΝΔΗΜΙΑΝΕΥΤ...ΟΝΠ ΤΟΝΚΑΘΑΠΕΡΕΠΙΒΑΛΛΕΙΑΝΔΡ 10 ΧΕΙΡΙΣΜΕΝΗΝΕΑΤΩΙΠΙ ΤΗΝΥΠΕΡΤΗΣΦΥΛΑΚ ΕΙΣΦΕΡΕΤΑΙΣΠΟΥΔ ΕΚΚΑΙΝΩΝΟΥΔΕΙ ΜΟΝΚΑΙ 15

ἐπεὶ τοῦ ἀνθυπάτου Γαΐου Κλαυδίου Ποπλίου υἱοῦ Νέρωνος ἐπιτάξαντος τοῖς Ποιμανηνῶν ἄρχουσιν ἐξαποστεῖλαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἰς παραφυλακὴν τῆς πόλεως στρατιώτας καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτῶν ἡγεμόνας Ποιμανηῶν (οἱ;) ὄντες ἡμῶν φίλοι καὶ εὐνόως διακείμενοι πρὸς τὸν δῆμον ἡμῶν ἐξαπέστειλαν τούς τε στρατιώτας καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτῶν ἡγεμόνα Νίκ(αν-) 5 δρον Μηνοφίλου (υἱ)ὸς καὶ παραγενόμενος εἰς τὴν πόλιν ἡμῶν (τήν) τε ἐνδημίαν ποιεῖται καλὴν καὶ εὐσχήμονα καὶ ἀξί(ως τοῦ τε ἡμετέ-) ρου δήμου καὶ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδος, τήν τε τῶν (ὑφ';) ἑαυτῷ νεανίσκων ἐνδημίαν εὔτ(ακτ)ον π(αρέχεται καὶ ἑαυ-) τὸν καθάπερ ἐπιβάλλει ἀνδρ(ὶ ...... καὶ τὴν ἐξουσίαν τὴν ἐγκε-) 10 χειρισμένην ἑατῷ πι(στῶς καὶ ............. τὴν ὑπὲρ τῆς φυλακ(ῆς .................. εἰσφέρεται σπουδ(ὴν ἐκ καινῶν οὐδει μον καὶ 15