|
Chapter 2 (part 17)
8. The VIII layer, the Greek Ilion. (p.201)
Above
the houses of the VII layer, but still below the large ashlar buildings
of the Roman period, we have found a number of fortress walls, house
walls and foundations in various parts of the castle, which we
summarize as the VIII layer. We include in it all those buildings and
associated masses of earth that are not yet belong to the IX layer and
thus in the long periods of time from 700 BC to 0 AD. These are both
ancient Greek and more recent Greek buildings. However, it was not
possible to separate the same, because almost all of them are built in
such a simple and partly primitive way that the time of their origin
could not be determined more precisely. Only by the household utensils,
especially by the pottery, which was found next to the walls, could the
buildings be recognized as Greek complexes and to some extent dated.
It
is also the fragments of vases found that prompt us to move the
beginning of the shift back to the year 700 BC and not to put it at
around 500 BC, as I did earlier. In fact, above the houses of the VII
layer and above the large well B b still used by their inhabitants,
numerous vases of "evolved-geometric" style have come to light, placed
by Schmidt around the VII century BC and connected with the Greek
colonization of Troas. Since they are younger than the VII layer
according to where they were found, it is best to count them in the
next, the VIII layer, and let this begin with the VII century BC.
However, we do not possess any buildings which can be ascribed with
certainty to this ancient Greek period; however, it is not impossible
that some undated remains of construction date back to the VII or VI
century.
On
the basis of this dating we have briefly referred to the two periods of
the VII layer in the discussion of the layers (above p. 31) as two
pre-Greek settlements and the VIII layer as the Greek Iliom.
Plate 6: Plan of Troy ruins from the layers VII and VIII.
The
structures that we count as layer VIII are laid out in yellow on Plate
6 and are thus distinguished from the structures of layer VII. There
are partly pieces of ring walls, which prove that the settlement
(p.202) was at least temporarily defensible, partly thin walls that
apparently belonged to residential buildings, partly foundation walls
of unknown purpose. The number of these remains of walls is very small
in relation both to the long period of time during which the stratum
existed and to the many changes to which the Greek city of Ilion and
the sanctuary of Athena are exposed as a result of the historical
events described in Chapter VIII. But this is easily explained by the
demolition of the middle part of the hill carried out by the Romans, in
which large parts of the VI and VII layers and almost the whole of the
VIII layer were destroyed. From the section drawing in fig.6 this
situation can be clearly seen. Only in a few places near the castle
wall remains of buildings of the VIII layer could be preserved at all.
Fig.6: Schematic section through Hissarlik hill showing the nine different strata.
We
begin the description of the ruins uncovered with the curtain wall,
then turn to the walls of dwellings, and finally discuss the older
remains of the sanctuary of Athena.
The eastern ring wall of
layer VIII has been seen several times in the pictures and plans of the
older layers. It is a wall of small stones, which was attached to the
remains of the old 6th layer castle wall from the inside and partly
from the outside. The internal reinforcement is shown in plan in fig.75
and in section in Plate 8. It was still about 2 m high in places, but
has now been broken off in some places to uncover the older Homeric
castle wall.
The external reinforcement is best seen on photos
27 and 28. In photo 27 it is marked d and occupies the whole center
of the picture. It still stands 1-2 m high on top of the rubble that
the castle wall (c) of the VI layer and a house wall (a) of the VII
layer covered. When it was built, the house of the 7th layer was, as
the evidence shows, long buried under a more than 2m high layer of
earth and stones. From the thickness of this layer of rubble we can
conclude that the wall does not belong to the beginning, but only to
the later centuries of the VIII layer.
On the other hand, the
fact that it cannot be younger and in no way belongs to the Roman or
even the Byzantine period is shown with complete certainty from the
fact that it was involved in the construction of the large eastern stoa
of the Athena temple precinct, whose ashlar foundation is shown in
photo 27 as (e), and marked with d on photo 28, came under the ground and was
therefore buried and completely unknown in the post-Christian period.
From the type of masonry, one would hardly have concluded that the time
of construction was the younger Greek epoch. Because the wall has no
specific character and resembles the older Trojan walls of the
prehistoric layers rather than Greek or even Hellenistic structures. It
is assembled from unworked chunks of stone and stones from older
buildings, which have been used here for the second time.
Photo 27: vvv
(p.203)
The piece of wall (d) shown on photo 27 also ended in antiquity at its
present right end. Further to the right, the old castle wall of the VI
layer still formed the outer facade. Of course, it was thoroughly
repaired in its upper part and, as can be seen from the ground plan and
has already been mentioned, it was reinforced on the inside by an
addition made of small stones, so that it had a total thickness of 6 m.
To the left (to the south) the wall d continued a little further and
then went (cf. the floor plan on Plate 6) into a round tower which
adjoined the old tower VI h.
The
right end of the outer reinforcement (b) and the wall of the sixth
layer adjoining to the north (a) can also be seen very well on photo 28
(on p. 192). The strong weathering of the surviving piece (h) of
the Homeric castle wall (a) soon strikes the attentive observer. This
piece is adjoined to the east by a wall (c) projecting like a tower,
through which the former gateway of layers VI and VII became closed. In
terms of design and elevation, it corresponds entirely to
the wall b just described, only its eastern corner, only partially
recognizable in our picture to the right of the Roman ashlar wall d, is
built of larger and better worked stones, which undeniably proves its
origin from a wall of the stately Mycenaean castle.
We have a
good standard for judging the great difference in height from the
worker who in photo 28 stands deep under wall (c) at the height of the
gateway of the sixth tier. When wall (c) was built in Greek times, the
old Homeric castle wall had long since been buried under rubble, and
the only visible part of the superstructure (h) was so disfigured by
weathering that the residents of the time hardly recognized it as the
remains of a once stately castle wall.
 Only
after we had demolished the wall (c) did the gate S of the VII layer
appear behind and below it, as is drawn in fig.41 (on p. 129), and only
after this too had been destroyed, as far as necessary, the old Homeric
castle gate came to light, the image of which is shown in photo 17 (to
p. 120).
Photo 28: xxx
Further north, up to square K 4, the upper part of the
old VI castle wall was restored as a fortress wall. It is not known how
far its substructure was hidden. However, the particularly strong
weathering of a part of the same shows that it must have been partially
visible. In square K 4 we meet again a round tower, which surrounded
the south-eastern part of the large tower VI g and certainly belongs to
layer VIII. The course of this tower to the north has not been
determined, because its northern part was apparently broken off when
the Roman wall IX N was erected.
To the north of this wall,
however, two pieces of the VIII (p.204) curtain wall are again
preserved, which enclose a staircase that is already known to us. It is
the well-preserved stairway of over 40 steps with its side wall of
small stones, which lies beside the north-west side of the great tower
VI g, and is shown in plan in fig.51 (on p. 143). Photos 20-22
illustrate their current condition.
Both the stairway and the
wall that accompanies it are far behind the excellently built tower
wall of the VI layer and the beautiful ashlar walls of the Roman period
in terms of size, processing and joining of the stones. They belong to
a time when Ilion was not of great importance as a fortress. The poor
construction would allow us to assign the stairway and wall to Layer
VII as well as Layer VIII. That they certainly belong to the latter
stratum is evident from the height to which the stairs climb. The last
surviving step is 31.07 m high (see fig.51), and a few more steps have
yet to be added. But even this height dimension does not match the
floor of the VII layer inside the tower, which is at about 28.50 m (cf.
fig.53 on p. 146), while the floor of the VIII layer (32, 20m) is in
very good accordance.
The purpose of the stairway is evident
from the fact that it terminates below at a well Bh, which is
surrounded by walls of small stones. Apparently, people climbed down to
the well to fetch drinking water. Stairs and wells were connected to
the castle by special walls, so that the inhabitants of Ilion could
descend without being noticed by the enemies. At the top, the stairs
opened into a passage drawn on Plate 6, which was below the Roman altar
foundation, but at the excavation of Tower VI g had to be demolished.
We
found almost nothing of the level VIII castle wall on the whole north
side. It was probably broken off during the Roman leveling work and
will have stood at approximately the same place where the northern
boundary wall of the Roman Acropolis (IX W) was later built. Only a
small piece may have been preserved in square J 3, namely the wall
marked (d) on photo 14 (on p. 104), which appears above the remains of
the VI castle wall.
On the west side, where the old Homeric
castle wall is missing, there is a circular wall RM in square A 4,
partly made of large ashlars and partly of smaller stones, which,
because of its height, certainly belongs to one of the youngest strata.
There is some doubt as to whether it should be assigned to layer VIII
because of its small stones, or to layer IX because of its ashlars. The
most correct assumption seems to me to be that it was built in Greek
times but renovated in Roman times.
On the other hand, a wall
that is preserved further south in squares A 6 and A 7 as an external
reinforcement of the Homeric castle wall can certainly be counted as
layer VIII. We have already seen their profile in fig.36 (p.205) (on p.
114). Like the ring wall on the east side of the castle, it consists of
small stones and is only clad with larger stones on the outside. Here,
too, in front of the old gate VI U, at the projection of the southern
wall VI, it merges into a round tower, such as we have seen in two
places on the east side.
We are not informed about the changes
that the southern castle wall of the VI layer underwent in Greek times,
because we have only uncovered its outside in a few places. We could
only determine that the old, very badly weathered castle wall is clad
in several places with younger walls and looks very different from the
outside.
It is questionable whether the southern gate T was
still used as a city gate in the VIII layer, because a wall built of
large and small stones, which can be seen in the ground plan in fig.43
(on p. 132) at (m) and in the view in fig.45 ( on page 134) is drawn at
(d), which seems to have blocked the Thorweg. Because it was a
retaining wall, which only had a well-worked facade to the west and can
therefore only be understood if the gateway behind it was filled in.
In
addition, it seems to have extended to the east beyond the gate,
because a similarly constructed wall has been preserved in square J 8,
which may have formed its continuation. In any case, the latter is also
built on the outside of ashlars and in its rear part of smaller stones,
and thus shows a type of construction that often occurs in Greek walls.
Its belonging to the VIII level is confirmed by the fact that the B
theater is built over it. The only question is whether these thin walls
really contain pieces of a ring wall, or whether they were actually the
retaining walls of Hellenistic buildings.
The various walls that
we have examined on this tour around the castle and counted as part of
the ring wall of the VIII layer do not come from one and the same time,
but all belong to the Greek epoch. These are mostly reinforcements or
repairs to the remains of the old Homeric castle wall that are still
above the ground. Being very simple and almost primitive structures,
with the exception of the last two pieces, they clearly speak for the
minor importance of the city of Ilion in Greek times. Most of the
sections of the wall do not belong to the ancient Greek period, but, as
we were able to prove with the eastern wall, could have been erected in
the later Greek or Hellenistic period at the earliest.
The
ancient writers have handed down to us that Ilion had a fortress wall
at this time. Several sieges of the city took place at that time: in
the middle of the IV century by the Attic general Charidemos, at the
end of the III century by Gallic mercenaries Attalos I and in the year
85 BC by Fimbria, the opponent of Sulla.
It is therefore
fitting that the ring wall that has actually been preserved is
attributed to the period from (p.206) the IVth to the Ist century BC.
However, it could be argued that the latter two sieges were probably
aimed at the lower town, not the castle. However, I do not believe
this, but consider it certain that the circular wall described, which
lies immediately below the Roman buildings, existed in the IVth century
and was still there in the Ist century BC.
In order to determine
the time of its construction, we have to remember the fact, already
mentioned several times, that the Homeric castle wall on the north and
west sides of the hill has been systematically broken down. I linked
this destruction to Strabo's reports of the use of stones from the
Trojan wall to build the fortifications of Sigeion by Archaianax and of
Achilleion by Periander, and then placed them around the middle of the
VI century (cf. p. 112 ).
Although the time of Archaianax from
Mytilene, to which A. Brückner draws my attention, is not exactly
certain, and although the report about Periander, as I have already
emphasized, is held to be incorrect by Strabo and Demetrios, in my
opinion it is at least the most probable It is considered that the
demolition of Wall VI took place during the battles that Mitylene and
Athens were fighting for Sigeion, that is, in the period from the end
of the VII to the middle of the VI century.
The ring wall of
the VIII layer, which according to our description above existed in the
IV century, cannot of course have existed at that time and must have
been built only after those battles. If we assume that the 5th or only
the 4th century was the construction time of the 8th layer ring wall,
then we are in agreement with the fact mentioned above that the eastern
ring wall can only be built when the houses of the 7th layer are
already buried by several meters high.
Only very few remains of
the internal buildings of the VIII layer have been preserved. They are
partly in the north-east in squares J 4 and J 5, partly in the
south-west in squares A 5 to C 7. They are shown in plan on Plate 6.
These are mostly thin, inconspicuous walls made of irregular quarry
stone masonry with earth mortar. Their age cannot be determined from
their construction, but their altitude and the finds made near them are
sure witnesses to their Greek origin. Only two walls, one at J 5 and
the other at A 6, are of good polygonal construction and can therefore
be attributed to the older or middle Greek period.
The fact that
the number of house walls belonging to the VIII layer is relatively
small should not surprise us. For we need only look carefully at the
section through the hill on fig.6 to convince ourselves that the
buildings of the eighth level had to disappear during the leveling work
of the Romans. There is therefore no doubt that the structures of this
layer once covered the entire hill.
(p.207)
One of the simple walls that was preserved in the north-east above
Tower VI g is shown in section with the floor belonging to it in fig.53
(on p. 146).Other walls from the southwestern part of the castle can be
seen in the background on photo 23 (to p. 152), recognizable by the
letter h. The same walls also appear on the left in the background on
photo 6 (to p. 40), above the large foundation blocks of Building VI B
marked with f.
On the other hand, some of the walls from square
J 5 shown on photo 29 (on p. 200) are easier to recognize in terms of
their construction. These walls, built from small stones, form a
corner, showon in the photo with (a) and (b), in the ground plan on
plate 6 is denoted by VIII a.
We see in the photo 29 the less
well constructed inside of the corner; the non-visible outside is
bricked in a better polygonal style. To the left and right of the
corner are other, even more inconspicuous walls (f and g), which belong
to the same layer, but must be somewhat younger because of their higher
position.
Photo 29: Temple square (b) and altar base (d) of the IX layer; house wall (a) of the VIII layer; wall (c) from building VI Q
Of the remaining walls in photo 29, (c) belongs to
building Q of the VI layer, (d) to an unknown building, perhaps of the
VIII layer, to which we shall return later, and (e) is the great ashlar
floor of the Roman period between the Temple of Athena and the great
altar foundation. The photograph clearly shows that this floor extends
over the wall (g) of the eighth layer.
The
construction and the thickness of the walls of level VIII, as well as
the shape of their ground plans, so far as they can still be
recognized, teach us sufficiently that in Greek times very simple
dwellings stood on the castle hill of Ilion. This fits very well with
the picture we got of the small fortified town from the badly built
castle wall, as can be seen in photos 27 and 28. If we now learn from
Strabo (XIII, 593) that Ilion was a village (chome) up to the time of Alexander and still a village town (chomopolis)
in the II century BC, this obviously agrees perfectly with the ruins.
Strabo's statement (XIII, 594) that the houses at the time of Demetrius
did not even have tiled roofs (but apparently flat earth roofs) fits
particularly well.
Earlier, however, according to another
report by Strabo (XIII, 593), a very different picture was made of the
city of Ilion of the III century BC. It was almost universally believed
that Lysimachus not only built a stately temple to Athena, but also
built a 40 stade (7-8 km) wall around the city and settled the
inhabitants of several destroyed neighboring cities here.
Of these statements by Strabo, at most the first can be correct; the other two refer, as the English historian G. Grote (History of Greece
I, p. 260) suspected, to Alexandreia Troas. Because first of all, the
circumference of Ilion, as the ruins certainly teach, may have been
large but cannot possibly be 7-8 km, while Alexandria is actually about
the size given. The great Roman (p.208) city of Illion, the contents of
which we can ascertain, comprises only about a fourth part of the
contents of Alexandria.
Secondly, the same Strabo relates
(594) that the Galatians, who visited soon after Lysimachus III, found
the city without walls, which apparently directly contradicts the first
account. Thirdly, the manner in which Strabo's text speaks of the city
of Alexandria Troas is also very peculiar and arouses suspicion. I
therefore essentially agree with G. Grote in not accepting a ring wall
built by Lysimachus and in not accepting a great Hellenistic city, but
differ in allowing the building of a new temple by Lysimachus.
This
brings us to the question of whether the ruins of a temple and a sacred
precinct have been preserved in Layer VIII in addition to the house
walls.
As early as 1890 we discovered the remains of the
foundations of a large temple in squares G4 and H4, which, according to
the building blocks, sculptures and inscriptions that were also found,
must have been the famous temple of Ilian Athena.
I used to
believe that I had to attribute the whole building, including its
foundations, to the time of Emperor Augustus, but I have been convinced
that parts of the building most likely come from the Hellenistic period
and must be attributed to Lysimachus. However, since the building was
repaired after the destruction by Fimbria and was certainly thoroughly
renewed under Augustus, it is advisable to first discuss it with the
Roman buildings, i.e. with the ninth layer.
But there must have
been a temple on the castle hill of llion before that of Lysimachus was
built. Only we do not know when it was built; neither the excavations
nor the ancient writers teach us about it.
It was shown above
(p. 174) that a temple to the gods may have stood on the Bergamos of
Troy as early as the sixth layer. We did not find any remains of the VI
layer that can be interpreted with certainty, or even just with
probability, as a temple. As far as we know, there are no walls under
the ruins of layers VII and VIII that could claim to belong to a
temple.
Nevertheless, there must have been a temple of Athena
in the VIII layer before the time of Lysimachus. We do not know whether
a temple of Athena already existed at the beginning of the fifth
century, when Xerxes visited Bergamos of Troy (Herodotus VII, 43),
because Herodotus does not expressly mention a temple. Since the
historian speaks only of a sacrifice to the Ilian Athena and not of a
visit to a temple, it is possible that a sanctuary without a temple
existed.
Strabon's story (XIII, 600) about the sending of
Locrian virgins to llion only proves the existence of a sanctuary.
Arrian (Alex. Anab. I, 11,8) mentions a temple in Ellion only for the
time of Alexander the Great. For this time Strabon only speaks (p.209)
of a hieron, i.e. a sanctuary, without mentioning a temple, and expressly adds that the hieron was michron (small) and euteles
until Alexander's visit. If, as we must assume from Arrian's testimony,
there was already a temple in the sacred precinct before Lysimachus, it
can only have been a very small one.
According to Strabo, this
insignificant sanctuary was decorated with votive offerings by
Alexander and the village of Ilion was raised to a polis. The king had
also promised the Illians, both verbally and in writing, to make their
city great and their sanctuary famous, but he himself did not carry out
the promises.
Only Lysimachus redeemed the promise, at least
in part, by building a temple and probably contributing in other ways
to raising the importance of the sanctuary. We have had to deny that he
also made the city big and surrounded it with a wall of 40 stadia. But
in the third century BC, as A. Brückner shows in Chapter VIII of this
book on the basis of preserved inscriptions, the sanctuary of the Ilian
Athena was of great importance and the sacred center of an Ilian
federation of cities.
Of the temple which stood at Ilion before
the time of Lysimachus, and of the sacred precincts enclosing it, we
have found no sure remains. At the place where the temple of Lysimachus
was built, namely in the squares G 4 and H 4, neither older temple
foundations nor other buildings of a sanctuary have come to light.
The
older building will therefore have been located either further inwards
of the castle on a higher terrace or further west or east on the
terrace of the later temple. For a time I believed the latter, because
at J 5, south of the foundation of the great altar, a foundation of
blocks of limestone was uncovered, differing from the other foundations
of the Roman period in being of harder and less worked material, and
therefore possibly could be assigned as an older
Temple. It is the strong wall marked (d) on photo 29 , which is on
the same level as the thinner house walls of layer VIII that can be
seen in the same picture.
However, I later convinced myself that
these house walls come so close to the foundation on several sides that
this cannot have existed at the same time as them. It will therefore
belong to the younger altar building, the floor plan of which is
unfortunately not entirely understandable.
The older temple was
therefore probably located on a higher terrace to the south or
south-west of the later temple, on a terrace whose walls and layers of
earth were removed during leveling work in Roman times. The Heraion at
Argos is a striking example of the similar arrangement of a younger
temple on a lower terrace below the older one. Of course, at Ilion,
when the younger temple was being built, the houses near it must have
been demolished and their foundations buried (p.210), while in other
parts of the hill the buildings of the VIII level then still survived.
There
are also no pieces that are definitely associated with the building
elements of the older temple. However, in the foundations of some Roman
buildings we have found several fragments of architectural pieces from
Pores, which join together to form the Doric entablature shown in
fig.78, and which in the book Troy (p. 219) have been attributed to a temple of the IV century BC.
In
my opinion, however, their art form excludes belonging to a temple of
the 5th or 4th century BC. I suspect that these Doric elements may have
belonged to some other, somewhat more recent building in the sacred
precinct, which was demolished during the great Roman alterations to
the castle. The height of the triglyph is 0.36 m and its width is 0.28
m; the height of the architrave is not known and has only been added to
the drawing as a guess. The upper diameter of the column is 0.45m. A
notable peculiarity of the entablature is the occurrence of only 5 nail
heads on the ledges of the architrave, while on the geison there are,
as usual, 6 such heads.
 Fig.78: Entablature of a Doric building in Pores. (1:15)
All
buildings of the VIII layer, namely the fortress wall, the houses and
also the temple, were damaged and partially destroyed when the city was
conquered and destroyed by Fimbria in 85 BC. Admittedly, the reports of
the writers, namely Strabo (XIII, 593) and Appian (I, 364), do not
agree with regard to the degree of destruction, in that Appian speaks
of a total annihilation in which nothing remained standing, while
Strabo mentions no such thing.
But the destruction must have
been thorough, for although Sulla aided it and restored much, Julius
Caesar, when he visited Ilion according to Lucan (IX, 998), seems to
have seen the city still in ruins. Nevertheless, the series of Roman
benefactors begins with Sulla and Caesar, who made a large, magnificent
city with colonnades, theaters and stately buildings out of the
destroyed "village town" of the VIII layer and restored the (p.211)
sanctuary of Athena and furnished it richly.
As an inscription
to be mentioned later documents, the reconstruction of the Athena temple
was first carried out by Emperor Augustus. Most of the other buildings
in the district were probably only built under Augustus and his
successors. With this period we begin with the last layer.
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 18]
[Return to Table of Contents]
|
|