And second, that even in the gorgeous
picture given by the Homeric poems of the period with which they
deal, there is a constant tendency to regard that period as being
only the decadent and inferior heir of a civilization which had
preceded it. Nothing is plainer in Homer than the suggestion that
the men of the age before the Trojan Wars were greater, stronger,
wiser, better in every respect than even the heroes who fought on
'the ringing plains of windy Troy,' even as these were greater
than the men of the poet's own degenerate days. Does it not seem
as though we were being led towards the conclusion that the Homeric
civilization is itself the representation of a very real fact of
history, the picture of a state of things which was submerged and
swept away by the coming of the Dorians, or by whatever inrush of
wild northern tribes the Greeks may have called by that general
title, but which was itself only the last decadent stage of an
antecedent culture, still greater and more highly developed--that
of the legendary period? The answer to this question has come in
the most surprising and romantic fashion from the archaeological
discoveries of the last forty years.
CHAPTER III
SCHLIEMANN AND HIS WORK
The man whose labours were to give a new impetus to the study of
Greek origins, and to be the beginning of the revelation of an
unknown world of ancient days, was born on January 6, 1822, at
Neu Buckow in Mecklenburg-Schwerin.
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