Petersburg,
where in the next year he founded a business house of his own, and
from that time all went well with him. The Crimean War brought him
opportunities which he utilized with such ingenuity as to derive
considerable profit from them. By 1858 he considered that the fortune
he had made was sufficient to warrant him in devoting himself entirely
to archaeology, and though exceptional circumstances obliged him to
return to business for a little, he finally cut himself loose from
it in 1863, and took up the task which was to occupy the remainder
of his busy life.
[Illustration V: WALLED PASSAGE IN WALL, TIRYNS (_p_. 49)
BEEHIVE TOMB (TREASURY OF ATREUS), MYCENAE (_p_. 46)]
His Greek studies had led him to two convictions on which his whole
exploring work was based. First, that the site of ancient Troy was on
the spot called in classical days New Ilium, the Hill of Hissarlik,
near the coast of the AEgean; and second, that the Greek traveller,
Pausanias, was right in stating that the murdered Agamemnon and
his kin were buried within the walls of the Acropolis at Mycenae,
and not without it. In both these opinions he ran counter to the
prevailing views of his time. It was generally believed that, if
Troy had ever any real existence at all, its site was to be looked
for not at Hissarlik, but far inland near Bunarbashi; while the
authority of Pausanias as to the graves of the Atreidae was held
to be quite unreliable.
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