In 1890, the
year of his death, Schliemann was on the way to the solution of the
problem, and in 1892, his coadjutor, Professor Doerpfeld, finally
proved that the Sixth City, lying four strata above Schliemann's
Troy, was the true Ilion of the great epic. Its wider circuit had
been missed by Schliemann in his earlier excavations owing to the
fact that, at the centre of the site where he was working, the
debris had been planed and levelled away by the Romans to make
room for the buildings of their New Ilium. The pottery of the Sixth
City was of the type which in the meantime had come to be called
Mycenaean, from the discoveries in the plain of Argos, and its massive
circuit wall, enclosing an area two and a half times greater than
that of the Second City, is quite worthy of the fame of Homeric
Troy. Without much risk of mistake, we may conclude that we have
before us in Plate III. the actual wall from whose summit Andromache
beheld the corpse of the gallant Hector dragged behind the chariot
of his relentless foe. The mere fact of his having to some extent
misinterpreted the evidence of his discoveries can scarcely be
said, however, to take anything from the credit justly due to
Schliemann. Had he been spared for but a year or two longer he
could not have failed to complete his work, and to prove, as his
fellow-worker did, that on the site which he had from the first
contended to be that of Troy, there had stood a large and splendidly
built city, which assuredly belongs to the period of the Trojan War.
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