As Homer is so well informed about the topography and the climatic conditions of the Troad, there can surely be no doubt that he had himself visited Troy. But, as he was there long after its destruction, and its site had moreover been buried deep in the _debris_ of the ruined town, and had for centuries been built over by a new town, Homer could neither have seen the Great Tower of Ilium nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great enclosing Wall, nor the palace of Priam; for, as every visitor to the Troad may convince himself by the excavations, the ruins and red ashes of Troy alone--forming a layer of from five to ten feet thick--covered all these remains of immortal fame, and this accumulation of _debris_ must have been much more considerable at the time of Homer's visit. Homer made no excavations so as to bring those remains to light, but he knew of them from tradition; for the tragic fate of Troy had for centuries been in the mouths of all minstrels, and the interest attached to it was so great that tradition itself gave the exact truth in many details. "Say now, ye Nine, who on Olympus dwell, Muses--for ye are Goddesses, and ye Were _present_ and know all things; _we ourselves_ _But hear from Rumor's voice_, and nothing know-- Who were the chiefs and mighty lords of Greece." Such, for instance, is the memory of the Scæan Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scæan Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double, and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines of the Iliad, it now seems extremely probable that, at the time of Homer's visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended in a direct line from Æneas. "But o'er the Trojans shall Æneas reign, And his sons' sons, through ages yet unborn."