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. Schliemann resolved to put his convictions to the test of actual excavation. In April, 1870, he cut the first sod of his excavation at Hissarlik. The work went on with varying, but never brilliant, fortune, until the year 1873, when his faith and constancy began at last to meet with their reward. On the south-west of the site a great city gate was uncovered, lines of wall, already partly disclosed, began to show themselves more plainly, and quite close to the gate there was discovered the famous 'Treasure of Priam,' so called, a considerable mass of vessels and ornaments in gold and silver, with a number of spearheads, axes, daggers, and cups, wrought in copper. As the excavations progressed, it became evident that not one city, but many cities, had stood upon this ancient site. The First City, reached, of course, at the lowest level of the excavation, immediately above the virgin soil, belonged to a very early stage of human development. Its remains yielded such objects as stone axes and flint knives, together with the black, hand-made, polished pottery, known as 'bucchero,' which is characteristic of Neolithic sites in the AEgean, ornamented frequently with incised patterns which are filled in with a white chalky substance. The stratum of debris belonging to the First City averages about 8 feet in depth.