Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progressBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Inventions; Progress
harbors treasures which the coming years may reveal.
The worship of Demeter and the nature of the Eleusinian mysteries are
much clearer since the successful excavations that were conducted at
Eleusis. Tanagra is of interest because of the clay figurines, the
manufacture of which was one of the specialties of ancient Bœotia.
Those figures, prepared partly from religious motives, partly as a
tribute to the dead, are valuable as illustrations of popular customs.
Great credit is due to the American school for the thorough manner in
which excavations have been conducted by it, and while the results
are not as striking as in some other places, so fundamental a problem
as the arrangement of the Greek theatre, which has been engaging the
attention of archæologists for the past decade, has been brought nearer
to its solution through excavations at Eretria. At Argos a head of Hera
was discovered, which is now famous as one of the best specimens of the
Polycletan school.
No sketch of Greek archæology, however brief, would be complete without
mention of a man who exhibited singular devotion and rare enthusiasm
for the study of the past. Heinrich Schliemann, by dint of individual
effort, laid bare the remains of pre-Grecian civilization at Mycenæ and
Tiryns, and, prompted by a theory which for a long time provoked naught
but ridicule, devoted many years and a large fortune to excavations
at Hissarlik, on the coast of Asia Minor, which, he believed, was the
scene of the Trojan War. At the latter place no less than nine cities,
erected one above the ruins of the other, have been found, but the
theory of Schliemann which identified the second layer with ancient
Troy, afterward known to the Greeks as Ilium, has been shown to be
false. It is the sixth layer that represents the ruins of Homer’s Troy.
At the same time, it must be remembered that the Homeric poems, while
based upon historic events, are not history, and the attempt to test
their supposed historical accuracy by the results of excavations is
now regarded by Greek students as futile and unscientific. But this
view in no way diminishes the credit due to Schliemann, who not only
did more to stir up popular interest in ancient Greece than any other
man living, but has illuminated the early chapters of Greek history
which were almost unknown to the scholars of this century. It now
appears that Phœnician traders, settling on the coast of Asia Minor
and in districts adjacent to the islands of the Ægean sea and harbors,
which furnished a refuge for their ships, gave the first impulse to
Greek art, and, although they were outdistanced by their apt pupils,
the traces of Phœnician influence remain in Greek architecture, and
more particularly in Greek cults, down to the latest times. Apart from
the direct bearings of the excavations conducted in various parts of
Greece upon the development of Greek art, the most important results of
the work consist in the vast increase of material for Greek history,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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