As we have seen in the preceding pages, the inhabitants of Novum Ilium held, according to an ancient legend, that Troy, the city of Priam, had not been entirely destroyed by the united Greek army under Agamemnon, and that it had never ceased to be inhabited. This legend is certainly confirmed by Homer, who, when Aeneas was on the point of being killed by Achilles in single combat, makes Poseidon say: “It is fated that Aeneas should be saved, in order that the race and the name of Dardanus may not utterly disappear—Dardanus, whom Zeus loved most of all the sons he begat of mortal women; because the race of Priam has now become odious to the son of Kronos: now, therefore, shall the mighty Aeneas reign over the Trojans, and the sons of his sons hereafter to he born.”

This legend has apparently been also confirmed by the criticism of my pickaæe and spade, for—as visitors can easily convince themselves with their own eyes—the south-eastern corner of the Third, the brick city, has not been destroyed by the conflagration. I must further say that this legend is also confirmed by the relies I have discovered, for—as the reader will see in the succeeding pages—we find among the successors of the burnt city the very same singular idols; the very same primitive bronze battle-axes; the very same terra-cotta vases, with or without tripod feet; the very same double-handled goblets (δέπα ἀμϕικύπελλα); the very same battle-axes of jade, porphyry, and diorite; the same rude stone hammers and saddle-querns of trachyte; the same immense mass of whorls or balls of terracotta with symbolical signs.