When Troy Was Besieged

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 69, 18 October 1940, Page 5

When Troy Was Besieged

S every schoolboy would know if he were a Tom Macaulay, the loss of surface-water in the Mediterranean by evaporation is not compensated for by the inflow of rivers. Consequently from both ends of that vast inland lake there is a constant inrush current, through Gibraltar in the west and through the Dardanelles (or Hellespont, as the ancients called it) at the eastern end, where, accord-

ing to the strength of the prevailing north-east wind, there is a steady flow into the Mediterranean of from three to six knots. This swift current, difficult enough at the Dardanelles for modern steamers, and often made more formidable by strong winds, was so serious a problem for ancient shipping that it was a regular custom to unload cargo under lee of the headland and

transport it ovesland to a port in the Hellespont. The road across this plain was commanded by the town uf Troy, and the Trojan chieftains maintained the road and levied toll in those far-off days. Now, the early Greeks (the Achaeans of Homer), yellow haired heroes whose favourite title was "sacker of cities," had accepted the challenge of the high-handed and doubtless none too scrupulous toll-collectors who bestrode the path of Greek progress eastwards. It was an age of sieges, and the most famous seems to have been their siege of Troy. That was over three thousand years ago, about 1180 B.C. ("Homer and the Heroic Age’"’: Prof. T. D. Adams, 4YA, October 1.)