Trade Routes and Constantinople

The text for this paper is taken from a review of my Troy in the Pall Mall Gazette for December 21, 1912. One does not usually take notice of anonymous reviews in the daily press, or answer them at large; but in this case the article is signed by the initials H. A. O., which are transparently those of a serious scholar, entitled to all respect even when he is wrong; and his views have further been adopted and enforced in another review of Troy published in the current number of the J.H.S. under the equally transparent initials of T. W. A. This raises the question above the level of ordinary journalism, and may, I hope, justify further discussion. For both articles involve problems which go to the very root of the whole question of ancient trade routes; and the views of both scholars seem to me so fundamentally erroneous and misleading that they should not pass without challenge. It is my intention to leave out of sight all mere matters of detail in both reviews, and to confine myself to what is really vital. It is, I presume, the wish of both gentlemen that I should retain the pretence of anonymity, so I shall refer to them under the initials which they have themselves preferred.