TROJA, the capital city of Troas, or, according to others, a country of which Ilum was the capital. It
was built on a small eminence near Mount Ida, and the promontory of Sigæum, at the distance of about four miles from the sea-shore. Dardanus the first king of the country built it, and called it Dardania, and from Troas one of his successors it was called Troja, and from Ilus Ilum. This city has been celebrated by Homer and Virgil.
A description of the plain of Troy has been published in French in the 3d volume of the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, by M. Chevalier. The city of Troy, according to him, stood on the present site of the modern village of Bounabachi, which is situated four leagues from the sea, on the side of an eminence, at the termination of a spacious plain, the soil of which is rich and of a blackish colour. Close to the village is to be seen a marsh covered with tall reeds; and the situation is impregnable on all sides except at Erin (Homer's Erines), the hill of wild fig-trees, which extended between the Scæan gate and the sources of the Scamander. In the plain there are several conical mounds or barrows, some of them 100 feet in diameter at the base; and which the author maintains to be the identical tombs raised over the ashes of the heroes of the Trojan war.
Since Chevalier's dissertation appeared, this plain has been investigated by Mr Morritt, Mr Gell, Dr Clarke, Mr Hobhouse, and several other travellers. Dr Clarke traversed the ground in different directions seventeen times. He rejects the hypothesis of Chevalier, and reasoning from the authority of Strabo, and from the scite of New Ilum, which he ascertained by inscriptions found among ruins, he fixes the situation of Troy four or five miles to the northward of Bounabachi, near a sluggish rivulet, called Califat Osmack, which he considers to be the Simois. The name of the Scamander is still preserved in the Mender, the most considerable stream in the district, rising in Mount Ida, as described by Homer; and the Thymbrius is still preserved in the Thymbrek. Dr Clarke also finds objects corresponding to the Calicolone, the tomb of Ilus, and the Throsmos or mound of the plain. But very strong objections have been stated to Dr Clarke's opinions by Mr Hobhouse and others; and, upon the whole, the more the subject is investigated, the more insuperable difficulties seem to present themselves to any attempt to identify the places and objects alluded to by the poet. See Clarke's Travels, vol. 3d, 8vo. and Edinburgh Review, vol. 6th, p. 257.