Gold-Digger*

SCHLIEMANN, The Story of a Goldseeker--Emil Ludwig-- Little, Brown ($3.50).

Nobody really knew where Troy had stood till Heinrich Schliemann came along and dug it up. Schliemann was not a professional archeologist but a retired indigo tycoon who made his pile and then dug for fun, for treasure, and to satisfy his belief in the literal truth of Homer.

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90) was born in a Mecklenburg parsonage, apprenticed to a grocer at 14 after a sketchy schooling. Business was Heinrich's dish; he prospered so exceedingly that soon he was supporting his family, writing them how they were to behave. Business took him all over Europe, to the U. S. (he made a small fortune in California, became a U. S. citizen), to Russia, where he lived many years and made a disastrous first marriage. Schliemann's hobby was languages. At 33 he spoke 15 tongues but was concentrating on ancient Greek. He was 44 when he turned archeologist.

After a trip around the world Herr Schliemann went to Paris and studied his subject for five years. His first excavation was at Ithaca; his report of what he found there won him a doctorate from the University of Rostock, much abuse from resentful scholars who had no money to go digging ancient sites. Before he started his big job at Troy, divorced, he wanted to marry an appropriate Greek wife. He wrote to a friendly Greek archbishop to get him one. Her name was Sophia; she turned out to be not only beautiful but a great help. The children she bore him he insisted on calling Andromache and Agamemnon.

The excavations at Troy were successful but they found no Homeric treasure. The day before digging was to stop the two Schliemanns, standing together, saw the glint of gold. With great presence of mind they dismissed the workmen, finished the digging themselves, smuggled the treasure away in Sophia's red shawl. Technically all such finds belonged to the Turkish Government, but Schliemann got safely away with it, finally gave it to the Berlin Museum.

Schliemann discovered too much at Troy; not one stratum but several. The level at which he found the treasure he naturally wanted to believe was the Homeric city, but scholars, still disagreeing among themselves, now think Schliemann was probably wrong. A richer find--richest of all archeological finds--Schliemann made four years later, at Mycenae, Greece. His excavations at the ancient sites of Orchomenos and Tiryns were only slightly less fortunate.

A little man with a big head and weak eyes, Schliemann's chief characteristic was his tireless energy. No cloistered scholar but a man of big affairs, he had the unabashed eccentricities of a millionaire. He "instructed every one on the healthy way to live, and if he saw pale women, he would say without ceremony: 'Why don't you take walks?' and to men with red necks: 'Why don't you bathe? You'll get apoplexy. Go for walks! Bathe!' " When he became displeased with Gladstone, "he took [Gladstone's] portrait, called his wife and children, and Gladstone, framed and glazed, was taken in solemn procession to the W.C. and hung up there."

Thinks Biographer Ludwig: Schliemann "is an outstanding example of my repeated contention that the enlightened amateur beats the solid expert every time. ... If Schliemann had at the beginning known the state of Homeric research ... he would have regarded the Trojan War as a legend, and would have spent neither time nor ambition nor money on it. He succeeded purely because he was not an archeologist."

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