Whatever other excursions a traveller may make in the Morea, he ought not to omit a trip to Sparta, which has so often been the centre of power, and is still one of the chief centres of attraction in Greece. And yet many reasons conspire to make this famous place less visited than the rest of the country. It is distinctly out of the way from the present starting-points of travel. To reach it from Athens, or even from Patras or Corinth, requires several days, and it is not remarkable for any of those architectural remains which are more attractive to the modern inquirer than anything else in a historic country.
Of the various routes we choose (in 1884) that from Nauplia by Astros, as we had been the guests for some days of the hospitable Dr. Schliemann, who was prosecuting his now famous researches at Tiryns. So we rose one morning with the indefatigable doctor before dawn,173 and took a boat to bring us down the coast to Astros. The morning was perfectly fair and calm, and the great mountain chains of the coast were mirrored in the opal sea, as we passed the pic[pg 436]turesque rocky fort which stands close to Nauplia in the bay, the residence of the public executioner. The beauty of the Gulf of Argos never seemed more perfect than in the freshness of the morning, with the rising sun illuminating the lofty coasts. Our progress was at first by the slow labor of the oar, but as the morning advanced there came down a fresh west wind from the mountains, which at intervals filled our lateen sail almost too well, and sent us flying along upon our way. In three hours we rounded a headland, and found ourselves in the pretty little bay of Astros.
Of course, the whole population came down to see us. They were apparently as idle, and as ready to be amused, as the inhabitants of an Irish village. But they are sadly wanting in fun. You seldom hear them make a joke or laugh, and their curiosity is itself curious from this aspect. After a good deal of bargaining we agreed for a set of mules and ponies to bring us all the way round the Morea, to Corinth if necessary, though ultimately we were glad to leave them at Kyparissia, at the opposite side of Peloponnesus, and pursue our way by sea. The bargain was eight drachmas per day for each animal; a native, or very experienced traveller, could have got them for five to six drachmas.
Our way led us up a river course, as usual through fine olive-trees and fields of corn, studded with scarlet anemones, till after a mile or two we [pg 437]began to ascend from the level of the coast to the altitudes of the central plateau, or rather mountain system, of the Morea. Here the flora of the coast gave way to fields of sperge, hyacinths, irises, and star of Bethlehem. Every inch of ascent gave us a more splendid and extended view back over coasts and islands. The giant tops of the inner country showed themselves still covered with snow. We were in that district so little known in ancient history, which was so long a bone of contention between Argos and Sparta, whose boundaries seem never to have been fixed by any national landmark. When we had reached the top of the rim of inland Alps, we ascended and descended various steeps, and rounded many glens, reaching in the end the village of Hagios Petros, which we had seen before us for a long time, while we descended one precipice and mounted another to attain our goal. It was amusing to see our agogiatæ or muleteers pulling out fragments of mirror, and arranging their toilette, such as it was, before encountering the criticism of the Hagiopetrans. One of these men was indeed a handsome soldierly youth, who walked all day with us for a week over the roughest country, in miserable shoes, and yet without apparent fatigue.
Another, a great stout man with a beard, excused himself for not being married by saying he was too little (εἶναι μικρός), and so we learned that as they are all expected to marry, and do marry, twenty-five [pg 438]is considered the earliest proper age. One would almost think they had preserved some echo of Aristotle’s views, which make thirty years the best age for marriage—thirty years! when most of us are already so old as to have lost interest in these great pleasures.
At Hagios Petros we were hospitably received by the demarch, a venerable old man with a white beard, who was a physician, unfortunately also a politician, and who insisted on making a thousand inquiries about Mr. Gladstone and Prince Bismarck, while we were starving and longing for dinner. Some fish, which the muleteers had providently bought at Astros and brought with them, formed the best part of the entertainment, if we except the magnificent creature, adorned in all his petticoats and colors and knives, who came in to see us before dinner, and kissed our hands with wonderful dignity, but who turned out to be the waiter at the table. We asked the demarch how he had procured himself so stately a servant, and he said he was the clerk in his office. It occurred to us, when we watched the grace and dignity of every movement in this royal-looking person, how great an effect splendid costume seems to have on manners. It was but a few days since that I had gone to a very fashionable evening party at a handsome palace in Athens, and had been amused at the extraordinary awkwardness with which various very learned men[pg 439]—professors, archæologists, men of independent means—had entered the room. The circle was, I may add, chiefly German. Here was a man, ignorant, acting as a servant and yet a king in demeanor. But how could you expect a German professor in his miserable Frankish dress to assume the dignity of a Greek in palicar costume, in forty yards of petticoat, his waist squeezed with female relentlessness, with his ruby jacket and gaiters, his daggers and pistols at his belt. After all, manners are hardly attainable, as a rule, without costume.
We were accommodated as well as the worthy demarch could manage for the night. As a special favor I was put to sleep into his dispensary, a little chamber full of galley-pots, pestles, and labelled bottles of antiquated appearance, and dreamt in turns of the study of Faust and of the apothecary’s shop in Mantua, which we see upon the stage.
Early in the morning we climbed up a steep ascent to attain the high plateau, very bleak and bare, which is believed by the people to have been the scene of the conflict of Othryades and his men with the Argive 300. A particular spot is still called στοὺς φονευμένους, the place of the slain. The high plain, about 3500 feet above the sea, was all peopled with country-folk coming to a market at Hagios Petros, and we had ample opportunity of admiring both the fine manly appearance and the excellent manners of this hardy and free [pg 440]peasantry. The complex of mountains in which they live is the chain of Parnon, which ultimately extends from Thyreatis through Kynuria down to Cape Malea, but not without many breaks and crossings. The heights of Parnon (now called Malevo) still hid from us the farther Alps of the inner country.
After a ride of an hour or two we descended to the village of Arachova, much smaller and poorer than its namesake in Phocis (above, p. 274), and thence to the valley of a stream called Phonissa, the murderess, from its dangerous floods, but at the moment a pleasant and shallow brook. Down its narrow bed we went for hours, crossing and recrossing it, or riding along its banks, with all the verdure gradually increasing with the change of climate and of shelter, till at last a turn in the river brought us suddenly in sight of the brilliant serrated crest of Taygetus, glittering with its snow in the sunshine. Then we knew our proper landmark, and felt that we were indeed approaching Sparta.
But we still had a long way to ride down our river till we reached its confluence with the Eurotas, near to which we stopped at a solitary khan, from which it is an easy ride to visit the remains of Sellasia. During the remaining three hours we descended the banks of the Eurotas, with the country gradually growing richer, and the stream so deep that it could no longer be forded. There is a quaint [pg 441]high mediæval bridge at the head of the vale of Sparta. On a hot summer’s afternoon, about five o’clock, we rode, dusty and tired, into Sparta.
The town was in holiday, and athletic sports were going on in commemoration of the establishment of Greek liberty. Crowds of fine tall men were in the very wide regular streets, and in the evening this new town vindicated its ancient title of εὐρύχορος. But the very first glance at the surroundings of the place was sufficient to correct in my mind a very widespread error, which we all obtain from reading the books of people who have never studied history on the spot. We imagine to ourselves the Spartans as hardy mountaineers, living in a rude alpine country, with sterile soil, the rude nurse of liberty. They may have been such when they arrived in prehistoric times from the mountains of Phocis, but a very short residence in Laconia must have changed them very much. The vale of Sparta is the richest and most fertile in Peloponnesus. The bounding chains of mountains are separated by a stretch, some twenty miles wide, of undulating hills and slopes, all now covered with vineyards, orange and lemon orchards, and comfortable homesteads or villages. The great chain on the west limits the vale by a definite line, but toward the east the hills that run toward Malea rise very gradually and with many delays beyond the arable ground. The old Spartans therefore settled in the richest and best [pg 442]country available, and must from the very outset of their career have had better food, better climate, and hence much more luxury than their neighbors.
We are led to the same conclusion by the art-remains which are now coming to light, and which are being collected in the well-built local museum of the town. They show us that there was an archaic school of sculpture, which produced votive and funeral reliefs, and therefore that the old Spartans were by no means so opposed to art as they have been represented in the histories. The poetry of Alkman, with its social and moral freedom, its suggestions of luxury and good living, shows what kind of literature the Spartan rulers thought fit to import and encourage in the city of Lycurgus. The whole sketch of Spartan society which we read in Plutarch’s Life and other late authorities seems rather to smack of imaginary reconstruction on Doric principles than of historical reality. Contrasts there were, no doubt, between Dorians and Ionians, nay, even between Sparta and Tarentine or Argive Dorians; but still Sparta was a rich and luxurious society, as is confessed on all hands where there is any mention of the ladies and their homes. We might as well infer from the rudeness of the dormitories in the College at Winchester, or from the simplicity of an English man-of-war’s mess, that our nation consisted of rude mountaineers living in the sternest simplicity.
[pg 443]But if I continue to write in this way I shall have all the pedants down upon me. Let us return to the Sparta of to-day. We lodged at a very bad and dear inn, and our host’s candid excuse for his exorbitant prices was the fact that he very seldom had strangers to rob, and so must plunder those that came without stint. His formula was perhaps a little more decent, but he hardly sought to disguise the plain truth. When we sought our beds, we found that a very noisy party had established themselves below to celebrate the Feast of the Liberation, with supper, speeches, and midnight revelry.
So, as usual, there was little possibility of sleep. Moreover, I knew that we had a very long day’s journey before us to Kalamata, so I rose before the sun and before my companions, to make preparations and to rouse the muleteers.
On opening my window, I felt that I had attained one of the strange moments of life which can never be forgotten. The air was preternaturally clear and cold, and the sky beginning to glow faintly with the coming day. Straight before me, so close that it almost seemed within reach of voice, the giant Taygetus, which rises straight from the plain, stood up into the sky, its black and purple gradually brightening into crimson, and the cold blue-white of its snow warming into rose. There was a great feeling of peace and silence, and yet a vast diffusion of sound. From the whole plain, with all its home[pg 444]steads and villages, myriads of cocks were proclaiming the advent of the dawn. I had never thought there were so many cocks in all the world. The ever-succeeding voices of these countless thousands kept up one continual wave of sound, such as I suppose could not be equalled anywhere else; and yet for all that, as I have said, there was a feeling of silence, a sense that no other living thing was abroad, an absolute stillness in the air, a deep sleep over the rest of nature.
How long I stood there, and forgot my hurry, I know not, but starting up at last as the sun struck the mountain, I went down, and found below stairs another curious contrast. All over the coffee-room (if I may so dignify it) were the disordered remains of a disorderly revel, ashes and stains and fragments in disgusting confusion; and among them a solitary figure was mumbling prayers in the gloom to the image of a saint with a faint lamp burning before it. In the midst of the wrecks of dissipation was the earnestness of devotion, prayer in the place of ribaldry; perhaps, too, dead formalism in the place of coarse but real enjoyment.
We left for Mistra before six in the morning, so escaping some of the parting inspection which the whole town was ready to bestow upon us. The way led us past many orchards, where oranges and lemons were growing in the richest profusion on great trees, as large as the cherry-trees in the Alps. The [pg 445]branches were bending with their load, and there was fruit tumbled into the grass, and studding the ground in careless plenty with its ruddy and pale gold. In these orchards, with their deep green masses of foliage, the nightingales sing all day, and we heard them out-carolling the homelier sounds of awakening husbandry. During all the many rides I have taken through Greece, no valley ever struck me with the sense of peace and wealth so much as that of Sparta.
After an hour or so we reached the picturesque town of Mistra, now nearly deserted, but all through the Middle Ages the capital of the district, nestled under the shelter of the great fortress of the Villehardouins, the family of the famous chronicler. Separated by a deep gorge (or langada) with its torrent from the loftier mountain, this picturesque rock with its fortress contains the most remarkable mediæval remains, Latin, Greek, Venetian, Turkish, in all the Morea. Villehardouins and Paleologi made it their seat of power, and filled it with churches and palaces, to which I shall return when we speak of mediæval Greece. An earthquake about fifty years ago destroyed many of the houses, and the population then founded the new Sparta, with its wide, regular streets, on the site of the old classical city. This resettlement is not so serious a hindrance to archæology as the rebuilding of Athens, for we know that in the days of its real greatness Sparta was a mere [pg 446]aggregate of villages, and the walls and theatre which are still visible must have been built in late Greek or Roman times. The so-called tomb of Leonidas, a square chamber built with huge blocks of ashlar masonry, of which three courses remain, appears like building of the best period, but its history is wholly unknown.
We reached in another hour the steep village of Trypi, at the very mouth of the great pass through Taygetus—a beautiful site, with houses and forest trees standing one above the other on the precipitous steep; and below, the torrent rushing into the plain to join the Eurotas. It is from this village that we ought to have started at dawn, and where we should have spent the previous night, for even from here it takes eleven full hours to reach Kalamata on the Gulf of Messene. The traveller should send on his ponies, or take them to Mistra and thence to Trypi on the previous afternoon. The lodging there is probably not much worse than at Sparta.
From this point we entered at once into the great Langada pass, the most splendid defile in Greece—the only way from Sparta into Messene for a distance of thirty miles north and south. It is indeed possible to scale the mountain at a few other points, but only by regular alpine climbing, whereas this is a regular highway; and along it strings of mules, not without trouble, make their passage daily, when [pg 447]the snow does not lie, from Sparta and from Kalamata.
Nothing can exceed the picturesqueness and beauty of this pass, and nothing was stranger than the contrast between its two steeps. That which faced south was covered with green and with spring flowers—pale anemones, irises, orchids, violets, and, where a stream trickled down, with primroses—a marsh plant in this country. All these were growing among great boulders and cliffs, whereas on the opposite side the whole face was bleak and barren, the rocks being striated with rich yellow and red veins. I suppose in hot summer these aspects are reversed. High above us, as it were, looking down from the summits, were great forests of fir-trees—a gloomy setting to a grandiose and savage landscape. The day was, as usual, calm and perfectly fine, with a few white clouds relieving the deep blue of the sky. As we were threading our way among the rocks of the river-course we were alarmed by large stones tumbling from above, and threatening to crush us. Our guides raised all the echoes with their shouts, to warn any unconscious disturber of this solitude that there were human beings beneath, but on closer survey we found that our possible assassins were only goats clambering along the precipice in search of food, and disturbing loose boulders as they went.
Farther on we met other herds of these quaint [pg 448]creatures generally tended by a pair of solitary children, who seemed to belong to no human kin, but, like birds or flowers, to be the natural denizens of these wilds. They seemed not to talk or play; we never heard them sing, but passed them sitting in curious vague listlessness, with no wonder, no curiosity, in their deep solemn eyes. There, all the day long, they heard no sound but the falling water, the tinkling of their flocks, and the great whisper of the forest pines when the breeze touched them on its way down the pass. They took little heed of us as we passed, and seemed to have sunk from active beings into mere passive mirrors of the external nature around them. The men with us, on the other hand, were constantly singing and talking. They were all in a strange country which they had never seen; a serious man with a gun slung around his shoulder was our guide from Trypi, and so at last we reached the top of the pass, about four thousand feet high, marked by a little chapel to St. Elias, and once by a stone pillar stating the boundary between Sparta and Messene. It was then up this pass, and among these forests, that the young Spartans had steeled themselves by hunting the wolf and the bear in peace, and by raids and surprises in days of war.
The descent was longer and more varied; sometimes through well cultivated olive yards, mulberries, and thriving villages, sometimes along giant slopes, where a high wind would have made our progress [pg 449]very difficult. Gradually the views opened and extended, and in the evening we could see down to the coast of Messene, and the sea far away. But we did not reach Kalamata till long after nightfall, and rested gladly in a less uncomfortable inn than we had yet found in the journey.
The town is a cheery and pleasant little place, with remains of a large mediæval castle occupied by Franks, Venetians, Turks, which was the first seat of the Villehardouins, and from which they founded their second fort at Mistra. The river Nedon here runs into the sea, and there is a sort of open roadstead for ships, where steamers call almost daily, and a good deal of coasting trade (silk, currants, etc.) goes on. The only notable feature in the architecture is the pretty bell tower of the church, of a type which I afterward saw in other parts of Messenia, but which is not usual in these late Byzantine buildings.
As there was nothing to delay us here, we left next morning for the convent of Vourkano, from which we were to visit Mount Ithome, and the famous ruins of Epaminondas’s second great foundation in Peloponnesus—the revived Messene. The plain (called Macaria or Felix from its fertility) through which we rode was indeed both rich and prosperous, but swampy in some places and very dusty in others. There seemed to be active cultivation of mulberries, figs, olives, lemons, almonds, [pg 450]currant-grapes, with cactus hedges and plenty of cattle. There were numerous little pot-houses along the road, where mastich and lucumia were sold, as well as dried fruit and oranges. If the Nedon was broad and shallow, we found the Pamisos narrow and deep, so that it could only be crossed by a bridge. A few hours brought us to the ascent of Mount Ithome, on a high shoulder of which is situated the famous and hospitable convent of Vourkano (or Voulkano).
The building, very picturesquely situated high on the side of Mount Ithome, commands a long slope covered with brushwood and wild-flowers, the ideal spot for a botanist, as many rills of water run down the descent and produce an abundant and various vegetation. There is not a sod of soil which does not contain bulbs and roots of flowers. Below stretches the valley of Stenyclarus, so famous in the old annals of Messene. It was studded with groves of orange and lemon, olive and date, mulberry and fig. The whole of this country has an aspect far more southern and subtropical than any part of Laconia.
The monks treated us with great kindness, even pressing us to sit down to dinner before any ablutions had been thought of, and while we were still covered with the dust of a very hot and stormy journey along high roads. The plan of the building, which is not old, having been moved down from [pg 451]the summit in the last century, is that of a court closed with a gateway, with covered corridors above looking into the court, and a very tawdry chapel occupying its centre. It seemed a large and well-to-do establishment, a sort of Greek Monte Cassino in appearance; and with the same stir of country people and passing visitors about it. Far above us, on the summit of Mount Ithome—the site of human sacrifices to Zeus Ithomates in days of trouble—we saw a chapel on the highest top, 2500 feet over the sea. Here they told us that a solitary anchorite spent his life, praying and doing service at his altar, far above the sounds of human life. We made inquiry concerning the history of this saint, who was once a wealthy Athenian citizen, with a wife and family. His wife was dead, and his sons settled in the world, so he resolved to devote the rest of his years to the service of God apart from the ways of men. Once a fortnight only he descended to the convent, and brought up the necessary food. On his lonely watch he had no company but timid hares, travelling quail, and an occasional eagle, that came and sat by him without fear, perhaps in wonder at this curious and silent friend. The monks below had often urged him to catch these creatures for their benefit, but he refused to profane their lofty asylum. So he sits, looking out from his watch upon sunshine and rain, upon hot calm and wild storm, with the whole Peloponnesus extended [pg 452]beneath his eyes. He sees from afar the works and ways of men, and the world that he has left for ever. Is it not strange that still upon the same height men offer to their God these human sacrifices, changed indeed in appearance, but in real substance the same?
The main excursion from the monastery is over the saddle of the mountain westward, and through the “Laconian gate” down into the valley beneath, to see the remains of Epaminondas’s great foundation, the new Messene. There are still faint traces of a small theatre and some other buildings, but of the walls and gates enough to tell us pretty clearly how men built fortifications in those days. The circuit of the walls included the fort on the summit, and enclosed a large tract of country, so much that it would be impossible for any garrison to defend it, and accordingly we hear of the city being taken by sudden assault more than once. The plan is very splendid, but seems to us rather ostentatious than serious for a new foundation liable to attacks from Sparta. The walls were, however, beautifully built, with towers at intervals, and gates for sallies. The best extant gate is called the Arcadian, and consisted of an outer and inner pair of folding-doors, enclosing a large round chamber for the watch. The size of the doorposts and lintels is gigantic, and shows that there was neither time nor labor spared to make Messene a stately settlement. There was [pg 453]almost enough land enclosed within the walls to feed the inhabitants of the houses, for their number never became very great. If Megalopolis, a far more successful foundation, was far too large for its population, how much more must this have been the case with Messene? In military architecture, however, we have no other specimen of old Hellenic work equal to it, except perhaps Eleutheræ, which resembles it in style strongly, though the enclosure is quite small in comparison.
We could have gone up from Messene by a very long day’s ride to Bassæ, and so to Olympia, but we had had enough of riding and preferred to make a short day to the sea at Kyparissia, and thence by steamer to Katakolo, from which rail and road to Olympia are quite easy. So we left the convent in the morning and descended into the valley, to turn north and then north-east, along the river courses which mark the mule-tracks through the wild country. We crossed a strange bridge over the junction of two rivers made of three arches meeting in the centre, and of which the substructure were certainly old Greek building. We then passed through bleak tracts of uncultivated land, perhaps the most signal case of insufficient population we had seen in Greece. All these waste fields were covered with great masses of asphodel, through which rare herds of swine were feeding, and the sight of these fields suggested to me that by the [pg 454]“meadow of asphodel” in Homer is not meant a pleasant garden, or desirable country, but merely a dull waste in which there is nothing done, and no sign of human labor or human happiness. Had there been night or gloom over this stony tract, with its tall straggling plants and pale flowers, one could easily imagine it the place which the dead hero inhabited when he told his friend that the vilest menial on earth was happier than he.
After some hours the mountains began to approach on either side, and we reached a country wonderful in its contrast. Great green slopes reached up from us far away into the hills, studded with great single forest trees, and among them huge shrubs of arbutus and mastich, trimmed and rounded as if for ornament. It was like a splendid park, kept by an English magnate. The regularity of shape in the shrubs arises, no doubt, from the constant cropping of the young shoots all round by herds of goats, which we met here and there in this beautiful solitude. The river bank where we rode was clothed with oleander, prickly pear, and other flowering shrubs which I could not name.
At last woods of ancient olives, with great gnarled stems, told us that we were nearing some important settlement, and the pleasant town of Kyparissia came in view—now, alas! a heap of ruins since the recent earthquake. Here we took leave of our ponies, mules, and human followers; but the pathos [pg 455]of parting with these intimate companions of many days was somewhat marred by the divergence of their notions and ours as to their pay. Yet these differences, when settled, did not prevent them from giving us an affectionate farewell.
I have set apart a chapter for Mycenæ and Tiryns, because the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann there have raised so many new problems, and have so largely increased public curiosity about them, that a book of travels in Greece cannot venture to avoid the subject; even long before Dr. Schliemann’s day, the learned and deliberate travellers who visited the Morea, and wrote their great books, found ample scope for description, and large room for erudite discussion. It is a curious thing to add, but strictly true, that all the new facts brought out by the late excavations have, as yet, contributed but little to our knowledge about the actual history of the country, and that almost every word of what was summed up from all existing sources twenty years ago, by Ernst Curtius, can still be read with far more profit than the rash speculations which appear almost weekly in the periodical press.
It is impossible to approach Mycenæ from any side without being struck with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down over the mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the [pg 457]valley of the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or east, into a secluded corner—“a recess of the horse-feeding Argos,” as Homer calls it, and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charváti. When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of Mycenæ—the Argion, as it was once called. The lower and longer was part of the outer city, which occupied both this hill and the gorge under the Argion. As you walk along the lower hill, you find the Treasure-house of Atreus, as it is called, built into the side which faces the Acropolis. But there are other ruined treasuries on the outer slope, and the newly-opened one is just at the joining saddle, where the way winds round to lead you up the greater hill to the giant gate with the Lion portal. If we represent the high levels under the image of a fishing-hook, with the shank placed downward (south), and the point lying to the right (east), then the Great Treasury is at that spot in the shank which is exactly opposite the point, and faces it. The point and barb are the Acropolis. The New Treasury is just at the turn of the hook, facing in[pg 458]ward (to the south). This will give a rough idea of the site. It is not necessary to enter into details, when so many maps and plans are now in circulation. But I would especially refer to the admirable illustrations in Schliemann’s Mycenæ, where all these matters are made perfectly plain and easy.
When we first visited the place it was in the afternoon of a splendid summer’s day; the fields were yellow and white with stubbles or with dust, and the deep gray shadow of a passing cloud was the only variety in the color of the upper plain. For here there are now no trees, the corn had been reaped, and the land asserted its character as very thirsty Argos. But as we ascended to higher ground, the groves and plantations of the lower plain came in sight, the splendid blue of the bay began to frame the picture, and the setting sun cast deeper shadow and richer color over all the view. Down at the river-bed great oleanders were spreading their sheets of bloom, like the rhododendrons in our climate, but they were too distant to form a feature in the prospect.
I saw the valley of Argos again in spring, in our “roaring moon of daffodil and crocus;” it was the time of growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple cistus, but there too of high winds and glancing shadows. Then all the plain was either brilliant green with growing wheat, or ruddy brown with recent tillage; there were clouds about the moun[pg 459]tains, and changing colors in the sky, and a feeling of freshness and life very different from the golden haze and dreamy calmness of a southern June.
I can hardly say which of these seasons was the more beautiful, but I shall always associate the summer scene with the charm of a first visit to this famous spot, and still more with the venerable and undisturbed aspect of the ruins before they had been profaned by modern research. It is, I suppose, ungrateful to complain of these things, and we must admit that great discoveries outbalance the æsthetic damage done to an ancient ruin by digging unsightly holes and piling mounds of earth about it; but who can contemplate without sorrow the covering of the finest piece of the Cyclopean wall at Mycenæ with the rubbish taken away from over the tombs? Who will not regret the fig-tree which spread its shade over the portal of the House of Atreus? This fig-tree is still to be seen in the older photographs, and is in the woodcut of the entrance given in Dr. Schliemann’s book, but the visitor of to-day will look for it in vain. On the other hand, the opening at the top, which had been there since the beginning of this century, but which was closed when I first visited the chamber, had been again uncovered, and so it was much easier to examine the inner arrangement of the building.
I am not sure that this wonderful structure was visited or described by any traveller from the days [pg 460]of Pausanias till after the year 1800. At least I can find no description from any former traveller quoted in the many accurate accounts which the present century has produced. Chandler, in 1776, intended to visit Mycenæ, but accidentally missed the spot on his way from Argos to Corinth—a thing more likely to happen then, when there was a good deal of wooding in the upper part of the plain. But Clarke, Dodwell, and Gell all visited and described the place between 1800 and 1806, and the latter two published accurate drawings of both the portal and the inner view, which was possible owing to the aperture made at the summit.
About the same time Lord Elgin had turned his attention to the Treasury, and had made excavations about the place, finding several fragments of very old engraved basalt and limestone, which had been employed to ornament the entrance. Some of these fragments are now in the British Museum. But, though both Clarke and Leake allude to “Lord Elgin’s excavators,” they do not specify what was performed, or in what condition the place had been before their researches. There is no published account of this interesting point, which is probably to be solved by the still unpublished journals said to be in the possession of the present Earl.174 This much is, however, certain, that the chamber was not first [pg 461]entered at this time; for Dr. Clarke speaks of its appearance as that of a place open for centuries. We know that systematic rifling of ancient tombs took place at the close of the classical epoch;175 we can imagine it repeated in every age of disorder or barbarism; and the accounts we hear of the Genoese plundering the great mounds of the Crimea show that even these civilized and artistic Italians thought it no desecration to obtain gold and jewels from unnamed, long-forgotten sepulchres. It seems, therefore, impossible to say at what epoch—probably even before Pausanias—this chamber was opened. The story in Dr. Schliemann’s book,176 which he quotes from a Greek newspaper, and which attributes the plundering of it to Veli Pasha, in 1810, is positively groundless, and in direct contradiction to the irrefragable evidence I have above adduced. The Pasha may have probed the now ruined chambers on the outer side of the hill; but the account of what he found is so mythical that the whole story may be rejected as undeserving of credit.
I need not attempt a fresh description of the Great Treasury, in the face of such ample and accurate reports as those I have indicated. It is in no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but, on the contrary, the product of [pg 462]enormous appliances, and of a perfect knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we except the application of the arch. The stones are hewn square, or curved to form the circular dome within with admirable exactness. Above the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway, there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled with some artistic carving like the analogous space over the lintel in the gate of the Acropolis. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the entrance, Gell and Dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in Dodwell’s book. Gell also found some fragments in a neighboring chapel, and others are said to be built into a wall at Nauplia. There are supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. Dr. Schliemann, however, asserts them to have been found at the entrance of the second treasury which Mrs. Schliemann excavated, though his account is somewhat vague (Mycenæ, p. 140). There is the strongest architectural reason for the triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some orna[pg 463]ment very like the lions on the citadel gate may have been applied.
The extreme darkness of the chamber during our first visit prevented me from discovering, even with the aid of torches, the nail-marks which all the earlier travellers found there, and which are now again easily to be seen. So also the outer lintel-stone is not by any means the largest, but is far exceeded by the inner, which lies next to it, and which reaches on each side of the entrance a long way round the chamber, its inner surface being curved to suit the form of the wall. Along this curve it is twenty-nine feet long; it is, moreover, seventeen feet broad, and nearly four feet thick, weighing about one hundred and twenty-four tons!
When we first entered by the light of torches, we found ourselves in the great cone-shaped chamber, which, strange to say, reminded me of the Pantheon at Rome more than any other building I know, and is, nevertheless, built on a very different principle. The stones are not, indeed, pushed forward one above the other, as in ruder stone roofs through Ireland; but each of them, which is on the other surfaces cut perfectly square, has its inner face curved so that the upper end comes out several inches above the lower. So each stone carries on the conical plan, having its lower line fitting closely to the upper line of the one beneath, and the [pg 464]whole dome ends with a great flat stone laid on the top.177
Dodwell still found copper nails of some inches in length, which he supposed to have been used to fasten on thin plates of shining metal; but I was at first unable to see even the holes in the roof, which other travellers had believed to be the places where the nails were inserted. However, without being provided with magnesium wire, it was then impossible to light the chamber sufficiently for a positive decision on this point. A comparatively small side chamber is hollowed out in the rock and earth, without any stone casing or ornament whatever, but with a similar triangular aperture over its doorway. Schliemann tells us he dug two trenches in this chamber, and that, besides finding some hewn pieces of limestone, he found in the middle a circular depression (apparently of stone), twenty-one inches deep, and about one yard in diameter, which he compares to a large wash-bowl. Any one who has visited New Grange will be struck with the likeness of this description to the large stone saucers [pg 465]which are still to be seen there, and of which I shall speak presently.
There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was applied, and we cannot now attempt to change the name, even if we could prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenæ in the second century A. D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no better informed than we, though he tells us the popular belief that this and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyæ at Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most wonderful things in all Greece. But it does not seem to me that his opinion, which, indeed, is not very clear, need in the least shackle our judgments.
The majority of scholars incline to the theory that it is a tomb. In the first place, there are three other similar buildings quite close to it, which Pausanias mentions as the treasure-houses of the sons of Atreus, but their number makes it most unlikely that any of them could be for treasure. Surely such a house could only be owned by the reigning king, and there is no reason why his successor should make himself a new vault for this purpose. In the next place, these buildings were all underground and dark, and exactly such as would be selected for tombs. Thirdly, they are not situated within the enclosure of the citadel of Mycenæ, but [pg 466]are outside it, and probably outside the original town altogether—a thing quite inconceivable if they were meant for treasure, but most reasonable, and according to analogy, if they were used as tombs. This, too, would of course explain the plurality of them—different kings having built them, just like the pyramids of Chufu, Safra, and Menkerah, and many others, along the plain of Memphis in Egypt. It is even quite easy and natural to explain on this hypothesis how they came to be thought treasure-houses. It is known that the sepulchral tumuli of similar construction in other places, and possibly built by kindred people, contained much treasure, left there by way of honor to the deceased. Herodotus describes this in Scythian tombs, some of which have been opened of late, and have verified his assertions.178 The lavish expense at Patroclus’s funeral, in the Iliad, shows the prevalence of similar notions among early Greeks, who held, down to Æschylus’s day, that the importance of a man among the dead was in proportion to the circumstance with which his tomb was treated by the living. It may, therefore, be assumed as certain that these strongholds of the dead, if they were such, were filled with many precious things in gold and other metals, intended as parting gifts in honor of the king who was laid to rest. Long after the devastation of Mycenæ, I suppose that these tombs [pg 467]were opened in search of treasure, and not in vain; and so nothing was said about the skeleton tenant, while rumors went abroad of the rich treasure-trove within the giant portal. Thus, then, the tradition would spring up and grow, that the building was the treasure-house of some old legendary king.
These antiquarian considerations have led us away from the actual survey of the old vault, for ruin it cannot be called. The simplicity and massiveness of its structure have defied age and violence, and, except for the shattered ornaments and a few pieces over the inner side of the window, not a stone appears ever to have been moved from its place. Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenæ, on the hillock over against you. Close beyond this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. But one more remark seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Hellenic building in its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be seen at Eleutheræ, or any other Greek fort, but still the really analogous buildings are to be [pg 468]found in far distant lands—in the raths of Ireland and the barrows of the Crimea.
I have had the opportunity of comparing the structure and effect of the great sepulchral monuments in the county of Meath, in Ireland. Two of these, Dowth and New Grange, are opened, and can be entered almost as easily as the treasury of Atreus. They lie close to the rich valley of the Boyne, in that part of the country which was pointed out by nature as the earliest seat of wealth and culture. Dowth is the ruder and less ornamented, and therefore not improbably the older, but is less suited for the present comparison than the greater and more ornate New Grange.
This splendid tomb is not a whit less remarkable, or less colossal in its construction, than those at Mycenæ, but differs in many details. It was not hollowed out in a hillside, but was built of great upright stones, with flat slabs laid over them, and then covered with a mound of earth. An enormous circle of giant boulders stands round the foot of the mound. Instead of passing through a short entrance into a great vaulted chamber, there is a long narrow corridor, which leads to a much smaller, but still very lofty room, nearly twenty feet high. Three recesses in the walls of this latter each contain a large round saucer, so to speak, made of single stone, in which the remains of the dead seem to have been laid. This saucer is very shallow, and [pg 469]not more than four feet in diameter. The great stones with which the chamber and passage are constructed are not hewn or shaped, and so far the building is rather comparable with that of Tiryns than that of Mycenæ. But all over the faces of the stones are endless spiral and zigzag ornaments, even covering built-in surfaces, and thus invisible, so that this decoration must have been applied to the slabs prior to the building. On the outside stones, both under and above the entry, there is a well-executed carving of more finished geometrical designs.
Putting aside minor details, it may be said that while both monuments show an equal display of human strength, and an equal contempt for human toil, which were lavished upon them without stint, the Greek building shows far greater finish of design and neatness of execution, together with greater simplicity. The stones are all carefully hewn and fitted, but not carved or decorated. The triangular carved block over the lintel, and the supposed metal plates on the interior, were both foreign to the original structure. On the contrary, while the Irish tomb is a far greater feature in the landscape—a landmark in the district—the great stones within are not fitted together, or hewn into shape, and yet they are covered with patterns and designs strangely similar to the carvings found by Dodwell and Dr. Schliemann at the Argive tombs. Thus the Irish builders, with far greater rudeness, show a [pg 470]greater taste for ornament. They care less for design and symmetry—more for beauty of detail. The Greek essay naturally culminates in the severe symmetry of the Doric Temple—the Irish in the glorious intricacy of the illuminations of the Book of Kells.
The second treasury lately excavated by Mrs. Schliemann has been disappointing in its results. Though it seems not to have been disturbed for ages, it had evidently been once rifled, for nothing save a few fragments of pottery were found within. Its entrance is much loftier than that of the house of Atreus, but the general building is inferior, the stones are far smaller and by no means so well fitted, and it produces altogether the impression of being either a much earlier and ruder attempt, or a poor and feeble imitation. Though Dr. Schliemann asserts the former, I am disposed to suspect the latter to be the case.
A great deal of what was said about the tomb of Agamemnon, as the common people, with truer instinct, call the supposed treasure-house, may be repeated about the fortifications of Mycenæ. It is the work of builders who know perfectly how to deal with their materials—who can hew and fit great blocks of stone with perfect ease; nay, who prefer, for the sake of massive effect, to make their doorway with such enormous blocks as even modern science would find it difficult to handle. The sculpt[pg 471]ure over the gate fortunately remains almost entire. The two lions, standing up at a small pillar, were looking out fiercely at the stranger. The heads are gone, having probably, as Dr. Schliemann first observed, been made of bronze, and riveted to the stone. The rest of the sculpture is intact, and is of a strangely heraldic character. It is a piece of bluish limestone,179 which must have been brought from a long distance, quite different from the rough breccia of the rest of the gate. The lintel-stone is not nearly so vast as that of the treasure-house: it is only fifteen feet long, but is somewhat thicker, and also much deeper, going back the full depth of the gateway. Still it must weigh a good many tons; and it puzzles us to think how it can have been put into its place with the appliances then in vogue. The joint use of square and polygonal masonry is very curious. Standing within the gate, one side is [pg 472]of square-hewn stones, the other of irregular, though well-fitted, blocks. On the left side, looking into the gate, there is a gap of one block in the wall, which looks very like a window,180 as it is not probable that a single stone was taken, or fell out of its place afterward, without disturbing the rest. What makes it, perhaps, more possible that this window is intentional, is the position of the gate, which is not in the middle of the walled causeway, as you enter, but to the right side.
When you go in, and climb up the hill of the Acropolis, you find various other portions of Cyclopean walls which belonged to the old palace, in plan very similar to that of Tiryns. But the outer wall goes all round the hill where it is steepest, sometimes right along a precipice, and everywhere offering an almost insurmountable obstacle to an ancient assailant. On the east side, facing the steep mountain, which is separated from it by a deep gorge, is a postern gate, consisting merely of three stones, but these so massive, and so beautifully hewn and fitted, as to be a structure hardly less striking than the lion gate. At about half the depth of these huge blocks there is a regular groove cut down both sides and along the top, in order to hold the door.
[pg 473]The whole summit of the great rock is now stony and bare, but not so bare that I could not gather scarlet anemones, which found scanty sustenance here and there in tiny patches of grass, and gladdened the gray color of the native rock and the primeval walls. The view from the summit, when first I saw it, was one of singular solitude and peace; not a stone seemed to have been disturbed for ages; not a human creature, or even a browsing goat, was visible, and the traveller might sketch or scrutinize any part of the fortress without fear of intrusion, far less of molestation. When I again reached the site, in the spring of 1877, a great change had taken place. Dr. Schliemann had attacked the ruins, and had made his world-renowned excavations inside and about the lion gate. To the gate itself this was a very great gain. All the encumbering earth and stones have been removed, so that we can now admire the full proportions of the mighty portal. He discovered a tiny porter’s lodge inside it. He denied the existence of the wheel-tracks which we and others fancied we had seen there on our former visit.
But proceeding from the gate to the lower side, where the hill slopes down rapidly, and where the great irregular Cyclopean wall trends away to the right, Dr. Schliemann found a deep accumulation of soil. This was, of course, the chief place on an otherwise bare rock where excavations promised [pg 474]large results. And the result was beyond the wildest anticipations. The whole account of what he has done is long before the public in his very splendid book, of which the illustrations are quite an epoch in the history of ornament, and in spite of their great antiquity will suggest to our modern jewellers many an exquisite pattern. The sum of what he found is this:—
He first found in this area a double circuit of thin upright slabs, joined together closely, and joined across the top with flat slabs mortised into them, the whole circuit being like a covered way, about three feet high. Into the enclosed circle a way leads from the lion gate; and what I noted particularly was this, that the whole circle, which was over thirty yards in diameter, was separated from the higher ground by a very miserable bounding wall, which, though quite concealed before the excavations, and therefore certainly very old, looked for all the world like some Turkish piece of masonry.
As soon as this stone circle was discovered, it was suggested that old Greek agoras were round, that they were often in the citadel at the king’s gate, and that people were sometimes buried in them. Dr. Schliemann at once baptized the place as the agora of Mycenæ. It was a circle with only one free access, and that from the gate; it had tombstones standing in the midst of it, and there were the charred remains of sacrifices about them. The [pg 475]number of bodies already exhumed beneath preclude their being all founders or heroes of the city. These and other indications were enough to disprove clearly that the circle was an agora, but that it was rather a place of sepulture, enclosed, as such places always were, with a fence, which seems made in imitation of a palisade of wood.
Inside this circuit of stone slabs were found—apparently at the same depth, but on this Dr. Schliemann is not explicit—very curious and very archaic carved slabs, with rude hunting scenes of warriors in very uncomfortable chariots, and varied spiral ornaments filling up the vacant spaces. These sculptures are unlike any Hellenic work, properly so called, and point back to a very remote period, and probably to the introduction of a foreign art among the rude inhabitants of early Greece. Deeper down were found more tombstones, all manner of archaic pottery, arrow-heads, and buttons of bone; there was also found some rude construction of hewn stones, which may have served as an altar or a tomb.
Yet further down, twenty-one feet deep, and close to the rock, were lying together a number of skeletons, which seemed to have been hastily or carelessly buried; but in the rock itself, in rudely hewn chambers, were found fifteen bodies buried with a splendor seldom equalled in the history of the world. These people were not buried like Greeks. They [pg 476]were not laid in rock chambers, like the Scythian kings. They were sunk in graves under the earth, which were large enough to receive them, had they not been filled up round the bottom with rudely-built walls, or pieces of stone, so as to reduce the area, but to create perhaps some ventilation for the fire which had partly burnt the bodies where they were found. Thus the splendidly-attired and jewelled corpses, some of them with masks and breastplates of gold, were, so to speak, jammed down by the earth and stones above them into a very narrow space; but there appears to have been some arrangement for protecting them and their treasure from complete confusion with the soil which settled down over them. This, if the account of the excavation be accurate, seems the most peculiar feature in the burial of these great personages, but finds a parallel in the curious tombs of Hallstadt, which afford many analogies to Mycenæ.181
Dr. Schliemann boldly announced in the Times, and the public believed him, that he had found Agamemnon, and his companions, who were murdered when they returned from the siege of Troy. The burial is indeed quite different from any such ceremony described in the Homeric poems. The number of fifteen is not to be accounted for by any of the legends. There is no reason to think all the [pg 477]tombs have been discovered; one, or at least part of the treasure belonging to it, was since found outside the circle. Another was afterward found by M. Stamatakes. Æschylus, our oldest and best authority, places the tomb of Agamemnon, not at Mycenæ, but at Argos. They all agree that he was buried with contempt and dishonor. The result was, that when the public came to hear the Agamemnon theory disproved, it was disposed to take another leap in the dark, and to look upon the whole discovery as suspicious, and as possibly something mediæval.
Such an inference would be as absurd as to accept the hypothesis of Dr. Schliemann. The tombs are undoubtedly very ancient, certainly far more ancient than the supposed date of Homer, or even of Agamemnon. The treasures which have been carried to Athens, and which I saw and handled at the National Bank, are not only really valuable masses of gold, but have a good deal of beauty of workmanship, both in design and decoration. Though the masks are very ugly and barbarous, and though there is in general no power shown of moulding any animal figure, there are very beautiful cups and jugs, there are most elegant geometrical ornaments—zigzags, spirals, and the like—and there are even imitations of animals of much artistic merit. The celebrated silver bull’s head, with golden horns, is a piece of work which would not disgrace [pg 478]a goldsmith of our day; and this may be said of many of the ornaments. Any one who knows the Irish gold ornaments in the Academy Museum in Dublin perceives a wonderful family likeness in the old Irish spirals and decorations, yet not more than might occur among two separate nations working with the same materials under similar conditions. But I feel convinced that the best things in the tombs at Mycenæ were not made by native artists, but imported, probably from Syria and Egypt. This seems proved even by the various materials which have been employed—ivory, alabaster, amber; in one case even an ostrich egg. So we shall, perhaps, in the end come back upon the despised legends of Cadmus and Danaus, and find that they told us truly of an old cultured race coming from the South and the East to humanize the barbarous progenitors of the Greeks.
I can now add important corroborations of these general conclusions from the researches made since the appearance of my earlier editions. I then said that the discoveries were too fresh and dazzling to admit of safe theories concerning their origin. By way of illustration I need only allude to those savants (they will hereafter be obliged to me for omitting their names) who imagined that all the Mycenæan tombs were not archaic at all, but the work of northern barbarians who occupied Greece during the disasters of the later Roman Empire! Serious re[pg 479]searches, however, have at last brought us considerable light. In the first place Helbig, in an important work comparing the treasures of Mycenæ with the allusions to art, arms, and manufactures in the Homeric poems, came to the negative conclusion that these two civilizations were distinct—that the Homeric poets cannot have had before them the palace of Mycenæ which owned the Schliemann treasures. As there is no room in Greek history for such a civilization posterior to the Homeric poems, it follows that the latter must describe a civilization considerably later than that we have found at Mycenæ. Placing the Homeric poems in the eighth century B. C. we shall be led to about 1000 B. C. as the latest possible date for the splendors of Mycenæ. But this negative conclusion has been well-nigh demonstrated by the positive results of the various recent researches in Egypt. Not only has the Egypt Exploration Society examined carefully the sites of Naucratis and Daphne, thus disclosing to us what Greek art and manufacture could produce in the sixth and seventh centuries B. C. (665–565 B. C.), but Mr. Flinders Petrie has enriched our knowledge by his wonderful discoveries of Egyptian art on several sites, and of many epochs, fairly determinable by the reigning dynasties. He has recently (1890) examined the Mycenæan and other pre-historic treasures collected at Athens, by the light of his rich Egyptian experience, and has given a sum[pg 480]mary of the results in two short articles in the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
He finds that the materials and their treatment, such as blue glass, even in its decomposition, alabaster, rock-crystal, hollowed and painted within, dome-head rivets attaching handles of gold cups, ostrich eggs with handles attached, ties made for ornament in porcelain, are all to be found in Egyptian tombs varying from 1400 to 1100 in date. His analysis leads him to give the dates for the tombs I.-IV. at Mycenæ as 1200–1100 B. C. That an earlier date is improbable is shown by the negative evidence that none of the purely geometrical false-necked vases occur, such as are the general product of 1400–1200 in Egyptian deposits. But as several isolated articles are of older types, as in particular the lions over the gate are quite similar to a gilt wooden lion he found of about 1450 B. C. in date, the Mycenæan civilization probably extended over a considerable period. He even finds proof of decadence in grave IV. as compared with the rest, and so comes to the conclusion, which I am disposed to question, that the tombs within the circle at Mycenæ (shaft-tombs) are later and worse interments made by the same people who had already built the more majestic and costly bee-hive tombs. Instead therefore of upholding a Phrygian origin, Mr. Petrie asserts an Egyptian origin for both Mycenæan and parallel Phrygian designs. The spiral pattern in its [pg 481]various forms, the rosettes, the keyfret, the palmetto, are all used in very early Egyptian decoration. The inlaid daggers of Mycenæ have long been recognized as inspired by Egypt; but we must note that it is native work and not merely an imported article. The attitude of the figures and of the lions, and the form of the cat, are such as no Egyptian would have executed. To make such things in Greece implies a far higher culture than merely to import them. The same remark applies to the glazed pottery; the style of some is not Egyptian, so that here the Mycenæans were capable of elaborate technical work, and imitated, rather than imported from Egypt.... The familiarity with Egypt is further proved by the lotus pattern on the dagger-blade, by the cat on the dagger, and the cats on the gold foil ornaments, since the cat was then unknown in Greece. That the general range of the civilization was that of Africa, is indicated by the frequent use of the palm (not then known in Greece) as a decoration, and by the very scanty clothing of the male figures, indicating that dress was not a necessity of climate. On the other hand this culture reached out to the north of Europe. The silver-headed reindeer or elk, found in grave IV., can only be the result of northern intercourse. The amber so commonly used comes from the Baltic. And we see in Celtic ornament the obvious reproduction of the decorations of Mycenæ, as Mr. Arthur Evans [pg 482]has shown. Not only is the spiral decoration indistinguishable,182 but also the taste for elaborately embossed diadems and breastplates of gold is peculiar to the Mycenæan and Celtic cultures. The great period of Mycenæ seems therefore to date 1300–1100 B. C., with occasional traditional links with Egypt as far back as 1500 or 1600 B. C.
Such is an abstract of Mr. Petrie’s estimate.183
I will only here point out, in addition, the remarkable unity of style between the ornaments found at a depth of twenty-five feet in the tombs, the sculptured tombstones twelve or fourteen feet over them, and the lions on the gate of the citadel. It is, indeed, only a general uniformity, but it corroborates Mr. Petrie’s inference that there was more than mere importing; there was home manufacture. But still among the small gold ornaments in the tombs were found several pairs of animals placed opposite each other in this strictly heraldic fashion, and even on the engraved gems this symmetry is curiously frequent. It seems, then, that the art of Mycenæ had not changed when its early history came to a close, and its inhabitants were forced to [pg 483]abandon the fortress and submit to the now Doric Argos.
We are, indeed, told expressly by Pausanias and Diodorus that this event did not take place till after the Persian wars, when old Hellenic art was already well defined, and was beginning to make rapid progress. But this express statement, which I saw reason to question since my former remarks on the subject in this book, I am now determined to reject, in the face of the inconsistencies of these historians, the silence of all the contemporaries of the alleged conquest, and the exclusively archaic remains which Dr. Schliemann has unearthed. Mycenæ, along with Tiryns, Midea, and the other towns of the plain, was incorporated into Argos at a far earlier date, and not posterior to the brilliant rule of Pheidon. So it comes that historical Greece is silent about the ancient capital of the Pelopids, and the poets transfer all its glories to Argos. Once, indeed, the name did appear on the national records. The offerings to the gods at Olympia, and at Delphi, after the victory over the Persians, recorded that a few patriots—460 in all—from Mycenæ and from Tiryns had joined the Greeks at Platæa, while the remainder of the Argives preserved a base and cowardly neutrality. The Mycenæans were very few in number; sixty are mentioned in connection with Thermopylæ by Herodotus. They were probably exiles through Greece, who had preserved their [pg 484]traditions and their descent, and gloried in exposing and insulting Argive Medism. The Tirynthian 400 may even have been the remnant of the slave population, which Herodotus tells us seized the citadel of Tiryns, when driven out from Argos twenty years before, and who lived there for some years. In the crisis of Platæa the Greeks were not dainty or critical, and they may have readily conceded the title of Tirynthian to these doubtful citizens, out of hatred and disgust at the neutrality of Argos. However these things may be, the mention of Mycenæans and Tirynthians on this solitary occasion afforded an obvious warrant to Diodorus for his date of the destruction of Mycenæ. But I am convinced that his authority, and that of Pausanias, who follows him, must be deliberately rejected.
On the other hand, the origin of Mycenæ, and its greatness as a royal residence, must be thrown back into a far deeper antiquity than any one had yet imagined. If Agamemnon and his house represent Hellenic princes, of the type of Homer’s knowledge and acquaintance, they must have arisen after some older, and apparently different dynasties had ruled and had buried their dead at Mycenæ.184 But it is also possible that the Homeric bards, describing professedly the acts of a past age, imposed their [pg 485]new manners, and their own culture, upon the Pelopids, whom they only knew by vague tradition, and that thus their drawing is false; while the chiefs they glorify were the ancient pre-Hellenic rulers of the country. This latter supposition is so shocking a heresy against “Homer” that I will not venture to expand it, and will leave the reader to add any conjectures he chooses to those which I have already hazarded in too great number.
When the splendid findings of Dr. Schliemann are taken out of their bandboxes in the Bank of Athens, and arranged in the National Museum;185 when the diligence of Greek archæologists investigates thoroughly the remainder of the site at Mycenæ, which is not nearly exhausted; when new accidents (such as the discoveries at Sparta and Vaphio) and new researches enlarge these treasures perhaps a thousand-fold, there will be formed at Athens a museum of pre-historic art which will not have its equal in the world (except at Cairo), and which will introduce us to an epoch of culture which we hardly yet suspected, when writing and coinage were unknown, when the Greeks had not reached unto their name, or possibly their language, but when, nevertheless, considerable commerce existed, when wonderful skill had already been attained in [pg 486]arts and manufactures, and when men had even accumulated considerable wealth and splendor in well-established centres of power.
The further investigation of the remains of Mycenæ, with the additional evidence derived from the ruins of Tiryns, presently to be described, have led Dr. Adler to explain Mycenæ as the record of a double foundation, first by a race who built rubble masonry, and buried their dead in narrow rock-tombs or graves, piling on the bodies their arms and ornaments; secondly, after some considerable interval, by a race who built splendid ashlar masonry, with well-cut blocks, and who constructed great beehive tombs, where the dead could lie with ample room in royal state. The second race enlarged, rebuilt, and refaced the old fortifications, added the present lion gate, and built the so-called treasure-houses. For convenience’ sake he calls them, according to the old legends, Perseids and Pelopids respectively. Hence the tombs which Dr. Schliemann found were really far older than any one had at first supposed, and if the record of Homer points distinctly to the Pelopids, then the gold and jewels of a far earlier people were hidden deep underground in the foundation of Agamemnon’s fortress, merely marked by a sacred circle of stones and some archaic gravestones.
To which of these stages of building do the ruins of Tiryns belong? Apparently to the earlier, though [pg 487]here, again, the size of the stones used is far greater than those in the first Mycenæ, and it is now certain that the beginnings of artificial shaping are discernible in them. Since the second edition of this book the walls have been uncovered and examined by Dr. Schliemann, with the valuable advice and assistance of Dr. Dörpfeld, so that I may conclude this chapter with a brief summary of the results they have attained.
The upper part of the rock of Tiryns, which consisted of two plateaus or levels, was known to contain remains of building by the shafts which Dr. Schliemann had already sunk there in former years. But now a very different method of excavating was adopted—that of uncovering the surface in layers, so that successive strata of debris might be clearly distinguished. This exceedingly slow and laborious process, which I saw going on for days at Tiryns with very little result, brought out in the end the whole plan of a palace, with its gates, floors, parting walls, and pillar bases, so that in the admirable drawing to be seen in the book called Tiryns, Dr. Dörpfeld has given us the first clear view of an old Greek, or perhaps even pre-Hellenic, palace. The partial agreement with the plan of the palaces of Troy, and of Mycenæ, since discovered, and the adoption in Hellenic temples of the plan of entrance, here several times repeated—two pillars between [pg 488]antæ—show that the palace at Tiryns was not exceptional, but typical.
All the gates leading up into this palace are still distinctly marked by the threshold or door-sill, a great stone, lying in its place, with grooves inserted for the pivots of the doors, which were of wood, but had their pivots shod with bronze, as was proved by the actual remains. These doors divided a double porch, entered either way between two pillars of wood, standing upon stone bases still in their place, and flanked by antæ, which were below of stone and above of wood dowelled into the stone piers. All the upper structure of the gates, and, indeed, of all the palace, seems to have been of wood. There are clear signs of a great conflagration, in which the palace perished. This implies the existence of ample fuel, and while the ashes, mud-bricks, etc., remain, no trace of architrave, or pillar, or roof has been found. There are gates of similar design leading into the courts and principal chamber of the palace, the floors of which are covered with a careful lime concrete marked with line patterns, and so sloped as to afford easy drainage into a vent leading to pipes of terra cotta, which carried off water. The same careful arrangements are observed in the bath-room, with a floor of one great stone, twelve feet by nine, which is likewise pierced to carry off water. The remains of a terra cotta tub were found there, and the walls of the room were panelled with wood, [pg 489]set into the raised edge of the floor-stone by dowels sunk in the stone. No recent discovery is more interesting than this.
Of the walls little remains but the foundations, and here and there a couple of feet of mud-bricks, with signs of beams let into them, which added to the conflagration. But enough remains to show that the walls of the better rooms were richly covered with ornament. There is a fresco of a bull still preserved, and reproduced in Dr. Schliemann’s book; and there was also found a very remarkable frieze ornament in rosettes and brooch patterns, made of blue glass paste (supposed to be Homer’s κύανος) and alabaster. This valuable relic shows remarkable analogies in design to other prehistoric ornaments found in Greece.
The size of the main hall, or men’s apartment, is very large, the floor covering about 120 square yards, and the parallel room in the palace at Troy was consequently taken to be the cella of a temple. But there seems no doubt that the great room at Tiryns, with a hearth in the middle and four pillar bases near it, supporting, perhaps, a higher roof, with a clerestory, was the main reception room of the palace; a smaller room of similar construction, not connected with the former, save by a circuitous route through passages, seems to have been the ladies’ drawing-room.
[pg 490]If I were to attempt any full description of this wonderful place I should be obliged to copy out a great part of the fifth chapter in Dr. Schliemann’s book, in which Dr. Dörpfeld has set down very modestly, but very completely, the results of his own acuteness and research. Many things which are now plain enough were perfect riddles till he found the true solution, and the acuteness with which he has utilized the smallest hints, as well as the caution of his conclusions, make this work of his a very model of scientific induction.
He says, rightly enough, that a minute description is necessary, because a very few years will cover up much of the evidence which he had plainly before him. The concrete floors, the remains of mud-brick walls, the plan of the various rooms, will be choked up with grass and weeds, unless they are kept covered and cleared. The rain, which has long since washed all traces of mortar out of the walls, will wash away far more now that the site is opened, and so the future archæologist will find that the book Tiryns will tell him much that the actual Tiryns cannot show him.
The lower platform on the rock is not yet touched, and here perhaps digging will discover to us the remains of a temple, from which one very archaic Doric capital and an antefix have found their way to the higher rock. There are traces, too, of the great [pg 491]fort being the second building on the site, over an older and not yet clearly determined palace.
Two things are plain from these discoveries, and I dwell on them with satisfaction, because they corroborate old opinions of mine, put forth long before the principal evidence was forthcoming. First, the general use of wood for pillars and architraves, so showing how naturally the stone temple imitated the older wooden buildings. Secondly, the archaic or ante-Hellenic character of all that was found at Tiryns, with the solitary exception of the architectural fragments, which certainly have no building to correspond to them where they were found. Thus my hypothesis, which holds that Tiryns, as well as Mycenæ, was destroyed at least as early as Pheidon’s time (660 B. C.), and not after the Persian wars, receives corroboration which will amount to positive proof in any mind open to evidence on the point.