CONNECTION OF THE FIVE TOMBS WITH THE ROYAL HOUSE OF PELOPS; AND DATE OF THE AGORA.

Discussion of the identity of the five tombs with those mentioned by Pausanias as the tombs of Agamemnon and his companions—Opinions of scholars about the Trojan War—The ancients unanimous for its reality—The author's faith in the traditions led to his discovery of Troy and of the five Royal Tombs at MycenÆ—The civilisation of MycenÆ higher than that of Troy—The pottery of both very primitive—Alphabetic writing known at Troy, but not at MycenÆ—The different civilisations may have been contemporaneous—The appearances in the tombs prove the simultaneous death of those interred, certainly in each tomb, and probably in all the five—Traditional veneration for the sepulchres—Monuments repeatedly placed over them—No tombs between the two circular rows of slanting slabs which formed the enclosure of the Agora and its benches—Agora probably erected when the tombstones were renewed, and the altar built over the fourth tomb, under the influence of the enthusiasm created by the Rhapsodists—These monuments buried in the course of time, but the memory of the site was fresh by tradition long after the destruction of the new city of MycenÆ—Testimony of Pausanias—The enormous treasures prove the sepulchres to be royal, but royalty at MycenÆ ended with the Dorian invasion—This must have been much earlier than the received date, 1104 B.C.—An objection answered—Honours paid to the remains of murdered princes even by their murderers—Custom of burying the dead with their treasures—The sepulchral treasure of Palestrina—The sepulchre of Nitocris at Babylon—Case of Pyrrhus and the royal sepulchres at ÆgeÆ—The sepulchre at Corneto.

Having in the preceding pages described the five great sepulchres and the treasures contained in them, I now proceed to discuss the question, whether it is possible to identify these sepulchres with the tombs which Pausanias, following the tradition, attributes to Agamemnon, to Cassandra, to Eurymedon, and to their companions.

The Trojan war has for a long time past been regarded by many eminent scholars as a myth, of which, however, they vainly endeavoured to find the origin in the Rig-VÊdas. But in all antiquity the siege and conquest of Ilium by the Greek army under Agamemnon was considered as an undoubted historical fact, and as such it is accepted by the great authority of Thucydides.[368] The tradition has even retained the memory of many details of that war which had been omitted by Homer. For my part, I have always firmly believed in the Trojan war; my full faith in Homer and in the tradition has never been shaken by modern criticism, and to this faith of mine I am indebted for the discovery of Troy and its Treasure.

However, the want of ornamentation on the Trojan jewels, the hand-made uncoloured pottery with impressed or engraved ornamentation, and, finally, the want of iron and glass, convinced me that the ruins of Troy belong to such a remote antiquity, as to precede by ages the ruins of MycenÆ, the date of which I thought I could fix by the result of the 34 shafts which I sank in the Acropolis in February 1874. I therefore believed that Homer had only known the siege and destruction of Troy from an ancient tradition commemorated by preceding poets, and that, for favours received, he introduced his contemporaries as actors in his great tragedy. But I never doubted that a king of MycenÆ, by name Agamemnon, his charioteer Eurymedon, a Princess Cassandra, and their followers had been treacherously murdered either by Ægisthus at a banquet, "like an ox at the manger," as Homer[369] says, or in the bath by Clytemnestra, as the later tragic poets represent;[370] and I firmly believed in the statement of Pausanias,[371] that the murdered persons had been interred in the Acropolis, differing in this respect, as I have said before, from Leake, Dodwell, O. MÜller, E. Curtius, Prokesch, and other travellers in the Peloponnesus, who had all misunderstood the statement of Pausanias, and thought that he meant the murdered persons to have been buried in the lower town.

My firm faith in the traditions made me undertake my late excavations in the Acropolis, and led to the discovery of the five tombs, with their immense treasures. Although I found in these tombs a very high civilisation, from a technical point of view, yet, as in Ilium, I found there only hand-made or most ancient wheel-made pottery, and no iron. Further, writing was known in Troy, for I found there a number of short inscriptions, in very ancient Cypriote characters; and, so far as we can judge, in a language which is essentially the same as Greek;[372] whereas we have the certainty now that the alphabet was unknown in MycenÆ. Had it been known, the Mycenean goldsmiths, who were always endeavouring to invent some new ornamentation, would have joyfully availed themselves of the novelty to introduce the strange characters in their decoration. Besides, in the remote antiquity, to which the Homeric rhapsodies and the tradition of the Mycenean tombs refer, there was as yet no commercial intercourse. Nobody travelled, except on warlike or piratical expeditions. Thus there may have been a very high civilisation at MycenÆ, while at the very same time the arts were only in their first dawn in Troy, and writing with Cypriote characters may have been in use in Troy more than 1000 years before any alphabet was known in Greece.

I have not the slightest objection to admit that the tradition which assigns the tombs in the Acropolis to Agamemnon and his companions, who on their return from Ilium were treacherously murdered by Clytemnestra or her paramour Ægisthus, may be perfectly correct and faithful. I am bound to admit this so much the more, as we have the certainty that, to say the least, all the bodies in each tomb had been buried simultaneously. The calcined pebbles below each of them, the marks of the fire to the right and left on the internal walls of the tombs, the undisturbed state of the ashes and the charred wood on and around the bodies, give us the most unmistakable proofs of this fact. Owing to the enormous depths of these sepulchres, and the close proximity of the bodies to each other, it is quite impossible that three or even five funeral piles could have been dressed at different intervals of time in the same tomb.

The identity of the mode of burial, the perfect similarity of all the tombs, their very close proximity, the impossibility of admitting that three or even five royal personages of immeasurable wealth, who had died a natural death at long intervals of time, should have been huddled together in the same tomb, and, finally, the great resemblance of all the ornaments, which show exactly the same style of art and the same epoch—all these facts are so many proofs that all the twelve men, three women, and perhaps two or three children, had been murdered simultaneously and burned at the same time.

The veracity of the tradition seems further to be confirmed by the deep veneration which the Myceneans and in fact the inhabitants of the whole Argolid, have always shown for these five sepulchres. The funeral pyres were not yet extinguished when they were covered with a layer of clay, and then with a layer of pebbles, on which the earth was thrown at once. To this circumstance chiefly are we indebted for the preservation of so large a quantity of wood and the comparatively good preservation of the bodies; for in no instance were the bones consumed by the fire, and on several bodies, which were covered with golden masks and thick breast-plates, even much of the flesh had remained. The site of each tomb was marked by tombstones, and when these had been covered by the dust of ages and had disappeared, fresh tombstones were erected on the new level, but precisely over the spot where the ancient memorials lay buried. Only on the large fourth sepulchre with the five bodies, instead of new tombstones, a sacrificial altar of almost circular form was built.

As before explained, the first tomb had, according to all appearance, been originally decorated with a large monument, from which came the three tombstones with the bas-reliefs, and these sculptured tombstones must have been taken out and erected on the new level.

Before proceeding to what I have further to say of the Agora, I must here add to the discussion opened in Chapter V. the testimony of Homer himself to the form and use of the Agora in the heroic age. In that beautiful passage in which he depicts the trial of a suit, as represented on the Shield of Achilles, he expressly describes the Agora as a sacred circle, with the elders sitting round it on polished stones, or—as we may now venture to translate—on smoothed slabs, like those in the Acropolis of MycenÆ:—[373]

What reader can follow this vivid picture, in the light furnished by my discovery of the Agora at MycenÆ, without feeling that the poet had often witnessed such a scene, perhaps on this very spot?

Homer makes the Trojan Agora, the assembly of all the people, old and young, with the elders, meet in the citadel of Ilium, at the gates of Priam.[374]

In several passages of the Odyssey he describes the Agora of the PhÆacians, which was also in the citadel, near the port. Hither the people were led by Alcinous, to hear the wonderful adventures of Ulysses, and they also "coming, seated themselves near on polished stones (or smoothed slabs); and the spaces of the Agora and the seats were quickly filled by the thronging people."[375]

To complete the parallel, this PhÆacian Agora (that is, its circular enclosure) was "fitted together with stones dragged to their places and sunk in the ground," like the slabs of the Agora at MycenÆ; and it surrounded "a beautiful PosideÜm," which we must naturally suppose to have been a small open sanctuary in the centre of the Agora.[376]

I may add, as a proof of the great importance of the Agora in the civic life of the Heroic age, that its absence among the Cyclopes is cited by Homer to characterize their barbarous state.[377]

I at first thought that every one of the large slabs of the circular double parallel row, which forms the enclosure of the Agora and its benches was a tombstone, and marked a grave; but this could not be the case. There are no real tombs either between the two parallel rows or on either side of them. The twelve quadrangular tomb-like recesses which form part of the enclosure of the Agora on the north side, have turned out to be nothing else than small reservoirs or cisterns. They were filled with household remains and bones of animals. At all events the Agora appears to have been erected in honour of those who were buried in the five sepulchres, but evidently at a later period, though undoubtedly centuries before the capture of MycenÆ by the Argives. I infer this from the irregular and careless architecture of the Cyclopean wall which supports the double parallel row in the lower part of the Acropolis, and from the number of slabs which it contains resembling those of that enclosure.

As a further proof, I may mention that between the stones of this wall, as well as between the two double circular rows of slabs which form the enclosure and benches of the Agora, and in the tomb-shaped cisterns, I find only fragments of the usual Mycenean pottery, and no trace of that ancient hand-made and wheel-made pottery which is found in the royal tombs. I think it therefore highly probable that the erection of the Agora coincides with the renewal of the tombstones on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th tombs, and the erection of the sacrificial altar on the 4th tomb; and that this renewal was occasioned by the immense enthusiasm which the Rhapsodists, who went from house to house chanting the Homeric hymns, roused among the people for the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Very likely the glorious acts of the king of men, Agamemnon, and his companions, were frequently chanted here in the Agora on their very sepulchres. I may here observe that while the whole Acropolis is covered with remnants of Cyclopean house-walls, I found no trace whatever of any prehistoric building within the sacred precincts of the circular Agora.

But, nevertheless, the accumulation of dÉbris continued, and in the course of time the new tombstones, as well as the Agora itself, were buried and disappeared, while the site of the tombs remained always fresh in the memory of the inhabitants. I think, however, we may consider it as perfectly certain that the Agora continued to serve for the National Assembly until the capture of MycenÆ by the Argives (468 B.C.), because not only were the Myceneans attached to those sacred precincts by the most glorious and most affectionate reminiscences, but also because the Agora was the most imposing and most beautiful situation in the whole city, whence the Assembly overlooked not only the whole lower city, but also the whole plain, with Argos, Tiryns, Nauplia, as well as the splendid Gulf of Nauplia. It is therefore equally certain that until 468 B.C. the Agora was kept clean, and that the accumulation in it only began after the Myceneans had been forced to emigrate. I think I have proved by the passages in Euripides[378] that this poet must necessarily have visited MycenÆ; for he was fully acquainted with the peculiar architecture of its Cyclopean walls, he perfectly knew the Agora in the Acropolis, and he was well aware that close to it was the building, laid bare by my spade, to which tradition pointed as the ancient Royal Palace.

To the above testimony might also be added the passage where the messenger says to Orestes, "Even if thou camest within the walls (the Acropolis) thou wouldst not be able" (to kill Aegisthus)[379]; further, the passage where the messenger says of a person that he "seldom comes to the city (MycenÆ) and to the circle of the Agora."[380]

From the former of these passages we also infer that Euripides knew the Palace of Aegisthus to be in the Acropolis, and from the latter we have an additional proof that he knew the Agora to be of circular form. I think we might, as a further proof of Euripides' acquaintance with MycenÆ, also adduce the passage: "I see the people go and sit down on the height (no doubt the Acropolis) where, as tradition goes, Danaus first assembled the people on common seats when he was brought to trial for the offence against Aegyptus."[381] Mr. Newton thinks that the poet speaks here of Argos, and so it certainly appears by the names of Aegyptus and Danaus, of whose visit to MycenÆ there is no tradition; besides, the walls of the Acropolis of Argos were attributed to Danaus. But after reading all that precedes, I think the passage can only refer to the Acropolis of MycenÆ. However that may be, at all events the passage gives us an additional proof that the people were sitting in the Agora.

It is impossible to say how many years after its capture by the Argives (468 B.C.) MycenÆ was visited by Euripides, who was born in 480 and died in 402 B.C. But the particulars he gives us of the Agora, as well as his allusions to the royal palace, seem to leave no doubt that he saw these monuments, and that consequently they were not yet totally buried in the dÉbris when he visited the Acropolis.

On the other hand, my excavations have proved that the Agora was already covered by a deep accumulation of dÉbris when the later Greek city was built on its top, and for the various reasons I have adduced[382] there can be no doubt that the new settlement was founded about 400 B.C. But as all the dÉbris which covered the Agora must necessarily have been washed down by the rain from the five upper natural or artificial terraces of the steep mount of the Acropolis, we are led to the conclusion that Euripides visited MycenÆ in his younger years, and thus shortly after the city's capture, for otherwise the enormous accumulation of dÉbris in about 400 B.C. would be altogether inexplainable.

But though buried deep below the new city, the precise site of each tomb was perfectly remembered by the inhabitants of the Argolid. After an existence of about 200 years, the new city was, for some cause or other, again and finally abandoned. But still the tradition remained so fresh, that nearly 400 years after the destruction of the new town the exact place of each tomb was shown to Pausanias. Nay, the interest which the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus felt in the sepulchres was still so great sixteen or eighteen centuries after the tragic event, that, as Pausanias states, the LacedÆmonians of AmyclÆ disputed with MycenÆ the honour of having Cassandra's tomb, which they thought they possessed in their own city. At all events, Pausanias[383] says that the Amycleans had in their village the sanctuary and the statue of Alexandra, whom they identified with Cassandra.

The five tombs of MycenÆ, or at least three of them, contained such enormous treasures, that they cannot but have belonged to members of the royal family. But the period of the kings of MycenÆ belongs to a very remote antiquity. Royalty ceased there at the Dorian invasion, the date of which has always been fixed at 1104 B.C. Thucydides says that it took place eighty years after the war of Troy, which has been hitherto supposed to have ended in 1184 B.C. But, in agreement with all archÆologists, I hold to the conclusion that, on the evidence of the monuments of Troy, the capture and the destruction of that city, and consequently also the Dorian invasion, must have occurred at a much earlier date.

It has been objected that the five sepulchres cannot possibly contain the bodies of Agamemnon, Eurymedon, Cassandra, and their followers, for the reason that they were killed by their enemies, Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, who had usurped the power, and who would neither have buried them nor have permitted them to be buried with immense treasures. But this objection falls to the ground before the testimony of Homer, that even he who killed his enemy burned him in his full armour, with all his weapons. Thus, for example, Andromache says to Hector:[384]

That it was the custom in the heroic age to bury the dead with those objects which had been dear to them in life, is further proved by Homer, where the soul of Elpenor begs Ulysses to bury his body with his weapons, and to erect a mound over him.[385] My esteemed friend Professor Semiteles reminds me that Ajax, in the tragedy of Sophocles, prays to be buried with his arms.[386]

It would therefore appear that, in burying the fifteen royal personages with immense treasures, the murderers merely acted according to an ancient custom, and consequently only fulfilled a sacred duty.

On the other hand, the usage of the age appears to have left the murderers at full liberty regarding the form of the sepulchres and the mode of the burial, which were consequently as ignominious as possible. The graves were merely deep irregular quadrangular holes, into which the royal victims were huddled by three and even by five, and on the bottom of which they were burnt, but each separately, so that their bones might not be mixed together.

I perfectly share Mr. Newton's opinion, that all the five immense and magnificent Treasuries in the lower city and in the suburb must necessarily be more ancient than the five royal tombs in the Acropolis; and if we reflect that princes, who used such magnificent underground palaces as store-houses of their wealth, should have been huddled away like impure animals into miserable holes, we find in this ignominious burial alone a powerful argument in favour of the veracity of the tradition which points to these sepulchres as those of the king of men, Agamemnon, and his companions, who on their return from Ilium were treacherously murdered by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.

Professor Paley reminds me that the excellent Greek scholar, Miss A. Swanwick, the translator (among other works) of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, has already made the just remark, that the ancient tradition made Agamemnon to be buried in silence and ignominy; and the same friend calls my attention to the following passages in the tragic poets to show how all of them agree upon this. Thus we read in Aeschylus: "By our hands has he fallen and died, and we shall bury him not with the lamentations of his household."[387] But we see continually in Homer that the lamentations of relations and of all those who belonged to the household were regarded as quite essential to the honour as well as the peace of the dead. So, for instance, we read in the Iliad[388]: "So spoke (BriseÏs) weeping, and the women (the other female slaves) broke out into lamentations, seemingly for Patroclus, but in reality every one of them was merely lamenting over her own misfortune."

We further read in Aeschylus: "O insolent mother, with the funeral of an enemy thou hast dared to bury your lord, a king without the tear of his citizens, a husband without his wife's"[389]: and "O father, who hast not died in the manner of kings."[390] Also in Sophocles: "Having ignominiously slain him like an enemy, she chopped and hacked his limbs."[391] Likewise in Euripides: "Certainly like a criminal thou wilt be buried ignominiously by night, not in the daytime."[392]

I may here observe that Sophocles seems never to have visited MycenÆ, for he fancied Agamemnon's sepulchre to have the form of a tumulus[393]: "On the mound of this grave I proclaim this to my father."

That in a remote antiquity it was the custom to bury kings with their treasures is proved by various classics. Thus, for instance, we are told by Diodorus Siculus[394] that Sardanapalus, the last king of Assyria, erected in one of his courts an immense pyre, on which he burnt himself together with all his treasures, his royal ornaments, his wives and his eunuchs.

We further read in Herodotus:[395] "This same queen, Nitocris, committed the following fraud: Above the most frequented gate of the city (Babylon) she erected for herself a sepulchre, which projected from the upper part of the gate. And on this sepulchre she engraved an inscription of the following tenour: 'Whichever of the kings of Babylon who succeeds me may stand in need of money, let him open the sepulchre and take treasure as much as he likes. But let him open it in no other case than when he really needs money; because that would not be good.' This sepulchre remained intact until the kingdom passed over to Darius. Darius was vexed that he could never use the gate, and that, though treasures were lying there, and though the treasures themselves invited him, he should not be allowed to take them. But this gate he could not use, because in passing through he would have had the corpse above his head. Now, on opening the tomb he found no treasures, but only the corpse, and an inscription which was as follows: 'If thou wert not insatiable and greedy for treasures, thou wouldst not have opened the tombs of the dead.'"

This account of Herodotus proves two things; first, that it was the custom at Babylon to bury the royal dead with treasures, and, secondly, that the people were prevented by a religious fear from plundering the abodes of the dead.

We further read in Diodorus:[396] "When Pyrrhus had pillaged ÆgeÆ, which was the residence of the Macedonian kings, he left there the Galatians. These having learned from some people that, according to an ancient custom, large treasures were buried in the royal tombs together with the deceased, they excavated all the sepulchres, and having rifled them, they divided the treasures among themselves, but the bones of the dead they threw away. Pyrrhus upbraided them on account of this sacrilegious act, but he did not punish them because he needed them in his wars." This proves again to us that it was an ancient custom in Macedonia to bury the dead of royal houses with treasures, and that the people were deterred by a religious fear from touching them, because, although it had been known for ages that the tombs contained treasures, yet nobody had dared to plunder them.

I may further remind the reader of the large treasure of elaborately ornamented gold and silver vases and other jewels, as well as of bronze vessels and vases, arms, etc., recently discovered in a tomb at Palestrina in Italy (the ancient PrÆneste), and attributed to the seventh century B.C.,—"that period at which the influence of the civilization and industry of the East dominated in Etruria and Latium, before those countries became subject to the force of Hellenic genius—the period when the two currents of Assyrian and Egyptian luxury and thought had become intermingled in their effect upon art, and spread by the Phoenician artisans and traders through the Western countries whither they carried their productions, ornamented according to the ideas they had imbibed, from the banks of the Euphrates on the one side, and the Nile on the other."[397]

I also call attention to the sepulchre of Corneto, the contents of which, as I have before stated, are in the Museum of Berlin. This tomb, which belongs to an epoch anterior to the influence of Greek culture in Italy, and therefore anterior to the seventh century B.C., contains not only the armour and weapons, but also the whole household furniture, copper kettles, drinking vessels, and so forth, of a rich warrior. I hardly think it necessary to remind the reader of the custom in ancient Egypt of burying the dead with treasures, for all the collections of Egyptian antiquities in the world are procured from Egyptian tombs.

My learned friend Dr. Karl Blind, in his excellent pamphlet, entitled 'Fire Burial,' cites the Odin Law in Scandinavia, which reads as follows:—"Odin ordained that the dead should be burnt, and that everything that had been theirs should be carried to the pyre. He said that every one should go up to Walhalla with as many riches as would be heaped upon his pyre, and that he should enjoy in Walhalla all those things also which he had hidden away in the earth. The ashes should be thrown into the sea, or be buried deep in the soil; but for illustrious men a mound should be raised as a token of remembrance."

Dr. Blind also gives in the same pamphlet the description of Beowulf's funeral, to prove that it was also the habit with the Anglo-Saxons to burn their dead with treasures:—

Thus we have the proof that in a remote antiquity it was the custom in Babylon, Egypt, Italy, Macedonia, Scandinavia, and Germany, to bury the rich with their treasures, and my excavations have proved that this custom existed also at MycenÆ in the time of the AtridÆ.