PREFACE.

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It has been with much reluctance that, at the persevering request of Dr. Schliemann, I have undertaken to write a Preface to his Mycenean volume. I have managed perhaps, though with long intermissions of the pleasant labour, to maintain a tolerable acquaintance with the text of Homer; and the due establishment of the points of contact between that text and the remains from MycenÆ is without question one of the essential aims, to which comment on this work requires to be addressed. But I have a horror of all specialism which travels beyond its proper province; and in this matter I am at best no more than a specialist, probably, too, not one of very high pretensions. I have not that practised skill, that comprehensive outlook over the whole field of Hellenic, and other than Hellenic archÆology, which has conferred upon Mr. Newton his well-earned fame. The just conclusion from these premises appears to be, that I ought to have declined a charge quod ferre recusent humeri.[1] But there was, in ancient poetry, a Destiny stronger than the will of gods. To me, on this occasion, Dr. Schliemann is the vicegerent and organ of that Destiny. In view of the splendid services which he has conferred upon classical science, a power, that thrusts argument out of court, brings me to perceive, that I cannot but accede to his desire. I have however given the reader fair warning where and why he should be on his guard: and I shall make all the use I can of the landmarks laid down in the report which Mr. Newton, after an ocular inspection of these remains, published in the Times of April 20, 1877; and of the valuable papers of Mr. Gardner in the Academy (April 21 and 28). I believe that the interest, excited by Dr. Schliemann's discoveries, has been by no means confined to classical scholars. I shall therefore endeavour to be as little technical as possible, and to write, so far as may be, for a circle wider than that of the persons among us who are acquainted with the Greek tongue.

When the disclosures at Tiryns and MycenÆ were announced in England, my own first impression was that of a strangely bewildered admiration, combined with a preponderance of sceptical against believing tendencies, in regard to the capital and dominating subject of the Tombs in the Agora. I am bound to say, that reflection and a fuller knowledge have nearly turned the scales the other way. There are indeed, not only gaps to be supplied, but difficulties to be confronted, and to be explained; or to be left over for future explanation. Yet the balance, I will not say of evidence, but of rational presumption, seems as though it might ultimately lean towards the belief that this eminent explorer has exposed to the light of day, after 3000 years, the memorials and remains of Agamemnon and his companions in the Return from Troy. But let us endeavour to feel our way by degrees up to this question, gradually and with care, as a good general makes his approaches to a formidable fortress.

I find, upon perusing the volume of Dr. Schliemann, that the items of evidence, which connect his discoveries generally with the Homeric Poems, are more numerous, than I had surmised from the brief outline, with which he favoured us upon his visit to England in the spring.

1. He presents to us the rude figures of cows; and upon a signet ring (No. 531) and elsewhere, cow-heads not to be mistaken. He then points to the traditional worship, from the first, of Hera in Argolis; and he asks us to connect these facts with the use of BoÖpis (cow-eyed) as a staple epithet of this goddess in the Poems; and he might add, with her special guardianship of Agamemnon in his interests and his personal safety (Il. I. 194-222).

This appears to me a reasonable demand. We know that upon some of the Egyptian monuments the goddess Isis, mated with Osiris, is represented in human figure with the cow's head. This was a mode of exhibiting deity congenial to the spirit of an Egyptian immigration,[2] such as might, compatibly with the text of Homer, have taken place some generations before the TroÏca. But it was also a mode against which the whole spirit of Hellenism, according to the authentic type of that spirit supplied in the Poems, utterly revolted. We find there a Hera, who wore, so to speak, the mantle of Isis, besides carrying the spoils of one or more personages enrolled in the Golden Book of the old Pelasgian dynasties. Nothing could be more natural than a decapitation of the Egyptian Isis, not penally but for her honour. She might consequently appear with the human head; but, not to break sharply with the traditions of the people, the cow-head, and even the cow figure, might nevertheless be retained as symbols of religion. And the great Poet, who invariably keeps these symbols so to speak at arms' length, in order that he may prevent their disparaging the creed of which he was the great doctor, might nevertheless select from the bovine features that one which was suited to his purpose, and give to his Hera, who was never a very intellectual deity, the large tranquil eye of the cow. The use of the epithet for Hera in Homer is not, indeed, exclusive, and I admit that he may have inherited that use. But, though not exclusive, it is very special, and this speciality is enough to give a sensible support to the doctrine of our famous explorer.

2. The buildings improperly called Cyclopean, and still more improperly endowed with the alternative name of Pelasgian, have long been known, more or less, to exist in Argolis; but Dr. Schliemann has thrown some light on what I may perhaps be allowed to call their diversity of style. He admits three forms found in this kind of building. I have objected to the current names, the first because it does not inform; the second because it misleads, for these buildings have no true connection with the Pelasgian tribes. What they indicate is the handiwork of the great constructing race or races, made up of several elements, who migrated into Greece, and elsewhere on the Mediterranean, from the south and east, and who exhibit an usual, though perhaps not an invariable connection with the Poseidon-worship, a worship, with which the Cyclopean name is, through the Odyssey, perceptibly associated, and which is one of the main keys, as I have long been persuaded, wherewith in time to unlock, for Hellenic and Homeric regions, the secrets of antiquity. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon; that is, by a race who practised the worship of the god. How far those walls conform to any of the minuter points of the descriptions of 'Cyclopean' architecture by Dr. Schliemann, (pp. 42, 123), I cannot say. But if he is right, as seems probable, in placing Troy at Hissarlik, it is important to notice that this work of Poseidon had a solidity, which bore it unharmed through the rage of fire, and kept it well together amidst all the changes which have buried it in a hill of rubbish and promiscuous remains. And of course the modes, used by the very same race in the business of building, could not but vary much with the circumstances of each case, and especially with the material at hand. I am tempted, at least until a better name can be found, to call this manner of building Poseidonian; at any rate, whatever it be called, to note it as a point of correspondence between the Poems and the discoveries, admitting at the same time that the matter is not sufficiently developed to warrant me in laying upon it any considerable stress.

3. The beehive-like building, which is rather loosely called the Treasury of Atreus, presents to us over the doorway (p. 43) two enormous slabs, one of them supposed to weigh from 130 to 135 tons. I only refer to them for the sake of reminding the reader that, as I think, we must be prepared, in this and other matters, freely to recognise the hand of the foreigner at work; who brought with him into Greece attainments, not to be despised, of material civilisation. More pointedly I wish to observe that in the interior of the Treasury, from the fourth course upwards, there are visible (p. 44) in each stone two bored holes, and in many of them the remains of 'bronze' nails still existing. Similar holes, it appears, are found (p. 45) in the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenos. The purpose of these nails, says our author, could only be to attach to the wall what in one place he calls the bronze, and in another the brazen plates, with which the whole interior was once decorated. On the secondary question, what was the exact material employed, let me here observe that of brass those ages knew nothing, and that bronze, particularly in that stage of material development, was wholly unsuited for sheeting. But, as to the structural point, we have here a remarkable point of contact with the Homeric text. For in the palace of AlkinoÖs, king of the Phaiakes, a splendour as of sun or moon dazzled the eye, for the walls were of chalkos (Od. VII. 86, cited p. 44), which I hope I may now boldly translate copper: a metal unlike bronze (a) in being readily malleable, (b) in being throughout the Poems most usually lustrous, a character I do not suppose we should assign to bronze. On the other hand, the comparative softness of copper was not well suited for the nails, so bronze might very well be employed. Nor does this conjunction of the two metals, pure and mixed, in the same work, carry us away from the text of Homer: for his wall-sheets of copper in ScheriÈ were crowned with a cornice of his dark kuanos, which I take to be bronze. This copper sheeting is a feature of the supreme Olympian Palace (Il. I. 426, Od. VIII. 321), built by Hephaistos of the skilful mind. I think I could show that it also adorned the palaces of Menelaos and Odysseus, and could point out, moreover, why all this is in accordance with the distinctly foreign and eastern character of the embellishment: but an exhibition of the evidence would lead me into too great length; and I note only for the present purpose the remarkable correspondence of the archÆology with the Poems.

4. Passing from architectural to moveable objects, I observe that Dr. Schliemann found both knives and keys of iron in MycenÆ, but that from their form he assigns them to a later and strictly historic period. Old MycenÆ, therefore, in accordance with Hissarlik, has afforded us, up to the present time, no remains of this metal. In the Poems it is freely mentioned, but as a rare and valuable substance, used where great hardness was required, and for objects comparatively small and portable; except, indeed, in the case of the Gates of Tartaros (Il. VIII 15), where the Poet could dispose of as much material as he pleased. The aggregate quantity, then, was small; and the instruments were likely to be carried away on the abandonment or destruction of a city. Its absence may therefore be accounted for, in part by its value, but also, and more especially, because it so readily corrodes.[3] Therefore, although we cannot here establish a positive correspondence, neither have we any occasion to admit a discrepancy.

5. Neither need we, I think, suppose any variance between the chariot, as our author found it on the second tombstone of the Acropolis (p. 84), and the Homeric picture. True, he finds a wheel of four spokes, and the Olympian car of Hera had eight (Il. V. 723); but this diversity of structure is probably introduced, like the diversity of material, by way of divine distinction, and to show the superior elaboration and strength of the vehicle.[4]

6. We have at MycenÆ the Agora, or place of Assembly, in full agreement with the Poems on the two points, first of its circular form (pp. 338, 339), and secondly of the smoothed horizontal slabs, bounding the circle, on which the Elders sate. I do not dilate upon these, as they are fully noticed in the text: but I shall return to the subject, in connection with the situation chosen for the tombs, and the inferences which are to be drawn from this important circumstance.

I will now hazard, before proceeding further with my list, one or two general remarks on the works of art and ornament, referring again to the reports of Mr. Newton and Mr. Gardner, as the most trustworthy comment on the text of our author concerning them.

First, I have to offer some reflections on the general character of the discoveries, and on its relation to the state of Art exhibited in the Poems. It seems reasonable to believe, especially after what has been shown by Mr. Gardner respecting the four tombstones, that they constituted the contemporary seal of a great deposit. It results, I think, from the evidence before us that it is impossible to reduce to one school or style or stage of art the whole of the objects exhumed. But on this I would observe first that, although they were simultaneously deposited in honour of the dead, they might have been the productions of more than one generation: secondly, that not only are we not required, but, in so far as we draw light from the Homeric Poems, we are hardly permitted, to refer them collectively to a domestic origin.

I gather from Mr. Gardner's report that the Art exhibited on the Pottery is more uniformly backward, than that exhibited by the works of metal. But this pottery, which was, whether wheel made or hand-made, of an early stage in the manufacture, was far more likely to be domestic; while the works in the precious metals might be imported. Or they might be the productions of foreign artists, attracted to the Court of Agamemnon; in the same manner as we find that Daidalos, whose name, however mythical, represents a foreign influence, executed in Crete, for Ariadne, the representation of a dance in metal.

The discovery, or the inspection, of the works must without doubt in the first instance suggest a reference of them to a local school of goldsmiths. But, considering the numerous points of contact between the discoveries and the Homeric Poems, it is important to know whether, and how far, they really favour such a supposition. This is not the place for an examination in detail of all the works of Art mentioned by Homer. I believe there is no one of them, of which the purely Greek origin can be established by proof from the text, while the manufacture abroad and importation are frequently mentioned. At the same time, there are some considerations which tend to show that, if there were local workmen in Greece capable of producing objects such as those now exhumed, it is at MycenÆ that we should expect to find them. First, on account of the wealth of the city, and of its position as the capital of the country. Secondly, on account of the wealth of Agamemnon personally, and his acquisitiveness if not his avarice, which made him eager to spoil those whom his spear had slain, and which is the subject of varied allusions in the Iliad. It must be remembered that in those days works of art were not merely ornamental, but were a favourite form, as their name (keimelia) shows, of stored wealth: and of these, even in Troas, Agamemnon possessed many (Il. IX. 330). Thirdly, an indication, perhaps, more significant, may be drawn from the remarkable passage in the Eleventh Book (15-46), which describes the arming of Agamemnon for the field. The first portion of the armour, that attracts observation, is an elaborately wrought breast-plate, which had come from Cyprus, a seat of Phoenician settlement. We next come to the sword, which I shall presently describe. This is followed by the shield, adorned with many bosses of metal, but also carrying a representation of the Gorgon with the heads or figures of Fear and Panic. This shield must be considered as a work of art; and the same may be said of its band or strap, which carried the figure of a three-headed snake. There is nothing said to connect these works with foreign manufacture. The family of Agamemnon was of a foreign origin comparatively recent; but it may remain an open question, whether these arms are presumptively referable, or not, to a domestic manufacture.

The deposits appear, again, to differ extremely in point of merit. I set aside the objects directly symbolical, because, where religion, or idolatry, is in question, excellence in workmanship becomes secondary, or even ceases to be desired. Among the other objects, I gather that none exhibit a very high order of technical qualities. But, if we may rely upon photographic representation, they surely exhibit lively and forcible movement, as well as many of the elements of nobleness, beauty, and fertility of invention; particularly in ornamentation, as distinguished from the representation of life, either animal or vegetable. Some of this diversity may be due to difference of date; some, perhaps much, to the superiority of the immigrant hand, or of imported works. That there were foreigners resident in Greece at the time of the TroÏca, we have every reason to infer from one conspicuous case, that of Echepolos, a son of Anchises, who was allowed to present the mare AithÈ to Agamemnon, as the price of his exemption (Il. XXIII. 296) from service against Troy. If there be anywhere in the Poems an account of a work of art produced in Greece or by a Greek, it is the bedstead of Odysseus,[5] wrought by himself (Od. XXIII. 190-201); and to him, after a good deal of consideration, I am inclined to ascribe a close connection with the immigrant or Phoenician stock; though this representation might also be due to his unequalled versatility and universality of accomplishment. There was indeed a ChrusochoÖs or gold-plater at the Court of Nestor (Od. III. 425); but the very same man goes by the name of Chalkeus or coppersmith (Ibid. III. 432). And it would even seem that working in metals cannot have been a principal or prominent employment in an Achaian community, for no such person is named in the remarkable passage of the Odyssey (XVII. 384) which supplies a sort of list, and where the wood-worker, or carpenter, appears.

The list of these objects, and of their ornaments, is on the whole richer and more diversified than the Poems, with the exception of the famous Shield of Achilles, would have led us to expect. Possibly a knowledge of the Mycenean treasures may have prompted or aided a vigorous imagination, in that wonderful anticipation of excellences which had not been realized in practice. The most remarkable feature, I think, of all Homer's delineations of art is the force and reality with which he confers animation on things inanimate. And perhaps the eye may be struck, in examining Schliemann's illustrations, with the vigour of life and motion which asserts itself in many of the Mycenean works, where the delineation is technically most imperfect. But we cannot compare the text with these remains alone; we are bound also to avail ourselves of such light as can be had from Hissarlik, whatever its effect upon our prepossessions or our arguments. Now I, for one, am struck with the wealth of MycenÆ, and the comparative poverty of what is probably Troy. I do not mean merely as to the small number of valuable remains, for this may be due to chance; though, indeed, fortune, for once renouncing her caprice, seems in both cases to have obeyed the dictates of archÆological justice, and to have treated Dr. and Mrs. Schliemann as her favourite children. But I mean that there is far less of luxe in the ornamentation of the works at Hissarlik; I might, perhaps, say no representation at all of life, except in the rudest and most barbarous form. There seem to be very good forms in the gold and silver objects of Hissarlik, but always associated with plain work; no animal or even vegetable representation calling for notice from the present point of view, none of the repoussÉ work, nothing resembling the (apparently) beautiful cylinder (p. 287), or the elaborate rings photographed in this volume. How are we to account for this? And does an argument hence arise, that the Hissarlik remains belong to a period different from, and anterior to, that which produced the works at MycenÆ? That the adverse case may be made as strong as possible, let it be borne in mind that while Homer indicates Orchomenos, and above all Egyptian Thebes, as the wealthiest cities of his little world, he seems designedly to assign the very same stage of opulence to Troy, which he gives to MycenÆ; for he describes by one and the same epithet, poluchrusos, which means gold-abounding, these two cities and these two alone. Troy has it in Il. XVIII. 289. For MycenÆ it was almost a formula; see Il. VII. 180, XI. 46; Od. III. 305.

We have now before us, as is not improbable, the choicest samples of what the two cities had to boast of; and the question is, can we account for the difference in opulence, and stage of art, between them? I conceive that we can, at least in a considerable degree; but it is only by that acknowledgment, which some are still indisposed to make, of the broad vein of historic reality, that runs through the delineations of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Three passages of the Iliad, in particular, convey to us that the city of Troy was suffering great impoverishment by the War. Indeed, if there be a grain of fact in the tale, it could not be otherwise. For the means of resisting the truly national attack of the Achaians, she was dependent neither on a good cause, nor on a soldiery commensurate with theirs. She had to seek strength from without; first from the grudging support of Dardania, secondly from the neighbouring tribes both of Europe and of Asia. It might even be inferred from the text that nine-tenths of the fighting power (Il. II. 123-33) were other than strictly domestic. But this support from without could only be got by paying for it. Accordingly Hector, in the Seventeenth Book speaks with the authority (220-32) of a general addressing allies, who are duly compensated for their services. So also we know that the great Eurupulos and his Keteians,[6] or Hittites (Od. XI. 520), fall in numbers on the plains of Troy, "serving for gifts." "I wear out the Trojans," says Hector, "with presents and with victualling for you." Again in the Twenty-fourth Book, Achilles, compassionately addressing Priam, says, "We hear that you once were prosperous, and exceeded in wealth, as well as in the number of your sons, all the neighbouring countries" (543-6). The inference is obvious; that at the time, though the city had not been captured, it was becoming comparatively poor. But the most express testimony is that of Il. XVIII. 288-92, when Hector stimulates his countrymen to sally out, by reminding them that they are already well-nigh ruined. Once, he says, all men were wont to celebrate the wealth of Troy; "but now the fine valuables have utterly disappeared from our mansions."

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And, under the wrath of Zeus, multitudes of their possessions had been sent in exchange to Phrygia and MÆonia; in exchange, that is, as I presume, for necessaries. But the great Mycenean deposit, if Schliemann be right in his view, was made before the time of any sack or depopulation of the city. Upon such an issue of life and death, as that offered to the Trojans, the best objects would naturally be parted with, as the most effective for their purpose (see Il. XXIV. 234-7); and accordingly, if we are comparing Troy and MycenÆ at all, we are comparing Troy in its exhaustion with MycenÆ in its prosperity.

We have among the remains in the precious metals from Hissarlik, I believe, no representation of an animal, either chased or in the round. But the Poems give us several examples of such works in the possession of Greeks; though commonly under presumptions of foreign production, as it would not be difficult to show.

It is true, indeed, that Troy, in immediate contact with the large fertile districts of Asia Minor, had means of material growth by land-trade, which Greece, split by her mountain chains into comparatively narrow tracts of cultivable soil, did not possess. But it seems likely that even in those days the maritime commerce, stimulated by Phoenician ships and settlements, may have compensated, or more than compensated, for this disadvantage. Of the trade in metals and in corn, carried on by their race, we have distinct information in the Poems (Od. I. 183-4, XIV. 333-5). They had, in all likelihood, already been followed by the Greeks. The voyage of the ship Argo seems to have been of a mixed character. The ships of the armament against Troy could hardly have been supplied by a people, who had not made a substantial beginning in maritime trade. The navigation of the coasts, without reference to purposes of war, is evidently a familiar idea in the Odyssey. But, in the Iliad, the construction of the ships of Paris is noted as the remarkable work of a remarkable man (Il. V. 59-64); nor do we, except in this one ill-omened case, ever hear of Trojan navigation.

Once more. We are given to understand[7] that signs of the art of writing have been discovered at Hissarlik; whereas the new volume supplies us with nothing of the kind for MycenÆ. But nothing, I apprehend, can be affirmed of its existence either in Greece or Troas during the Homeric age, except as the secret of a few; in Greece it was manifestly exotic, and perhaps it may have been the same in Troas. As long as the evidence remains in this state, we cannot infer from it with confidence any important proposition as to comparative advancement.

I now resume the list of points of contact between the Mycenean discoveries and the Poems, by noticing such of them as are found in movables.

1. As the first of these I take the free use of copper for large utensils (pp. 274-277). We have also the analysis supplied by Dr. Percy of a sword and a vase-handle of bronze (pp. 372-5). In my judgment, we have no sign whatever from the Poems of the fusion of metals together as a domestic practice; while we have abundant proof of the importation and foreign production of works of art and implements in bronze. This vase, then, may probably have been foreign. The same is likely with respect to the sword. We know that swords were exported and imported between different countries. Thrace was a seat of manufacture both for fine works of art (Il. XXIV. 234) and for weapons (Il. XXIII. 808): and we find a sword, "beautiful and long," from Thrace, in the possession of the Trojan Prince Helenos (Il. XIII. 577). Moreover, copper was an abundant metal, tin a rare one. Bronze weapons, therefore, must have been expensive. And the swords of bronze found in the tombs, in conjunction with all other costly objects, are just where we should have expected them. Even so at Hissarlik, two battle-axes found in the Treasure, and presumably belonging therefore to distinguished persons, were of bronze.[8] But axes made of pure copper may be seen in the Museum of the Irish Academy; and the great layer of copper-scoriÆ at Hissarlik, without any tin, seems effectually to show that copper was the staple metal of the heroic period, and that our archÆologists will have to insert a copper age in their lists, between their age of stone and their age of bronze. If weapons of copper were to be discovered in the tombs at MycenÆ, no circumstance could more enhance the proofs afforded by the Poems of the general use of copper; because the weapons in the tombs are weapons of the persons most likely to be able to command the use of bronze. I hope that the analysis, already begun, will be applied to a much larger number of objects. In the meantime, as to large utensils, I find the discoveries already in close correspondence with the Poems.

2. The most remarkable, perhaps, in themselves, of all the objects discovered at Hissarlik, were the two elaborate head-dresses of gold, which for the first time enabled us to construe, with reasonable confidence, the entire passage in the Iliad (XXII. 468-72), which describes the head-dress cast away by AndromachÈ in the agony of her grief. The print will not have been forgotten, which exhibits the plektÈ anadesmÈ.[9] It was a series of gold plaits, hanging down, over the forehead and the ears, from the broad band (ampux) which ran round the head, and which constituted as it were the base of the ornament. With these objects, and with the Poems, Schliemann associates, incontestably as it would appear, the ornament No. 357 (p. 248); a band or frontlet adorned "with rosettes and crosses. It has two perforations in the rim, a little way from either end, from one of which is still hanging the fragment of a very fine chain." The only variation in the fashion of the thing seems to be, that the plaits have not been continued over the forehead.

3. Hissarlik did nothing for us towards explaining the kredemnon; an article of head-dress worn by many or some women of the heroic age, who could not add to it the splendid decorations then reserved for princesses. But the definitions of this commodity are supplied for us by the Poems, piecemeal indeed, yet with adequate clearness. In the first place, it crowned the head like the battlements of a walled city; for the destruction of the walls of Troy is described as the ruin of its sacred kredemna (Il. XVI. 100).

It was not, however, a metallic or solid object; for the deified Ino, to save Odysseus from the fury of the storm, throws to him her own kredemnon and bids him bind it round his chest (Od. V. 346). It used to be made of delicate and glossy material (Od. I. 334), and was worthy even to be a marriage gift from AphroditÈ to the bride of Hector (Il. XXII. 470). But finally, it had a long wing, tail, or lappet (I am not skilled or confident in this vocabulary), descending from behind, perhaps more than one. This is shown indirectly, but I think conclusively, by the information given us in Od. VI. 100, that the handmaidens of NausicaÄ, when about to play at ball, first put away their kredemna, evidently lest the free movement of their arms should be embarrassed by the long lappets. Again, it is evident that PenelopÈ, when she used her kredemna to cover her face, brought the lappets round and employed them as a veil; on any other ground the use of the plural can hardly be explained (Od. I. 334). And now this part of the prehistoric lady's toilette is as complete as I can make it from the Poems.

I turn, then, to Dr. Schliemann's volume, and call attention to the signet ring at p. 354, which, though apparently not of a high order in art, combines so many objects of interest. On the extreme left of the picture stands a child, or small woman, who is picking fruit from a tree. Behind her head appear to descend long tresses of hair. What if these should prove on further examination to be lappets from a head-dress which the head seems to carry? Passing to the right of the tree, first comes a tall seated woman in a turban, which carries in front, says our author, a diadem and behind a "tress of hair" from the point into which the turban runs. I cannot but suppose this "tress" to be a lappet of the kredemnon. She offers poppies to another tall woman, again dressed in a turban running out into a point (p. 356), "from which a long ornament hangs down on the back," a third time, in all likelihood, the lappet of the kredemnon. Below her outstretched right arm we have another small figure, probably of a child, again in a turban, and with "a long tress of hair, or some ornament, hanging down its back:" yet once more, I conjecture, the lappet indicated by Homer. There is also a fifth: we have still the figure to the right of the picture (p. 357); and she, too, wears a turban terminating in a point "from which a long band-like ornament hangs down on her back." Now let us go aloft; and we find a small figure, towards the right of the picture. This figure (p. 357) is described by Schliemann as female, from his observing breasts upon it: and again, "from the back project the long bands." Thus, in all the six cases, we appear to have the same remarkable form described for the main article of female head dress, which is also given us by Homer.

It may, however, be said that the female figures on this ring are foreign, rather than Hellenic, in their character and habiliments. But it happens that the evidence of the Poems more copiously establishes the use of the kredemnon among foreigners, than in Greece. We hear indeed of the kredemna of PenelopÈ; and Hera, when about to inveigle Zeus, assumes the kredemnon (Il. XIV. 184). But it is worn, as we have seen, by AndromachÈ in Troy; by Ino, a deity of Phoenician extraction; and by the maidens attendant on NausicaÄ in ScheriÈ.

4. In the upper region, or what we might call the sky of the picture, are presented to us, apparently in very rough outline, the sun and a thinly horned moon.[10] Below them is an uneven band, forming rudely an arc of a circle. This, I am led to suppose, is an indication of mother-earth, with its uneven surface of land and its rippling sea, in the proper place, beneath the sun and moon. If this be so, it greatly confirms the conjecture of Mr. Newton respecting the six objects on the rim of the picture to the right. He asks whether these can be the teirea (Il. XVIII. 485), the stars of heaven, which are described by Homer as placed upon the Shield of Achilles, together with the sun, moon, sky, earth, and sea. Schliemann assigns to this sestetto heads and eyes: Mr. Newton says they are thought to be heads of lions. That they should be things animate is not, I imagine, in conflict with the conjecture that they may be stars. The spirit of Hellenism transmuted the older Nature-worship by impersonations, of which we have an Homeric example in the astral Orion (Il. XVIII. 486, Od. XI. 572). Should these conjectures be confirmed, the matter will be of peculiar interest: for we shall then have before us, in actual collocation, the very objects, which people the first compartment of the god-wrought Shield of Achilles: the earth (of land and sea), sun, moon, and all the stars of heaven. The ouranos or heaven itself, which the Poet also includes, is here in all likelihood represented by the curvature of the picture.

5. The goblet (No. 346 of the volume) has on each of its two handles, we are told, the carved figure of a dove in gold. Schliemann observes on the correspondence with the goblet of Nestor (Il. XI. 632-635). We are not indeed told that this was of gold; probably a different material is to be supposed from the mention of gold as the material of these parts or appendages. But it had four handles, and on each handle were two doves. We are also told that he did not get it in Troy, which may remind us of the argument already presented, but brought it from home. It was probably a foreign work; for the Phoenician associations of Nestor are attested by his descent from Poseidon (Od. XI. 254). This is fairly to be noted for an instance of equable development in art, as between the discoveries and the Poems.

6. We frequently hear in the Poems of the golden studs or buttons which were used as ornamental adjuncts. In many passages we have the silver-studded sword, xiphos or phasganon arguroËlon (Il. II. 45, III. 334 et al.). This, I say, is common. We have also studs, or bosses, of gold upon the staff or sceptre of Achilles (Il. I. 246), upon the cup of Nestor XI. 632-635: and upon a sword, only once it is true, but then that sword is the sword of Agamemnon, king of gold-abounding MycenÆ (Il. XI. 29). On this sword, says the Poet, there were gilt, or golden, bosses; and the expression he uses about them (pamphainon) is worthy of note. It is not easy to represent by any one English word. It means not merely shining brightly, but shining all over; that is to say, apparently, all over the sheath to which they were attached, so as to make it seem a shining mass. Is not this precisely what must have been the effect of the line of bosses found lying by the sword in p. 303, which lie closely together, are broader than the blade, and probably covered the whole available space along the sheath of wood, now mouldered away? And is it not now startling, to descend into the tombs with Dr. Schliemann, and to find there lying silently in rows these gold studs or bosses, when the wooden sheaths they were attached to have for the most part mouldered away, but by the very sides of the very swords which they adorned like binding on a book, and of the slight remains of warriors by whom, there need be little doubt, those swords were wielded?

"Expende Annibalem; quot libras in duce summo Invenies?"[11]

They also appear on the sword-handle knobs. The helos of Homer is commonly rendered a nail or stud, which has a head of small size; but the word probably includes the larger buttons or bosses, which lie in lines along some of the swords. (See on this point pp. 281, 2; 303, 5, 6.)

I will not attempt to pursue further an enumeration which, growing more and more minute, would be wearisome. If porcelain and glass have been found, I should at once assign them to foreign importation. The art of casting and tooling in the precious metals, of which the examples would appear, both from our author and from Mr. Newton, to be few, are probably to be referred to a like source. The hammer and the pincers are the only instruments for metallic manipulation, of which Homer appears to be aware (Il. XVIII. 477, Od. III. 434-5). As regards the pottery mentioned by our author, if some of the goblets were of light green (p. 285), we have a colour developed in their manufacture of which Homer had certainly no distinct conception, though it may still be true that, as in nature, so in human art, objects bearing that colour may have met his eye. Of the scales in the third sepulchre there seems no reason to doubt that we may find the interpretation, by referring them to the Egyptian scheme of doctrine with regard to a future life (pp. 197, 8). In the Books of the Dead, we have an elaborate representation of the judgment-hall, to which the departed soul is summoned. Here the scales form a very prominent object;[12] and it seems very possible that the Poet, who was Greek and not Egyptian in his ideas of the future state, may have borrowed and transposed, from this quarter, the image of the balances displayed on high, which he employs with such fine effect in some critical passages of the Iliad. As regards the emblem of the double-headed or full-formed axe, I venture to dispense with the cautious reserve of Schliemann. As the usual form of a weapon familiar to the age, it seems to require no special explanation (p. 252). But where we find it conjoined with the ox-head (p. 218), or on the great signet ring in conjunction with a figure evidently representing Deity, I cannot hesitate to regard it as a sacrificial symbol. We have only to remember the passage in the third Odyssey, where the apparatus of sacrifice is detailed, and Thrasumedes, who was to strike the blow, brought the axe (III. 442):—

The boar's teeth (p. 273) supply a minor, perhaps, but a clear and significant point of correspondence to be added to our list (Il. X. 263-264). Another is to be noticed in the manner of attaching, by wire, lids and covers. On these subjects, I refer to the text of the volume.

By the foregoing detail I have sought to show that there is no preliminary bar to our entertaining the capital question whether the tombs now unearthed, and the remains exposed to view, under masks for the faces, and plates of gold covering one or more of the trunks, are the tombs and remains of the great Agamemnon and his compeers, who have enjoyed, through the agency of Homer, such a protracted longevity of renown. For the general character of the Mycenean treasures, I take my stand provisionally on the declaration of Mr. Newton (supported by Mr. Gardner), that, in his judgment, they belong to the prehistoric or heroic age, the age antecedent to his Greco-Phoenician period; and in important outlines of detail I have endeavoured to show that they have many points of contact with the Homeric Poems, and with the discoveries at Hissarlik. But this Preface makes no pretension whatever to exhibit a complete catalogue of the objects, or to supply for each of them its interpretation. We encounter, indeed, a certain number of puzzling phenomena, such as the appearance of something like visors, for which I could desire some other explanation, but which Schliemann cites as auxiliaries to the masks of the tombs, and even thinks to prove that such articles were used by the living, as well as for the dead (p. 359).

Undoubtedly, in my view, these masks constitute a great difficulty, when we come to handle the question who were the occupants of the now opened sepulchres? It may be, that as Mr. Newton says, we must in the main rest content with the "reasonable presumption" that the four tombs contained Royal personages, and must leave in abeyance the further question, whether they are the tombs indicated to Pausanias by the local tradition; at any rate, until the ruins of MycenÆ shall have been further explored, according to the intention which the government of Greece is said to have conceived.

At the same time this is a case where the question before us, if hazardous to prosecute, is not easy to let alone.

It is obviously difficult to find any simple, clear, consistent interpretation of the extraordinary inhumation disclosed to us by these researches. Such an interpretation may be found hereafter: it does not seem to be forthcoming at the present moment. But the way towards it can only be opened up by a painstaking exhibition of the facts, and by instituting a cautious comparison between them and any indications, drawn from other times or places, which may appear to throw light upon them. For my own part, having approached the question with no predisposition to believe, I need not scruple to say I am brought or driven by the evidence to certain conclusions; and also led on to certain conjectures suggested by those conclusions. The first conclusion is that we cannot refer the five entombments in the Agora at MycenÆ to any period within the historic age. The second is that they are entombments of great, and almost certainly in part of royal, personages. The third, that they bear indisputable marks of having been effected, not normally throughout, but in connection with circumstances, which impressed upon them an irregular and unusual character. The conjecture is, that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company. It is supported in part by a number of presumptions, but in great part also by the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of offering any other suggestion which could be deemed so much as colourable.

The principal facts which we have to notice appear to be as follows:—

1. The situation chosen for the interments.

2. The numbers of persons simultaneously interred.

3. The dimensions and character of the graves.

4. The partial application of fire to the remains.

5. The use of masks, and likewise of metallic plates, to adorn or shelter them, or both.

6. The copious deposit both of characteristic and of valuable objects in conjunction with the bodies.

1. Upon the situation chosen for the interments, Dr. Schliemann opines that they were not originally within the Agora, but that it was subsequently constructed around the tombs (p. 340). His reasons are that the supporting wall, on which rest, in double line, the upright slabs, formerly, and in six cases still, covered by horizontal slabs as seats for the elders, is careless in execution, and inferior to the circuit wall of the Acropolis. But, if it was built as a mere stay, was there any reason for spending labour to raise it to the point of strength necessary for a work of military defence? Further, he finds between the lines of slabs, where they are uncovered, broken pottery of the prehistoric period more recent than that of the tombs. But such pottery would never have been placed there at the time of the construction; with other rubbish, it would only have weakened and not strengthened the fabric of the inclosure. Nor can we readily see how it could have come there, until the work was dilapidated by the disappearance of the upper slabs. If so, it would of course be later in date than the slabs were.

It appears to me that the argument of improbability tells powerfully against the supposition that the Agora was constructed round the tombs, having previously been elsewhere. The space within the Acropolis appears to be very limited: close round the inclosures are 'Cyclopean' houses and cisterns. When works of this kind are once constructed, their removal would be a work of great difficulty: and this is a case, where the earliest builders were followed by men who aimed not at greater, but at less, solidity. Besides which, the Agora was connected with the religion of the place, and was, as will be shown, in the immediate neighbourhood of the palace. In addition to these material attractions, every kind of moral association would grow up around it.

It can be clearly shown that the ancient Agora was bound down to its site by manifold ties, other than those of mere solidity in its construction. It stands in MycenÆ, says our author (p. 341), on the most imposing and most beautiful spot of the city, from whence the whole was overlooked. It was on these high places that the men of the prehistoric ages erected the simple structures, in many cases perhaps uncovered, that, with the altars, served for the worship of the gods. In ScheriÈ, it was built round the temple, so to call it, of Poseidon (Od. VI. 266). In the Greek camp before Troy the Agora was in the centre of the line of ships (Il. XI. 5-9, 806-8). There justice was administered, and there "had been constructed the altars of the gods." Further, it is clear, from a number of passages in Homer, that the place of Assembly was always close to the royal palace. In the case of Troy we are told expressly that it was held by the doors of Priam (Il. II. 788, VII. 345, 6). In ScheriÈ, the palace of AlkinoÖs was close to the grove of AthenÈ (Od. VI. 291-3); and we can hardly doubt that this grove was in the immediate vicinity of the PosideÏon, which was itself within the Agora. In Ithaca (Od. XXIV. 415 seqq.), the people gathered before the Palace of Odysseus, and then went in a mass into the Agora. While it was thus materially associated with those points of the city which most possessed the character of fixtures, it is not too much to say, considering the politics of early Greece, that it must, in the natural course, have become a centre around which would cling the fondest moral and historical associations of the people. Into the minor question whether the encircling slabs are the remains of an original portion of the work or not, I do not think it needful for me to enter.

But, while I believe that the Agora is where it was, the honour paid to the dead by the presence of their tombs within it is not affected by either alternative; but only the time of paying it. If this be the old Agora, they were honoured by being laid in it; if it is of later date, they were honoured by its being removed in order to be built around them; if at least this was done knowingly, and how could it be otherwise, when we observe that the five tombs occupy more than a moiety of the whole available space? We know, from the evidence of the historic period, that to be buried in the Agora was a note of public honour; we cannot reasonably doubt, with the five graves before us, that it was such likewise in the historic age.

It was a note of public honour, then, if these bodies were originally buried in the Agora. If we adopt the less probable supposition that the Agora was afterwards constructed around them by reason of their being there, the honour may seem even greater still.

2. Next, the number of persons simultaneously interred, when taken in conjunction with the other features of the transaction, offers a new problem for consideration. An argument in p. 337, to show that the burials were simultaneous, seems quite conclusive. They embraced (ibid.) sixteen or seventeen persons. Among the bodies one appears to be marked out by probable evidence as that of the leading personage. Lying in the tomb marked as No. 1, it has two companions. Now Agamemnon had two marshals or heralds (Il. I. 320), whose office partook of a sacred character. There might, therefore, be nothing strange in their being laid, if so it were, by their lord. The most marked of the bodies lay to the north of the two others, all three having the feet to the westward. It was distinguished by better preservation, which may, at least not improbably, have been due to some preservative process at the time of interment. It carried, besides a golden mask (p. 296), a large golden breastplate (15? by 9½ in.), and other leaves of gold at various points; also a golden belt across the loins, 4 ft. long and 1¾ in. broad. By the side of the figure lay two swords, stated by Dr. Schliemann to be of bronze (p. 302), the ornamentation of one of them particularly in striking accordance with the description in the Iliad of the sword of Agamemnon (Il. XI. 29-31). Within a foot of the body, to the right, lay eleven other swords (p. 304), but this is not a distinctive mark, as the body on the south side has fifteen, ten lying at the feet, and a great heap of swords were found at the west end, between this and the middle body.

The entire number of bodies in the five tombs (p. 337), which is stated at sixteen or seventeen, seems to have included three women and two or three children. The local tradition recorded by Pausanias (inf. p. 59) takes notice of a company of men with Agamemnon, and of Cassandra, with two children whom she was reported to have borne. This is only significant as testifying to the ancient belief that children were buried in the tombs: for Cassandra could only be taken captive at the time when the city of Troy was sacked, and the assassination immediately followed the arrival in Greece. But it is likely enough that these children may have been the offspring of another concubine, who may have taken the place BriseÏs was meant to fill. This is of course mere speculation; but the meaning is that there is nothing in these indications to impair the force of any presumptions, which the discoveries may in other respects legitimately raise.

3. Like the site in the Agora, so the character of the tombstones, which is in strict correspondence with the style of many of the ornaments,[13] and the depth of the tombs, appear with one voice to signify honour to the dead. As I understand the Plans, they show a maximum depth of 25 feet (see, e.g., p. 155) below the surface, hollowed for the most part out of the solid rock. But then we are met with the staggering fact that the bodies of full-grown, and apparently (p. 295) tall, men have been forced into a space of only five feet six inches in length, so as to require that sort of compression which amounts almost to mutilation.

We seem thus to stand in the face of circumstances that contradict one another. The place, the depth, the coverings of the tombs, appear to lead us in one direction; the forcing and squeezing of the bodies in another. But further, and stranger still, there seems to have been no necessity for placing the bodies under this unbecoming, nay revolting, pressure. The original dimensions of the tomb (p. 294) were 21 ft. 6 in. by 11 ft. 6 in. These are reduced all round, first by an inner wall two feet thick, and secondly by a slanting projection one foot thick (at the bottom) to 5 ft. 6 in. and 15 ft. 6 in. Why, then, were the bodies not laid along, instead of across, it? Was not the act needless as well as barbarous? And to what motive is a piece of needless barbarism, apparently so unequivocal, to be referred? I hardly dare to mention, much less, so scanty is the evidence, to dwell upon the fact that their bodies lie towards the west, and that the Egyptian receptacle for the dead lay in that quarter.[14] The conflict of appearances, at which we have now arrived, appears to point to a double motive in the original entombment; or to an incomplete and incoherent proceeding, which some attempt was subsequently made to correct; or to both. But let us pay a brief attention to the remaining particulars of the disclosures.

4. We have next to observe (a) that fire was applied to these remains; (b) that the application of it was only partial; (c) that the metallic deposits are said to show marks[15] of the action of it (pp. 158, 165, 188, 198, 201, 208, 215, 218, 260, 266, 321, 330): so do the pebbles (p. 294). We see, therefore, that the deposition of the precious objects took place either at the same moment with the fire, or, and more probably I suppose, before it had entirely burned out.

The partial nature of the burning requires a more detailed consideration. In the Homeric burials, burning is universal. It must be regarded, according to the Poems, as the established Achaian custom of the day, wherever inhumation was normally conducted. And for burial there was a distinct reason, namely, that without it the Shade of the departed was not allowed to join the company of the other Shades, so that the unburied Elpenor is the first to meet Odysseus (Od. XI. 51) on his entrance into the Underworld; and the shade of Patroclos entreats Achilles to bury him as rapidly as may be, that he may pass the gates of AÏdes (Il. XXIII. 71). I think the proof of the universal use of fire in regular burials at this period is conclusive.

Not only do we find it in the great burials of the Seventh Book (429-32), and in the funerals of Patroclos (XXIII. 177) and Hector (XXIV. 785-800), but we have it in the case of Elpenor (Od. XII. 11-13), whom at first his companions had left uninterred, and for whom therefore we must suppose they only did what was needful under established custom. Perhaps a yet clearer proof is to be found in a simile. Achilles, we are told, wept while the funeral pile he had erected was burning, all night long, the bones of Patroclos, "as a father weeps when he burns the bones of his youthful son" (XXIII. 222-5). This testifies to a general practice.

In the case of notable persons, the combustion was not complete. For not the ashes only, but the bones, were carefully gathered. In the case of Patroclos, they are wrapped in fat, and put in an open cup or bowl (phialÈ) for temporary custody (XXIII. 239-44) until the funeral of Achilles, when with those of Achilles himself, similarly wrapped, and soaked in wine, they are deposited in a golden urn (Od. XXIV. 73-7). In the case of Hector, the bones are in like manner gathered and lodged in a golden box, which is then placed in a trench and built over with a mass of stones (Il. XXIV. 793-8). Incomplete combustion, then, is common to the Homeric and the Mycenean instances. But in the case of the first tomb at MycenÆ, not only was there no collection of the bones for deposit in an urn, but they had not been touched; except in the instance of the middle body, where they had simply been disturbed, and the valuables perhaps removed, as hardly anything of the kind was found with it. In the case of the body on the north side, the flesh of the face remained unconsumed.

But though the use of fire was universal in honourable burial, burial itself was not allowed to all. Enemies, as a rule, were not buried. Hence the opening passage of the Iliad tells us that many heroes became a prey to dogs and birds (Il. I. 4). Such says Priam, before the conflict with Hector, he would make Achilles if he could (XXII. 42); and he anticipates a like distressing fate (66 seqq.) for himself. In the Odyssey, the bodies of the Suitors are left to be removed by their friends (XXII. 448; XXIV. 417). Achilles, indeed, buried EËtion, king of Asiatic Thebes, with his arms, in the regular manner. "He did not simply spoil him, for he had a scruple in his mind" (Il. VI. 417); and no wonder; for EËtion, king of the Kilikes, was not an enemy: that people does not appear among the allies of Troy in the Catalogue. Thus there was a variance of use; and there may have been cases of irregular intermediate treatment between the two extremes of honourable burial and casting out to the dogs.

5. With regard to the use of masks of gold for the dead, I hope that the Mycenean discoveries will lead to a full collection of the evidence upon this rare and curious practice. For the present, I limit myself to the following observations:

(1.) If not less than seven of these golden masks have been discovered at MycenÆ by Dr. Schliemann, then the use of them, on the occasion of these entombments, was not limited to royal persons, of whom it is impossible to make out so large a number.

(2.) I am not aware of any proof at present before us that the use of such masks for the dead of any rank or class was a custom prevalent, or even known, in Greece. There is much information, from Homer downwards, supplied to us by the literature of that country concerning burials; and yet, in a course of more than 1200 years, there is not a single allusion to the custom of using masks for the dead. It seems to be agreed that the passage in the works of Lucian, who is reckoned to have flourished in the second half of the second century, does not refer to the use of such masks. This might lead us to the conjecture that, where the practice has appeared, it was a remainder of foreign usage, a survival from immigration.

(3.) Masks have been found in tombs, not in Greece, but in the Crimea, Campania, and Mesopotamia. Our latest information on the subject is, I believe, the account mentioned in Dr. Schliemann's last report from Athens (pp xlvii, xlviii), of a gold mask found on the Phoenician coast over against Aradus, which is of the size suited for an infant only. It is to be remembered that heroic Greece is full of the marks of what I may term Phoenicianism, most of which passed into the usages of the country, and contributed to form the base of Hellenic life. Nor does it seem improbable, that this use of the metallic mask may have been a Phoenician adaptation from the Egyptian custom of printing the likeness of the dead on the mummy case. And, again, we are to bear in mind that MycenÆ had been the seat of repeated foreign immigrations.

(4.) We have not to deal in this case only with masks, but with the case of a breastplate in gold, which, however, could not have been intended for use in war; together with other leaves or plates of gold, found on, or apparently intended for, other portions of the person.

6. Lastly, with regard to the deposit of objects which, besides being characteristic, have unchangeable value, the only point on which I have here to remark is, their extraordinary amount. It is such, I conceive, as to give to these objects, and particularly to those of the First Tomb, an exceptional place among the sepulchral deposits of antiquity. I understand that their weight is about one hundred pounds troy, or nearly that of five thousand British sovereigns. It is difficult to suppose that this deposit could have been usual, even with the remains of a King; and it is at this point that I, for one, am compelled to break finally and altogether with the supposition, that this great entombment, in the condition in which Dr. Schliemann found it, was simply an entombment of Agamemnon and his company effected by Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, their murderers.

So far, with little argument, I have endeavoured fairly to set out the facts. Let me now endeavour to draw to a point the several threads of the subject, in order to deal with the main question, namely, whether these half-wasted, half-burned remains are the ashes of Agamemnon and his company? And truly this is a case, where it may be said to the inquirer, in figure as well as in fact,

"et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso."[16]

Let us place clearly before our eyes the account given by the Shade of Agamemnon, in the Eleventh Odyssey (405-434), of the manner of his death. No darker picture could be drawn. It combined every circumstance of cruelty with every circumstance of fraud. At the hospitable board, amid the flowing wine-cups, he was slain like an ox at the stall, and his comrades like so many hogs for a rich man's banquet; with deaths more piteous than he had ever known in single combat, or in the rush of armies. Most piteous of all was the death of Cassandra, whom the cruel Clytemnestra despatched with her own hand while clinging to Agamemnon; nor did she vouchsafe to her husband the last office of mercy and compassion, by closing his mouth and eyes in death. Singularly enough, Dr. Schliemann assures me that the right eye, which alone could be seen with tolerable clearness, was not entirely shut (see the engraving at p. 297); while the teeth of the upper jawbone (see the same engraving) did not quite join those of the lower. This condition, he thinks, may be due to the superincumbent weight. But if the weight had opened the jaw, would not the opening, in all likelihood, have been much wider?

Now, as we are told that Ægisthus reigned until Orestes reached his manhood, we must assume that the massacre was in all respects triumphant. Yet there could hardly fail to be a party among the people favourable to the returning King, who had covered his country with unequalled glory. There might thus be found in the circumstances a certain dualism, a ground for compromise, such as may go far to account for the discrepancies of intention, which we seem to find in the entombments. There was this division of sentiment among the people, in the only case where we know the return of the prince from Troy to have been accompanied with a crisis or conflict, I mean the case of Ithaca.

The assassins proceeded in such a way, that the only consistent accomplishment of their design would have been found in casting forth the bodies of the slain like the bodies of enemies. But this may have been forbidden by policy. In the Julius CÆsar of Shakespeare, Brutus says (III. 1.)—

"We are contented CÆsar shall
Have all due rites and lawful ceremonies.
It shall advantage more than do us wrong."

Ægisthus was not Brutus. Even fury was apparent in the incidents of the slaughter. Yet there might be a desire to keep up appearances afterwards, and to allow some semblance of an honourable burial. There is one special circumstance that favours the idea of a double process, namely, that we readily find the agents for both parts of it; the murderers for the first, with necessity and policy controlling hatred; Orestes on his return for the second, with the double motive of piety and revenge.

We are now on the road not of history, but of reasonable conjecture. I try to account for a burial, which according to all reasonable presumption is of the heroic age, and of royal and famous personages, but which presents conflicting features of honour and of shame. That there is no conflicting hypothesis, is not a good reason for precipitate assent to the hypothesis which we may term Agamemnonian. Conjecture, to be admissible, ought to be consistent with itself, to meet the main demands of the known facts, and to present no trait at actual variance with any of them. In this view I present the hypothesis of a double procedure, and a double agency: and I submit, that there is nothing irrational in the following chain of suppositions for the First Tomb, while the others are probably included in the argument. That the usurping assassins, from the same policy, granted the honour of burial in the Agora; hewed the sepulchre deep and large in the rock; and built the encircling wall within it. That honour stopped with the preparation of the tomb, and the rest, less visible to the public eye, was left to spite or haste. That the bodies were consequently placed in the seemingly strange and indecent fashion, which the tomb has disclosed. That, as they were protected by the rock, and by the depth from the surface, their decomposition was slow. That Orestes, on his return, could not but be aware of the circumstances, and, in the fulfilment of his divinely ordered mission, determined upon reparation to the dead. That he opened the tombs and arranged the means of cremation. That, owing to the depth, it was imperfect from want of ventilation; we may remember that in the case of Patroclos the winds were specially summoned to expedite the process (Il. XXIII. 192-218). In calling it imperfect, I mean that it stopped short of the point at which the bones could be gathered; and they remained in situ. That the masks, breastplate, and other leaves of gold were used, perhaps, in part with reference to custom; in part, especially as regards all beside the masks, to replace in the wasted bodies the seemliness and majesty of nature, and to shelter its dilapidation. That the profuse deposits of arms and valuables were due to filial piety. That the same sentiment carried the work through even to the careful sculpturing of the four tombstones (others have been found (p. 100), but without sculpture); and sought, by their means, to indicate for renown and reverence, and to secure from greedy violation, the resting-place of the dead.

A complex solution, perhaps; but one applicable to very complex facts, and one of which the ground at least is laid in those facts; one also, which I offer as a contribution to a most interesting scrutiny, but with no claim or pretension to uphold it against any other, that may seem better entitled to fill the vacant place.

W. E. G.
HAWARDEN, November, 1877.


DR. SCHLIEMANN'S ACCOUNT OF A TOMB AT SPATA, IN ATTICA.

Athens, 1st Oct., 1877.

For some months past it has repeatedly been asserted in the Press by travellers that there exists a very great similarity between the Mycenean antiquities and those recently discovered in a tomb at Spata. Having now visited the latter, in company with my esteemed friend Professor E. Castorches, of the University of Athens, and his daughter Helen, and having carefully examined the objects found in it, I think it in the interest of science to offer the following remarks on the subject. The village of Spata, which is exclusively inhabited by Albanians, lies about nine miles to the east of Athens, on the further side of Mount Hymettus, on the road to Marathon. Close to that village is a small mount, whose circular summit has evidently been artificially levelled; it is covered to a depth of about three feet with dÉbris, in which we see now and then fragments of archaic vases with painted parallel horizontal bands. The villagers assert that until very recently the summit was surrounded by the ruins of fortress walls, which have now altogether disappeared, the stones having been used for the building of the new village. The name of the settlement which existed here in antiquity is altogether uncertain. Colonel Leake[17] recognises in the present name, Spata, a corruption of the ancient demos of Sphettus (S??tt?? or S??tt??), which is mentioned by Aristophanes,[18] Strabo,[19] Pausanias,[20] Stephanus Byzantinus,[21] and others.

In the south-west side of the mount, which slopes at an angle of 52 degrees, there occurred last winter in one place a sudden breaking down of the ground, and in the hollow thus formed there was discovered a sepulchre cut out in the sandstone rock. The ArchÆological Society had the place explored, and it was found that an inclined road, cut in the rock, 74 feet long, led into the tomb. The road is 8¼ feet broad up to the entrance, which is 10 feet long and 3? feet broad. The sepulchre consists of three quadrangular chambers, which are united by two passages 6½ feet long and 3? feet broad; and the ceilings of these chambers are cut out in the rock in the form of roofs with two slanting sides. The primitive architect had evidently intended to give to each of these three chambers exactly the shape of a house, because the slanting sides of the roof-like ceiling do not converge directly from the vertical walls, but hang over by 8 inches like the eaves of a house. The height of the first chamber is 16½ feet, its breadth 15, and its length 20 feet; the two other chambers are 12½ feet high, 12 feet long, and 11½ feet broad. Of the existence of wooden doors there are no traces, except in the passage from the first to the second chamber. Seen from the extremity of the "dromos" this tomb reminds us of the Egyptian sepulchres.[22]

In each of the three chambers was found a human skeleton, with a quantity of ashes and charcoal, which seems to prove that each body had been burnt on the pyre in the very spot where it lay, but so superficially that the bones were preserved. In this respect, as well regarding the burning of the bodies in the tombs, we find a resemblance to the mode of burial of the bodies in the five royal sepulchres at MycenÆ. But here the bones crumbled away on being exposed to the air. This tomb had evidently been already rifled in ancient times, for but a few objects were found with the bodies; nearly all of them lay dispersed in the dÉbris, in and before the entrance. They consisted of bone or ivory, glass, bronze, stone, and terra-cotta. Only a few flowers of very thin gold-leaf having been found, whose aggregate weight cannot exceed the eighth part of a pound, it appears that the tomb-robbers only aimed at the golden ornaments, and that they threw away all the rest.

The few terra-cotta vessels found here are all wheel-made; among the number there is one which perfectly resembles the vase represented under No. 25, p. 64; it is ornamented with red and black circular bands, and is in the shape of a globe with a flat foot; it terminates above in a very pretty narrow neck, without an opening, the top of which is joined on each side by a beautifully shaped handle to the upper part of the body. The real mouth of the vase is in the shape of a funnel, and near to the closed neck. There was also found the upper part of a similar vase. I remind the reader that forty-three vases of exactly the same form were found in a sepulchre at Ialysus in Rhodes, and are now in the British Museum; that they sometimes, though but seldom, occur in Attica, and that some specimens of them have also been found in the Egyptian tombs and in Cyprus.

Another vase found in the tomb of Spata is ornamented with black spirals.

I also mention among the findings at Spata the large quantity of small ornaments which Professor Landerer's analysis has proved to consist of glass alloyed with much protoxide of lead, the latter having the property of breaking the rays of light; these ornaments present a silvery mirror-like glimmer. Landerer observes that it is soda-glass (in German, Natrum-Glas), and that it has the property of dividing into small leaves or splinters. It is very remarkable that all these ornaments of glass have evidently been cast in moulds, and that many of them resemble more or less the types which we see in the Mycenean moulds represented under No. 162 and No. 163, p. 107 and p. 109. On the reverse side of most of these objects are one, two, or three small holes, or tubular rings, for fastening them on other objects, probably on clothes. A most frequent object here is that which we recognise in the type on the lower side of the mould, No. 162, p. 107. There also occur small cones of a much weather-beaten glass, which have the very greatest similarity to the type which we see in that side of the mould, No. 163, which is represented on page 109 in the upper row to the right of the spectator; it also resembles very much the small cone, No. 164, p. 109, of which a large number were found at MycenÆ; the only difference is that the cones of Spata have an impressed spiral line, whereas the cones of MycenÆ show impressed concentric circles. However, it deserves attention that the mould, No. 163, represents the type of such a cone with a spiral line. But then, again, there is the greatest difference in the substance, for whilst at Spata all these small ornaments are of glass, the Mycenean cones and other objects, such as Nos. 164, 165, 166 and 167, are of a hard-baked clay, which has been varnished with a lead glaze; no trace of glass having been found at MycenÆ except some small glass beads, the small object, No. 177, and the almost microscopical tubes of cobalt glass described at pages 157 and 158. As, on the other hand, there have been found a large quantity of small ornaments of hard-baked clay varnished with a lead-glaze, we cannot reasonably doubt that the manufacture of glass at MycenÆ was only in its first beginning, that until the capture of the city (468 B.C.) it made no progress there, and that all the types contained in the Mycenean moulds served merely for the casting of similar ornaments of baked clay varnished with a lead-glaze.

But there also occur in the tomb at Spata objects of blue cobalt glass, some of which are identical in shape with the object of stone represented under No. 172, p. 111.

All these objects of glass lead us to the conclusion that the sepulchre of Spata belongs to a much later time than the royal tombs of MycenÆ. But we find a much stronger proof of this in the carved works discovered in the Spata sepulchre, which are generally thought to consist of ivory, but which by the investigation of Professor Landerer are proved to consist of common bone. All these carved works appear to belong to a late period of Assyrian art; perhaps the most remarkable object among them is a beardless man's head covered with a very high Assyrian mitre, the lower part of which is ornamented all round with a diadem, whilst the upper part is divided by three double bands into four compartments. As usual in the Assyrian hair-dress, the hair hangs down on the neck in three tresses, lying the one on the other. I also mention a comb 5·8 in. long, 3·4 in. broad, the upper part of which is divided by narrow borders into two horizontal compartments; the upper one containing in the midst a flower and on either side a female sphinx; the lower one containing three female sphinxes. There are also two bone plates with female sphinxes. All these sphinxes have very large and broad wings and exhibit a most excellent Assyrian style of art. In comparison with them the golden sphinxes of the Mycenean tombs, of which I have represented one under No. 277, on p. 183, show a most ancient and very primitive style of art.

Among the carved works found in the tomb at Spata particular attention is due to a plate of bone, on which is represented a lion devouring an ox; the whole body of the former is represented as hovering in the air, and his long outstretched hind-legs vividly remind us of the representation of the lions on the Mycenean goblets and plates of gold. On the other hand the lion's head and the ox which he devours most decidedly show an Assyrian style of art.

I repeat here that no trace of Assyrian art was found at MycenÆ.

Another of the carved works from Spata which deserves attention is a disk of bone of 4·6 in. in diameter, with a border formed by two double lines, the whole interior space being in the form of a net, divided by treble wave-like lines into small triangles.

Professor Landerer asserts that these large plates and disks of bone prove beyond any doubt that the art of softening bone in water, and pressing it, and thus preparing very large pieces of bone, was known in Attica at a remote antiquity.

I still call attention, among the objects found at Spata, to the small disks of stone, which have on one side in the centre a small tube, and may have been used as ornaments on the house doors. They are mostly similar to objects which I found at MycenÆ;[23] but they were also found in the sepulchre at Ialysus, and may be seen in the British Museum.

Of bronze arrow-heads several specimens were found in the sepulchre at Spata, but no trace of them occurred in the Mycenean tombs. On the other hand there were found in one of the latter the thirty-five arrow-heads of obsidian represented under No. 435, p. 272, and arrow-heads of the same stone also occurred in the dÉbris above the tombs; it was only in the upper layers of dÉbris at MycenÆ that I found some arrow-heads of bronze.[24]

Among the objects found at Spata I further mention the fragment of a vase of black granite, with two holes for suspension; fragments of similar vases occurred also at MycenÆ.

Close to this tomb was discovered another, consisting of but one small chamber, approached by a dromos which has but half the length of that which leads to the large tomb. In the small tomb was found the skeleton of a man which had evidently likewise been burned on a pyre on the very spot where it lay; there was also found the skeleton of a stag, but nothing more.

Colonel Leake is in all probability right in proclaiming the identity of Spata with the ancient demos of Sphettus (S??tt?? or S??tt??), and as, according to Plutarch,[25] the fifty Pallantides, sons of Pallas, the brother of Ægeus, marched from Sphettus against Athens; and as Colonel Leake, guided by an inscription published by Finlay, identifies the site of the demos of PallenÆ, which the Pallantides inhabited, with a spur of mount Hymettus, which bars the road to Probalinthus and Marathon, and is thus in the immediate neighbourhood of Sphettus—for all these reasons it has been supposed that the tombs of Spata might possibly belong to the Pallantides killed by Theseus. But this opinion is contradicted by the objects discovered, which make it impossible for us to attribute the large tomb to an earlier period than the eighth century, B.C., whilst the royalty at Athens belongs to a very remote antiquity, and must be contemporaneous with royalty at MycenÆ.

The use of masks in antiquity being a question very important for Archaeology, I cannot conclude without mentioning that my esteemed friend Professor A. Rhousopoulos, of the University of Athens, reminds me of a very small golden mask found last spring in a sepulchre on the coast of ancient Phoenicia, just opposite to the island of Aradus. It had been bought there by a trader in antiquities, who brought it first to Athens, and showed it to me at Boulogne-sur-Mer, on his way to London, where he intended to sell it. It is of thin gold plate, and so small that it could apparently only fit on the face of a new-born child. It represents a human face with shut eyes, in very rude repoussÉ work.


THE FALL OF MYCENÆ AS DESCRIBED BY DIODORUS SICULUS.

I give, at my worthy friend Professor F. A. Paley's suggestion, a literal translation of the account which Diodorus Siculus (xi. 65) gives us of MycenÆ's tragic end:

"In the seventy-eighth Olympiad (B.C. 468) a war was set on foot between the Argives and the people of MycenÆ, on the following grounds. The Myceneans, proud of the high renown which their own country had formerly enjoyed, refused to obey the Argives as the other cities in that territory had done, but took up an independent position and paid no regard to the Argives. They had disputes with them also about the worship of the goddess Hera, and put in a claim to have the sole conduct and management of the Nemean games. And still further they were at variance with them because, when the Argives had passed a resolution not to aid the Spartans at Thermopylae, unless they should be allowed a share in the command, the Myceneans alone of all the inhabitants of Argolis joined the ranks of the LacedÆmonians. The Argives had besides a general suspicion that some day their rivals might become too powerful and dispute with them the sovereignty, from the former greatness of their city. Such being the motives for hostility, they had long been watching an opportunity to raze MycenÆ to the ground; and they thought the fitting time had now arrived, as they saw the LacedÆmonians had been defeated and were unable to bring any aid to the Myceneans. Accordingly they collected a strong force from Argos and the other states in alliance, and led them to the attack. The Myceneans were beaten, driven into the walls of their city, and besieged. For some time they defended themselves with spirit against the besieging hosts; but at length, partly because they had been worsted in the war, partly because the LacedÆmonians were unable to aid them, from having wars of their own on hand, as well as through the disastrous effects of the earthquakes, and having no one now to help them, through mere deficiency of aid from without they were taken by assault. The Myceneans were thus made slaves by the Argives, a tithe of their property was consecrated to the service of religion, and their city was razed to the ground. Thus a state that had been great and wealthy in times of old, had numbered many illustrious men and performed many glorious actions, met with its final overthrow, and it has remained desolate up to our times" (i.e., to the time of Augustus).


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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