Chapter X

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 333