Chapter II: Preface (2)

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 Phœnician 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 Phœnicianism, 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 Phœnician
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_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Hor. _A. P._ 39.

[2] Since this Preface was put in type, the fragments of an ostrich egg, originally mistaken for an alabaster vase, have been tested and verified. This object seems to afford a new indication of prehistoric relations between Mycenæ and Egypt.

[3] In the remarkable Museum of the Royal Academy of Ireland are two swords referred to the Danish period, which were taken out of a bed of mud. After a repose of perhaps a thousand years, they do not exhibit corrosion to the common eye. But the case is considered exceptional, and probably due to some peculiar ingredient in the moisture.

[4] I do not think it proved that, as Schliemann seems to convey (p. 84), the chariot-box was removed and fastened on each occasion of using it. The passages in _Il._ XXIV. 190 and 267 refer to the _peirins_ of the waggon. In _Od._ XV. 131, it is simply mentioned as a portion of the carriage, with no reference to detaching it.

[5] Ikmalios is mentioned in _Od._ XIX. 57 as the maker of a chair inlaid with ivory and silver. I cannot doubt that this was foreign, since it is marked as the work of a former age: ἥν ποτε τέκτων ποίης᾽ ᾽Ικμάλιος, "which erewhile Ikmalion with cunning hand had made" (Norgate). 'Erewhile' will not be found in Todd or Latham: but it is in Shakespeare, and the Dictionary of Worcester and Webster contains it.

[6] 'Homeric Synchronism,' pp. 171 _seq._ I do not here enter on the curious question what is the precise meaning of γυναῖα δῶρα.

[7] 'Troy and its Remains,' pp. 369, 371.

[8] 'Troy and its Remains,' p. 361. One of these had only about four per cent. of tin. Could this have been a native admixture?

[9] 'Troy and its Remains,' p. 335.

[10] I wish here to call attention to the fact that, as always (I believe) in the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, the moon is on this ring also distinguished from the sun, not by its size, but by its being a crescent moon. In truth, the distinction of size, to the common eye, is variable; and is sometimes against the sun. Two full-formed globes of equal diameter would have presented a picture alike defective in composition and in meaning: and ancient art, not content with this, seized, more poetically as I think, upon the distinction of character in the two bodies respectively. Homer, as I contend, has exactly followed this form of representation in his σελήνην τε πλήθουσάν: and I venture to hope that the sense of growing, filling, waxing, or crescent moon will now be allowed to prevail over the more customary rendering of 'full' moon (_Il._ XVIII. 434).

[11] Juvenal, _Sat._ X. 147.

[12] See, _e.g._, the print in Manning's 'Land of the Pharaohs,' p. 129.

[13] Mr. Percy Gardner, in the _Academy_, April 21, 1877.

[14] 'Homeric Synchronism,' p. 240.

[15] These marks, I now learn from Dr. S., are universal.

[16] Hor. _Od._ II. 1. 8.

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 (Σϕῆττος or Σϕηττός), 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 3⅓ feet broad. The sepulchre consists of three quadrangular chambers, which are united by two passages 6½ feet long and 3⅓ 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 (Σϕῆττος or Σϕηττός), 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] 'Demi of Attica,' p. 125.

[18] _Plutus_, 720.

[19] IX., p. 397.

[20] II., 30, 8.

[21] P. 627.

[22] "Si parva licet componere magnis."

[23] See No. 126, in the upper row to the right and left, p. 76.

[24] Pages 76, 123.

[25] _Theseus_, 13.

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).

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

_Preface_, by the Right Hon. _W. E. Gladstone_ _Page_ v

Dr. Schliemann's Account of a Tomb at Spata, in Attica " xli

The Fall of Mycenæ, as described by Diodorus Siculus " xlviii

Table of French and English Measures " lviii

List of Illustrations " lix