Chapter II: The Mycenæan Age (2)

In this sense of an aftermath of art, Mycenæan influence outlasted by centuries the overthrow of Mycenæan power; and the fact is one to be considered in establishing a chronology. We have taken as our lower limit the catastrophe in which the old order at Mycenæ and elsewhere obviously came to an end. But the old stock survived,--“scattered and peeled” though it must have been,--and carried on, if it did not teach the conqueror, their old arts. If we are to comprehend within the Mycenæan Age all the centuries through which we can trace this Mycenæan influence, then we shall bring that age down to the very dawn of historical Greece. In this view it is no misnomer to speak of the Æginetan gold find recently acquired by the British Museum as a Mycenæan treasure.

THE PROBLEM OF THE MYCENÆAN RACE

We have seen that Mycenæan art was no exotic, transplanted full grown into Greece, but rather a native growth--influenced though it was by the earlier civilisations of the Cyclades and the East. This indigenous art, distinct and homogeneous in character, no matter whence came its germs and rudiments, must have been wrought out by a strong and gifted race. That it was of Hellenic stock we have assumed to be self-evident. But, as this premise is still in controversy, we have to inquire whether (aside from art) there are other considerations which make against the Hellenic origin of the Mycenæan peoples, and compel us to regard them as immigrants from the islands or the Orient.

In the first place, recalling the results of our discussion of domestic and sepulchral architecture, we observe that neither in the Ægean nor in Syria do we find the gable-roof which prevails at Mycenæ. Nor would the people of these warm and dry climates have occasion to winter their herds in their own huts--an ancestral custom to which we have traced the origin of the avenues to the beehive tombs.

Again, we have seen reason to refer the shaft-graves to a race or tribe other than that whose original dwelling we have recognised in the sunken hut. To this pit-burying stock we have assigned the upper-story habitations at Mycenæ. If we are right, now, in explaining this type of dwelling as a reminiscence of the pile-hut, it would follow that this stock, too, was of northern origin. The lake-dwelling habit, we know, prevailed throughout Northern Europe, an instance occurring, as we have seen, even in the Illyrian peninsula; while we have no reason to look for its origin to the Orient or the Ægean. It is indeed true that the island-folk were no strangers to the pile-dwelling, but this rather goes to show that they were colonists from the mainland.

But, apart from the evidence of the upper-story abodes, are there other indications of an element among the Mycenæan people which had once actually dwelt in lakes or marshes?

Monuments like the stone models from Melos and Amorgos have not indeed been found in the Peloponnesus, or on the mainland, but in default of such indirect testimony we have the immediate witness of actual settlements. Of the four most famous cities of the age, Mycenæ, Tiryns, Orchomenos, and Amyclæ, it is a singular fact that but one has a mountain-site, while the other three were once surrounded by marshes. The rock on which Tiryns is built, though it rises to a maximum elevation of some sixty feet above the plain, yet sinks so low on the north that the lower citadel is only a few feet above the level of the sea. Now this plain, as Aristotle asserts, and as the nature of the ground still bears witness, was originally an extensive morass. The founders, therefore, must have chosen this rock for their settlement, not because it was a stronghold in itself, but because it was protected by the swamp out of which it rose.

What is true of Tiryns holds for Orchomenos as well. The original site was down in the plain until the periodic inundations of the lake forced the inhabitants to rebuild on the slopes of Mount Acontion; and Orchomenos was not the only primitive settlement in this great marsh. Tradition tells us also of Athenæ, Eleusis, Arne, Midea--cities which had long perished, and were but dimly remembered in historic times. To one of these, or to some other whose name has not come down to us, belong the remarkable remains on the Island of Goulas or Gha, which is connected with the shore by an ancient mole. During the Greek Revolution this island-fort was the refuge of the neighbouring population who found greater security there than in the mountains.

It is usually held that, when these Copaïc cities were founded, the region was in the main drained and arable, whereas afterwards, the natural outlets being choked up, the imprisoned waters flooded the plain, turned it into a lake, and so overwhelmed the towns. But, obviously, this is reversing the order of events. To have transformed the lake into a plain and kept it such would have demanded the co-operation of populous communities in the construction of costly embankments and perpetual vigilance in keeping them intact. Where were such organised forces to be found at a time anterior to the foundation of the cities themselves? Is it not more reasonable to believe that the builders of these cities--instead of finding Copaïs an arable plain, and failing to provide against its inundation--were induced by the very fact of its being a lake to establish themselves in it upon natural islands like the rock of Goulas, on artificial elevations, or even in pile-settlements? It is possible, indeed, that on some unusual rise of the waters, towns were submerged, but it is quite as probable that without any such catastrophe the inhabitants finally abandoned these of their own accord to settle in higher, healthier, and more convenient regions.

The case of Amyclæ is no exception. The prehistoric as well as the historic site is probably to be identified with that of the present village of Mahmud Bey, some five miles south of Sparta. The ground is low and wet, and in early times was undoubtedly a marsh.

In the plain of Thessaly, again, we may trace the same early order. There, where tradition (backed by the conclusions of modern science) tells us that the inflowing waters used to form stagnant lakes, we find low artificial mounds strewn with primitive potsherds. On these mounds, Lolling holds, the people pitched their settlements to secure them against overflow.

The choice of these marshy or insulated sites is all the more singular from the environment. Around Lake Copaïs, about Tiryns and Amyclæ, as well as in Thessaly, rise mountains which are nature’s own fastnesses and which would seem to invite primitive man to their shelter. The preference for these lowland or island settlements then, can only be explained in the first instance by immemorial custom, and, secondly, by consequent inexperience in military architecture. Naturally, a lake-dwelling people will be backward in learning to build stone walls strong enough to keep off a hostile force. And in default of such skill, instead of settling on the mountain slopes, they would in their migrations choose sites affording the best natural fortifications akin to their ancient environment of marsh or lake--reinforcing this on occasion by a moat, an embankment, or a pile-platform.

That the people in question once actually followed this way of living is beyond a doubt. Amyclæ shows no trace of wall, and probably never had any beyond a mere earthwork. The Cyclopean wall of Tiryns, as it now stands, does not belong to the earliest settlement, nor is it of uniform date. Adler holds that the first fortress must have been built of wood and sun-dried bricks. This construction may possibly account for those remarkable galleries whose origin and function are not yet altogether clear. The mere utility of the chambers for storage--a purpose they did unquestionably serve--hardly answers to the enormous outlay involved in contriving them. May we not, then, recognise in them a reminiscence of the primitive palisade-earthwork? In the so-called Lower Citadel of Tiryns we find no such passages, possibly because its Cyclopean wall was built at a later date. Likewise no proper galleries have yet been found at Mycenæ, and it is highly improbable that any such ever existed there. What had long been taken for a gallery in the north wall proves to be nothing but a little chamber measuring less than seven by twelve feet. Obviously, then, the gallery was not an established thing in fortress-architecture, and this fact shows that it did not originate with the builders of stone walls, but came to them as a heritage from earlier times and a more primitive art.

In fact, we find in the _terramare_ of Italy palisade and earthwork fortifications so constructed that they may be regarded as a first stage in the development which culminates in the Tiryns galleries. The construction of the wall at Casione near Parma is thus described:[4] “Piles arranged in two parallel rows are driven in the ground with an inward slant so as to meet at the top, and this Δ-shaped gallery is then covered with earth. Along the inside of this embankment is carried a continuous series of square pens, built of beams laid one upon another, filled with earth and brushwood, and finally covered with a close-packed layer of sand and pebbles. This arrangement not only strengthens the wall but provides a level platform for its defenders.” Thus the space between these palisades would closely resemble the “arched” corridors of Tiryns, while the square pens (if covered over without being filled up) would correspond to the chambers.

These facts strengthen the inferences to which we have been led by our study of the stone models and the upper-story dwellings. And they point to the region beyond Mount Olympus as the earlier seat of this lake-dwelling contingent of the Mycenæan people as well as of their kinsmen of the earth-huts. And we have other evidence that the Mycenæan cities, at least the four of chief importance, were founded by a people who were not dependent on the sea and in whose life the pursuits of the sea were originally of little moment. Mycenæ and Orchomenos are at a considerable remove from the coast, while Amyclæ is a whole day’s journey from the nearest salt-water. Tiryns alone lies close to the sea-board; and, indeed, the waves of the Argolic Gulf must have washed yet nearer when its walls were reared. But, obviously, it was not the nearness of the sea that drew the founders to this low rock. For it is a harbourless shore that neighbours it, while a little farther down lies the secure haven of Nauplia guarded by the impregnable height of Palamedes; and it is yet to be explained why the Tirynthians, if they were a sea-faring people, did not build their city there. Again, the principal entrance to Tiryns is not on the side towards the sea, but on the east or landward side. This goes to show that even when the Cyclopean wall was built, certainly long after the first settlement, the people must have been still devoted mainly to tilling the soil and tending flocks, occupations to which the fertile plain and marshy feeding grounds would invite them. So in historic times, also, the town appears to have lain to the east of the citadel, not between it and the sea.

Even if it be granted that these Mycenæan cities were settled by immigrants who came by sea, it does not follow that they were originally a sea-faring folk. The primitive Dorians were hardly a maritime people, yet Grote has shown that their conquest of the Peloponnesus was in part effected by means of a fleet which launched from the Malian Gulf; and their kinsmen, who settled in Melos, Thera, and Crete, in all probability, sailed straight from the same northern port.

The Minyæ, who founded Orchomenos, Curtius regards as pre-eminently a seafaring race; and he seeks to account for their inland settlement by assuming that they were quick to realise the wealth to be won by draining and tilling the swamp. But this is hardly tenable. Whatever our estimate of Minyan shrewdness, they must have had their experience in reclaiming swamp land yet to acquire and on this ground. It was the outcome of age-long effort in winning new fields from the waters and guarding them when won. The region invited settlement because it offered the kind of security to which they were wonted; the winning of wealth was not the motive but the fortunate result.

Again, if the Mycenæans had been from the outset a maritime race we should expect to find the ship figuring freely in their art-representations. But this is far from being the case. We have, at last, one apparent instance of the kind on a terra-cotta fragment found in the acropolis at Mycenæ in 1892. On this we seem to have a boat, with oars and rudder, and curved fore and aft like the Homeric νῆες ἀμφιέλισσαι. Below appear what we may take to be dolphins. But this unique example can hardly establish the maritime character of the Mycenæans.

Along with this unfamiliarity with ships, we have to remark also their abstinence from fish. In the remains of Tiryns and Mycenæ we have found neither a fish-hook nor a fish-bone, though we do find oysters and other shellfish such as no doubt could be had in abundance along the adjacent shores. In the primitive remains of the Italian _terramare_ there is the same absence of anything that would suggest fishing or fish-eating; and, indeed, linguistic evidence confirms these observations. Greek and Latin have no common term for fish; and we may fairly conclude that the Græco-Italic stock before the separation were neither fishermen or fish-eaters. That they were slow to acquire a taste for fish, even after the separation, is attested not only by the negative evidence of their remains in the Argolid and on the Po but by the curious reticence of Homer. His heroes never go fishing but once and then only in the last pinch of famine--“when the bread was all spent from out the ship and hunger gnawed at their belly.”

Now that we find in Greece, five or six centuries earlier than the poems, a people in all probability hailing from the same region whence came the ancestors of the Homeric Greeks, with the same ignorance of, or contempt for, a fish diet, and building their huts on piles like the primitive Italians whose earthworks further appear to have set the copy for the Tirynthian galleries--can we doubt that this people sprung from the same root with the historic Greeks and their kinsmen of Italy? The conclusion appears so natural and so logical, that it must require very serious and solid objections to shake it. But, instead of that, our study of Mycenæan manners and institutions--both civil and religious--affords strong confirmation. In the matter of dress we find the historical Greeks the heirs of the Mycenæans, and the armour of the Homeric heroes--when we get behind the epic glamour of it--differs little from what we know in the Mycenæan monuments.

While our knowledge of Mycenæan religion is vague at the best, and we must recognise in the dove-idols and dove-temples the insignia of an imported Aphrodite-cult, we have beyond a reasonable doubt also to recognise a genuine Hellenic divinity with her historical attributes clearly foreshadowed in Artemis. Again, while the Homeric Greeks themselves are not presented to us as worshippers of the dead after the custom avouched by the altar-pits of Mycenæ and Tiryns, we do find in the poems an echo at least of this cult, and among the later Hellenes it resumes the power of a living belief. So, though Homer seems to know cremation only, and this has been taken for full proof that the Mycenæans were not Greeks, the traces of embalming in the poems clearly point to an earlier custom of simple burial as we find it uniformly attested by the Mycenæan tombs. And, here, again, historical Greece reverts to the earlier way. In Greece proper, at least in Attica, the dead were not burned,--not even in the age of the Dipylon vases,--and yet the Athenians of that day were Greeks. So, among the earlier Italians, burial was the only mode of dealing with the dead, and the usage was so rooted in their habits that even after cremation was introduced some member of the body (_e.g._, a finger) was always cut off and buried intact. We need not repeat what we have elsewhere said of the funeral banquet, the immolation of victims, the burning of raiment--all bearing on the same conclusion and cumulating the evidence that the Greeks of Homer, and so of the historic age, are the lineal heirs of Mycenæan culture.

If the proof of descent on these lines is strong, it is strengthened yet more by all we can make out regarding the political and social organisation. That monarchy was the Mycenæan form of government is sufficiently attested by the strong castles, each taken up in large part by a single princely mansion. But “the rule of one man” is too universal in early times to be a criterion of race. Far more significant is the evidence we have for a clan-system such as we afterwards find in full bloom among the Hellenes.

The clan, as we know it in historic times, and especially in Attica, was a factor of prime importance in civil, social, and religious life. It was composed of families which claim to be, and for the most part actually were, descended from a common ancestor. These originally lived together in clan-villages--of which we have clear reminiscences in the clan-names of certain Attic demes, as Boutadai, Perithoidai, Skanbonidai. Not only did the clan form a village by itself, but it held and cultivated its land in common. It built the clan-village on the clan-estate; and as the clansmen dwelt together in life, so in death they were not divided. Each clan had its burial-place in its own little territory, and there at the tomb it kept up the worship of its dead, and especially of its hero-founder.

That the Mycenæans lived under a like clan-system, the excavation of the tombs of the lower town has shown conclusively. The town was composed of villages more or less removed from one another, each the seat of a clan. We have no means of determining whether the land was held and tilled in common, but we do know that by each village lay the common clan-cemetery--a group of eight, ten, or more tombs, obviously answering to the number of families or branches of the clan. In the construction of the tombs, and in the offerings contained, we note at once differences between different cemeteries and uniformity in the tombs of the same group. The richest cemeteries lie nearer the acropolis, as the stronger clans would naturally dwell nearer the king. Thus, for its population, Mycenæ covered a large area, but its limits were not sharply defined, and the transition from the citadel centre to the open country was not abrupt. The villages were linked together by graveyards, gardens and fields, highways and squares; thus the open settlement was indeed a πόλις εὐρυάγυια--a town of broad ways.

Somewhat such must have been the aspect in primitive days of Sparta and Athens, not to mention many other famous cities. Indeed, even in historic times, as we know from the ruins, Sparta was still made up of detached villages spread over a large territory for so small a population. So, primitive Athens was composed of the central settlement on the Acropolis, with the villages encircling it from Pnyx to Lycabettus and back again. When the city was subsequently walled in, some of these villages were included in the circuit, others were left outside, while still others (as the Ceramicus) were cut in two by the wall. The same thing happened at Mycenæ; the town wall was built simply because the fortress was an insufficient shelter for the populace as times grew threatening; but it could not, and did not, take in all the villages.

Such, briefly, is the objective evidence--the palpable facts--pointing to a race connection between the Mycenæans and the Greeks of history. We have, finally, to consider the testimony of the Homeric poems. Homer avowedly sings of heroes and peoples who had flourished in Greece long before his own day. Now it may be denied that these represent the civilisation known to us as Mycenæan; but it is certainly a marvellous coincidence (as Schuchhardt[h] observes) that “excavations invariably confirm the former power and splendour of every city which is mentioned by Homer as conspicuous for its wealth or sovereignty.”

Of all the cities of Hellas, it is the now established centres of Mycenæan culture which the poet knows best and characterises with the surest hand. Mycenæ “rich in gold” is Agamemnon’s seat, and Agamemnon is lord of all Argos and many isles, and leader of the host at Troy. In Laconia, in the immediate neighbourhood of the tomb which has given us the famous Vaphio cups, is the royal seat of Menelaus, which is likened to the court of Olympian Zeus. Bœotian Orchomenos, whose wealth still speaks for itself in the Treasury of Minyas, is taken by the poet as a twin type of affluence with Egyptian Thebes, “where the treasure-houses are stored fullest.” Assuredly, no one can regard all this and many another true touch as mere coincidence. The poet knows whereof he affirms. He has exact knowledge of the greatness and bloom of certain peoples and cities at an epoch long anterior to his own, with which the poems have to do. And there is not one hint in either poem that these races and heroes were not of the poet’s own kin.

It might be assumed that there had once ruled in those cities an alien people, and that the monuments of Mycenæan culture were their legacy to us, but that the Achæans who came after them have entered into the inheritance of their fame. Such usurpations there have been in history; but the hypothesis is out of the question here. At Mycenæ, where exploration has been unusually thorough, the genuine Mycenæan Age is seen to have come to a sharp and sudden end--a catastrophe so overwhelming that we cannot conceive of any lingering bloom. Had the place passed to a people worthy to succeed to the glory of the race who reared its mighty walls and vaulted tombs, then we should look for remains of a different but not a contemptible civilisation. But, in fact, we find built directly on the ruins of the Mycenæan palace mean and shabby huts which tell us how the once golden city was succeeded by a paltry village. Centuries were to pass before the Doric temple rose on the accumulated ruins of palace and hovels, and generations more before the brave little remnant returned with the laurels of Platæa and enough of the spoil (we may conjecture) to put the walls of the Atreidæ in repair.

If the structures peculiar to the Mycenæan age are the work of foreigners, what have we left for Agamemnon and his Achæans? Simply the hovels. Of the Dipylon pottery, with which it is proposed to endow them, there is none worth mentioning at Mycenæ, very little at Tiryns, hardly a trace at Amyclæ, or Orchomenos. In the Mycenæan acropolis, particularly, very few fragments of this pottery have been found, and that mainly in the huts already mentioned. Can these be the sole traces of the power and pride of the Atreidæ?

For us at least the larger problem of nationality is solved; but there is a further question. Can we determine the race or races among the Greeks known to history to whom the achievements of Mycenæan civilisation are to be ascribed? In this inquiry we may set aside the Dorians, although many scholars (especially among the Germans) still claim for them the marvellous remains of the Argolid. The Homeric poems, they say, describe a state of things subsequent to the Dorian migration into the Peloponnesus and consequent upon the revolution thereby effected. As the Dorians themselves hold sway at Mycenæ and Sparta, they must be the subjects of the poet’s song--the stately fabric of Mycenæan culture must be the work of their hands.

On the other hand, Beloch,[i] while accepting the Dorian theory of this civilisation, dismisses the traditional Dorian migration as a myth, and maintains that Dorian settlement in the Peloponnesus was as immemorial as the Arcadian. Just as the original advent of the Arcadians in the district which bears their name had faded out of memory and left no trace of a tradition, so the actual migration of the Dorians belonged to an immemorial past.

The first of these views which attributes the Mycenæan culture to the Dorians of the traditional migration, cannot stand the test of chronology. For tradition refers that migration to the end of the twelfth century B.C., whereas the Mycenæan people were established in the Argolid before the sixteenth, probably even before the twentieth century. While Beloch’s hypothesis is not beset with this chronological difficulty, it is otherwise quite untenable. For, as the excavations at Tiryns and Mycenæ abundantly prove, the Mycenæan civilisation perished in a great catastrophe. The palaces of both were destroyed by fire after being so thoroughly pillaged that scarcely a single bit of metal was left in the ruins. Further, they were never rebuilt; and the sumptuous halls of Mycenæ were succeeded by the shabby hovels of which we have spoken. The larger domes at Mycenæ, whose sites were known, were likewise plundered--in all probability by the same hands that fired the palace. This is evidenced by the pottery found in the hovels and before the doorways of two of the beehive tombs. A similar catastrophe appears to have cut short the career of this civilisation in the other centres where it had flourished.

How are we to account for this sudden and final overthrow otherwise than by assuming a great historic crisis, which left these mighty cities with their magnificent palaces only heaps of smoking ruins? And what other crisis can this have been than the irruption of the Dorians? And their descent into the Peloponnesus is traditionally dated at the very time which other considerations have led us to fix as the lower limit of the Mycenæan Age. Had that migration never been recorded by the ancients nor attested by the state of the Peloponnesus in historic times, we should still be led to infer it from the facts now put in evidence by the archæologist’s spade.

Setting aside the Dorian claim as preposterous, we have nothing to do but follow the epic tradition. The Homeric poems consistently assume that prior to any Dorian occupation Argolis was inhabited by other peoples, and notably by Achæans whose position is so commanding that the whole body of Greeks before Troy usually go by their name. Their capital is Mycenæ, and their monarch Agamemnon, King of Men; although we find them also in Laconia under the rule of Menelaus. But the poet has other names, hardly less famous, applied now to the people of Argolis and now to the Greeks at large. One of these names (Ἀργεῖοι) is purely geographical, whether it be restricted to the narrow Argolid district or extended to the wider Argos, and has no special ethnological significance. But the other (Δαναοί) belonged to a people distinct from and, according to uniform tradition, more ancient than the Achæans. We find, then, two races in Argolis before the Dorian migration, each famous in song and story, and each so powerful that its name may stand for all the inhabitants of Greece. The Achæans occupy Mycenæ, that is to say, the northern mountain region of the district, while legend represents the Danaans as inseparably connected with Argos and the sea-board, and ascribes to them certain works of irrigation.

Whatever interpretation be put upon the myth, it seems clear that Argos could not feed its great cities without artificial irrigation, and this it owed to Danaus and his fifty daughters, “who were condemned perpetually to pour water in a tub full of holes,”--that is to say, into irrigation ditches which the thirsty soil kept draining dry.

Now our study of the Mycenæan remains has already constrained us to distinguish in the Argolid two strata of Mycenæan peoples, one of them originally dwelling on dry land in sunken huts, the other occupying pile settlements in lakes and swamps. And since tradition squares so remarkably with the facts in evidence, may we not venture to identify the marsh-folk with the Danaans and the landsmen with the Achæans?

But Achæans and Dorians were not alone in shaping and sharing Mycenæan culture; they had their congeners in other regions. Foremost among these were the Minyan founders of Orchomenos. As lake-dwellers and hydraulic engineers they are assimilated to the Danaans, whose near kinsmen they may have been, as the primitive islanders, whose abode we have found copied in the stone vases, must have been related to them both. Tradition has, in fact, preserved an account of the colonisation of Thera by a people coming from Bœotia, although it is uncertain whether it refers to the original occupation or to a settlement subsequent to the great catastrophe.

From the Danao-Minyan stock, it would appear that the Achæans parted company at an early date and continuing for a time in a different--most probably a mountainous--country, there took on ways of living proper to such environment. Later than the Danaans, according to the consistent testimony of tradition, they came down into the Peloponnesus and by their superior vigour and prowess prevailed over the older stock.

To these two branches of the race we may refer the two classes of tombs. The beehive and chamber tombs, as we have seen, have their prototype in the sunken huts: they belong to the Achæans coming down from the colder north. The shaft-graves are proper to the Danaan marsh-men. At Tiryns we find a shaft-grave, but no beehive or chamber tomb. At Orchomenos the Treasury of Minyas stands alone in its kind against at least eight _tholoi_ and sixty chamber-tombs at Mycenæ. Hence, wherever this type of tombs abounds we may infer that an Achæan stock had its seat, as at Pronoia, in Attica, Thessaly, and Crete. Against this it may be urged that precisely at the Achæan capital, and within its acropolis at that, we find the famous group of shaft-graves with their precious offerings, as well as humbler graves of the same type outside the circle. But this, in fact, confirms our view when we remember it was the Danaid Perseus who founded Mycenæ and that his posterity bore rule there until the sceptre passed to Achæan hands in the persons of the Pelopidæ.[5] We have noted the close correspondence of the original fortress at Mycenæ with that of Tiryns, and its subsequent enlargement. Coincident with this extension of the citadel, the new type of tomb makes its appearance in the great domes,--some of them certainly royal sepulchres,--although the grave-circle of the acropolis is but half occupied. That circle, however, ceases thenceforth to be used as a place of burial, while the humbler graves adjacent to it are abandoned and built over with dwellings. With the new type of tomb we note changes of burial customs, not to be accounted for on chronological grounds: in the beehive tombs the dead are never embalmed, nor do they wear masks, nor are they laid on pebble beds--a practice which may have owed its origin to the wet ground about Tiryns.

There is but one theory on which these facts can be fully explained. It is that of a change in the ruling race and dynasty, and it clears up the whole history of Mycenæ and the Argive Plain. The first Greek settlers occupied the marshy sea-board, where they established themselves at Tiryns and other points; later on, when they had learned to rear impregnable walls, many of them migrated to the mountains which dominated the plain and thus were founded the strongholds of Larissa, Midea, and Mycenæ.

But while the Danaans were thus making their slow march to the north the Achæans were advancing southward from Corinth--a base of great importance to them then and always, as we may infer from the network of Cyclopean highways between it and their new centre. At Mycenæ, already a strong Perseid outpost, the two columns meet--when, we cannot say. But about 1500 B.C., or a little later, the Achæans had made themselves masters of the place and imposed upon it their own kings.

We have no tradition of any struggle in connection with this dynastic revolution, and it appears probable that the Achæans did not expel the older stock. On the contrary, they scrupulously respected the tombs of the Danaid dynasty--it may be, because they felt the claim of kindred blood. In manners and culture there could have been but little difference between them, for the Achæans had already entered the strong current of Mycenæan civilisation.

Indeed, we discern a reciprocal influence of the two peoples. Within certain of the Achæan tombs (as we may now term the beehives and rock chambers) we find separate shaft-graves, obviously recalling the Danaid mode of burial. On the other hand, it would appear that the typical Achæan tomb was adopted by the ruling classes among other Mycenæan peoples. Otherwise we cannot explain the existence of isolated tombs of this kind as at Amyclæ (Vaphio), Orchomenos, and Menidi--obviously the sepulchres of regal or opulent families; while the common people of these places--of non-Achæan stock--buried their dead in the ordinary oblong pits.

Achæan ascendency is so marked that the Achæan name prevails even where that stock forms but an inconsiderable element of the population. Notably this is true of Laconia, where the rare occurrence of the beehive tomb goes to show that the pre-Dorian inhabitants were mostly descended from the older stock, which we have encountered at Tiryns and at Orchomenos.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[3] [Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from the article “Mycenæan Civilisation,” by D. G. Hogarth, in the New Volumes of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Copyright, 1902, by The Encyclopædia Britannica Company.]

[4] Helbig,[f] _Die Italiker in der Pœbene_, p. 11; cf. Pigorini[g] in _Atti dell’ Accad. dei Lincei_, viii. 265 ff.

[5] This is not gainsaying the Phrygian extraction of the Pelopid line. “The true Phrygians were closely akin to the Greeks, quite as closely akin as the later Macedonians. We may fairly class the Pelopidæ as Achæan.” (Percy Gardner,[e] _New Chapters of Greek History_, p. 84.)