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Mycenae The sweltering Argive Plain lies like a tortoise, its hind legs to the sea, its head stretching up into the mountains of Tenea. High above the eye of the tortoise Mycenae lies. Nauplia is set in the right foot. Argos in the centre. From Nauplia to Mycenae is a short run by train. The line follows the coast as far as Argos, passes under the headland of Larissa, and then turns north across a plain that seems always ten degrees hotter than the rest of the country. It lies low, shut in by hills on all sides except towards the sea. Mycenae commands the passes through the hills behind and keeps watch over plain and sea below. Yet one looks in vain for a frowning Acropolis dominating the landscape. In spite of its 2,000 feet of height Mycenæ is not a conspicuous landmark. It is set on one of a series of foot-hills which are dwarfed by the mountain-range behind. In the dry, scattered light of noon, mountains, foot-hills, and citadel assume one monotonous tone of broken grey. The citadel is placed just as Homer described it "in midmost Argos," hidden away among her stony heights. The train stops at a little wayside station guarded by a single row of eucalyptus trees, from which a narrow ribbon of road runs up to the modest inn, that blushes a bright pink, and calls itself "The Beautiful Helen." No wheeled vehicles are likely to be found at the station, but a brown boy in the grey cotton smock of the country takes charge of travellers' bags and puts them on the inevitable mule. When we last stayed at the Beautiful Helen we were impressed with the cleanliness, unusual in small Greek inns. Our host told us that he had acted foreman to the American excavators at Corinth and had learnt there that the type of traveller who would come to Mycenae would not grumble at simplicity if he could have a clean bed and an omelette for breakfast. He proudly showed us the white enamel washing apparatus, and a panoply of bedding spread out to air on the balcony. The homestead behind the inn gave attractive glimpses of "works and days" in a modern Argive version. I have a vivid recollection of some dozen peasants clothed in loose blue linen, wielding their wooden shovels with laughter and merrymaking, while the chaff from the threshing-floor made dusty the rose of a sultry twilight. This was when we returned to our pleasant quarters at the end of a long day among the stones on the Acropolis. From this homestead the road runs uphill, and soon the lines of boulders mark the outer lines of the fortress and the remains of a prehistoric bridge across a ravine. On the left of the road is the entrance to the magnificent beehive tomb shown to Pausanias and other travellers as the Treasury of Atreus. One can but be grateful that the old picturesque, inaccurate names are still allowed to linger. Tomb A and Tomb B would convey little to the imagination, while the present name suggests the natural mistake of the first discoverers who found a sepulchre so gorgeous that it seemed to them a king's hidden treasure-chamber. Atreus, son of Pelops and father of Agamemnon, was just the kind of personage, on the borderland of myth and history, who would benefit, so to speak, by the touch of reality, by association with visible remains, so to Atreus the treasure-house was assigned. The wanderings of the two carved shafts that flanked the doorway of this tomb illustrate well the kind of vicissitudes that have beset the stones of ancient Greece. The uppermost part of the right-hand shaft was used as the lintel of a mosque in Argos, and to adapt it to that purpose a large portion of the outer surface was hewn away. The greater part of the left and the upper part of the right shaft were removed to Ireland in 1810 by the then Lord Sligo. They were given to him by Veli Pasha, Governor of the Morea, in memory of a picnic party at Mycenae, which seems to have ended in a little informal excavation. The present Marquis of Sligo has presented these pieces of the columns to the British Museum, where they now stand in a commanding position. A complete restoration of the doorway that once contained them has been set up at the end of the Archaic Room among the Greek marbles. It gives an idea of regal opulence, with which the interior of the tomb is in keeping--the burial-place of a great king. A passage of squared stones led down into the hill-side where semi-columns in dark grey stone supported a lintel crowned with slabs of red porphyry. The vaulted tomb itself is cut out of the earth; from the outside nothing but the entrance to the passage was visible, and this was probably filled in with earth after the burial. Once inside the columned inner entrance a large room is revealed, 50 feet high, and shaped like a beehive. Think of its dusky magnificence as it lay hidden through the centuries gloriously decorated with gold rosettes and paintings! Through this large hall is a smaller inner chamber, the tomb proper, which could be sealed up and made doubly secure. The other tombs seen by the roadside on the way up to Mycenæ are repetitions, more or less imperfect, of this famous building. A turn in the road and the Lion Gate is before us. Solid stone lintels crowned by a massive slab of stone on which are carved two lions on either side of a blank column. Why is the column there? The answer to that question might keep us waiting outside the gate all day. To divine the meaning of the column one must turn to Sir Arthur Evans' fascinating work on "Tree and Pillar Cult." It is a mistake to suppose that the most primitive ideas are the most simple. The connection of the god with the tree or pillar--one might almost say his evolution from the tree or pillar--is particularly hard to define since the thought of primitive man was in itself confused. The name "Lion Gate" is to this extent a misnomer, since it gives the lions the first importance, whereas they are but heraldic supporters to the column between them. The column may be said to stand for the deity, and links the dwellers in Mycenae with that ancient form of religion--the worship of stocks and stones. It is something of a mental exertion to forget the later hierarchy of Hellenic gods, and to purge our minds of all superfluous knowledge as we pass under this gate that is so old and so simple and so mysterious. Inside the gate and close to it is the circle of masonry enclosing the royal tombs discovered by Schliemann. Here most of the golden treasures were found, the death mask of the king, the swords, the cups, the diadems--all the wealth that has justified the Homeric epithet of "golden Mycenae." The other scattered remains on the hill-top are more suggestive taken as a whole than studied individually. There are walls of dwelling-houses, and the lines of a palace which are best interpreted by the ground-plan of Tiryns. It is the situation of the citadel that kindles the imagination more than any study of the stones. Except on the side of the Lion Gate the ground drops steeply from the summit: on the south-east it is even precipitous. Yet the natural strength of the position was not considered sufficient protection. Unlike the low-lying, unwalled cities of her predecessors in Crete, Mycenae has been walled and rewalled at different dates and in different styles. Sitting among the low stones of the old palace, one looks across "thirsty, horsebearing Argos" to the shining shield of sea, seeing in vision the long, open boats that once carried the princes of the Peloponnese, their gilded bronze, their terrible plumes, their tents, and their followers to the plains of windy Troy: "They set up their mast and spread the white sail forth, and the wind filled the sail's belly and the dark wave sang loud about the stern, as the ship made way and sped across the wave accomplishing the journey." This is the place to read again Achilles' defiance of Agamemnon: it shows the spirit in which some of that host set out, and also the unsatisfactory nature of that indefinite headship which the King of Mycenæ was able to claim over the other lords of the Peloponnese. "Ah me, thou clothed in shamelessness, thou of the crafty mind, how shall any Achaian hearken to thy bidding with all his heart, be it to go a journey or to fight the foe again? Not by reason of the Trojan spearmen came I hither to fight, for they have not wronged me; never did they harry mine oxen nor my horses, nor even waste my harvest in deep-soiled Phthia, the nurse of men; seeing there lieth between us long space of shadowy mountains and echoing sea: but thee, thou shameless one, we followed hither, to make thee glad by earning recompense at the Trojan's hands for Menelaos and for thee, thou dog-face!" Certainly the King of Mycenæ was not followed from pure devotion. Here on his hill-top palace the tragedy of Agamemnon's life was finished. Homer shows the beginning of the drama. It is to Aeschylus that one turns for the end. Aeschylus himself had probably never visited Mycenæ since he laid the scene of his play at Argos. He had not realized how noble a watch-tower this palace made and how many hours there were for Clytemnestra to lay her plots. If it were morning when the long boats were sighted over sea, it would be evening before Agamemnon's triumphal chariot reached the Lion Gate. In the play the moments are compressed. The watchers in the tower have hardly brought the queen news of his arrival on the shore, before the shouts outside proclaim his return to the palace. The chariot is slowly drawn within the gates and in it stands wide-ruling Agamemnon in his golden armour and nodding plumes; and beside him the captive prophetess. Clytemnestra welcomes him, spreading carpets at his feet. She leads him to the bathroom. These hard stones that now lie baking in the sun she covered with soft drapery, and hidden among the drapery the noose and net. The final pause, the cry of anguish, and then the cry of triumph as the queen shows her bloody axe to the sunshine. "Thus and thus I smote him." This is the tremendous drama that opens the long trilogy of the House of Atreus. One cannot visit Mycenae and ignore Aeschylus any more than one can visit Agincourt without Shakespeare. There is no need to ask how much is poetry, how much is literature? This is the wine of imagination that has turned men of business into tomb-hunters and archaeologists. In the early part of last century there was a young student who did not trouble over nice distinctions between literature and history. He studied his Homer as the Bible was studied before the days of the higher criticism. He had the faith that can remove mountains, and he lived to show tangible proofs of his belief. This boy was Henry Schliemann. His story still reads like a fairy-tale. Single-handed he amassed a fortune that enabled him to realize his youthful dreams and to carry on excavations on the traditional sites of the Homeric world. At Troy he showed the walls of successive settlements reaching back to the Stone Age. At Tiryns and at Mycenæ he laid bare these palaces and tombs of the Argive kings. In the tombs he found treasures of a civilization fully as wonderful as that described by Homer. It is in the Central Museum at Athens that the treasures of Schliemann's Mycenaean Age are stored. The socalled "Mycenaean Room" (just opposite the main entrance) has been designed to harmonize with its contents. The walls are decorated with reproductions of Mycenæan patterns, correct both in form and colour, and on the floor there are the same spiral motives in mosaic. In the large glass cases in the centre of the room are set out the contents of the royal tombs found by Schliemann at Mycenae: the death-mask of some great king, his crown and ornaments represented in fine gold leaf. On the top of one of these cases stands an alabaster cup with three upcurving handles. These grandiloquent curves are not suggestive of stone-work. The cup must have been manufactured as something of a tour de force, in imitation no doubt of some metal original. It is remarkable that three out of the original four handles have survived. Then there is the golden Nestor cup, so called because it recalls Homer's description of the cup that Nestor used in the camp before Troy:-- "A right goodly cup that the old man brought from home, embossed with studs of gold, and four handles that were to it, and round each two golden doves were feeding, and to the cup were two feet below. Another man could scarce have lifted the cup from the table when it was full, but Nestor the Old raised it easily. In this cup the woman like unto the goddesses mixed a mess for them, with Pramnian wine, and therein grated cheese of goats' milk, with a grater of bronze, and scattered white barley thereon and bade them drink, whenas she had made ready the mess." At the far end of the room, set each on its own pedestal, are two small golden cups found in a tomb at Vaphio, near Sparta. These may very well have been imported from Crete. Here once more is the world of the Cretan bull-fight--only on these cups it is not the fight that is shown us but the preliminary scenes of capture. A bullhunt is going forward; with the help of a decoy cow naked men are driving the bulls into a trap. The figures of the men are attenuated and uninteresting when compared with the masterly treatment of the animals. The craftsman who did not shrink from rendering in beaten gold the figure of a tripped bull rolling in a net could also handle with delicious satire the innocent expression on the face of the cow who is leading her companions to their fate. These cups look as if they were made in solid metal. In reality there is an inner cup of smooth gold over which the embossed outer cup is fitted, leaving a hollow space between. The handle is a beautiful little bit of constructive goldsmith's work. Beside the cups is an inlaid dagger showing a lionhunt. The huntsmen are true Cretans with their slim, naked bodies and big shields. The Mycenæan, no less than the Briton, seems to have known that paradoxical sportsman's instinct that loved and drew and hunted and slew the wild creatures around him. Swords and golden shields are here too, and an infinite number of small discs of beaten gold (perhaps ornaments on a mummy case recalling the golden armour and raiment which the king had worn in life), an abundance also of gold rings, bracelets, and diadems. Looking into these glittering cases we understand how the stories of the "Age of Gold" lingered on into Hesiod's day, and how the poets of Homer's time loved to enlarge on the glories of the "King of Mycenæ rich in gold." Read how Agamemnon arrayed himself for battle:-- "Then the son of Atreus cried aloud and bade the Argives arm them, and himself amid them did on the flashing bronze. First he fastened fair greaves about his legs, fitted with ankle-clasps of silver; next again he did his breast-plate about his breast, the breast-plate that in time past Kinyras gave him for a guest-gift. For afar in Cyprus did Kinyras hear the mighty rumour how that the Achaians were about to sail forth to Troy in their ships, wherefore did Kinyras give him the breast-plate, to do pleasure to the king. Now therein were ten courses of black cyanus, and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin, and dark blue snakes writhed up towards the neck, three on either side, like rainbows that the son of Kronos has set in the clouds, a marvel of the mortal tribes of men. And round his shoulders he cast his sword, wherein shone studs of gold, but the scabbard about it was silver fitted with golden chains. And he took his richly-dight shield of his valour that covereth all the body of a man, a fair shield, and round about it were ten circles of bronze and thereon were twenty white bosses of tin, and one in the midst of black cyanus. And thereon was embossed the Gorgon fell of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Dread and Terror. And from the shield was hung a baldric of silver, and thereon was curled a snake of cyanus; three heads interlaced had he growing out of one neck. And on his head Agamemnon set a twocrested helm with fourfold plate and plume of horsehair, and terribly the crest nodded from above. And he grasped two strong spears, shod with bronze, and keen, and far forth from him into the heaven shone the bronze, and thereat Hera and Athena thundered, honouring the King of Mycenæ rich in gold." Reading this description and then looking at the contents of the royal tombs found by Schliemann at Mycenae it is easy to sympathize with the first burst of surprise and admiration that made Schliemann himself and the scholars of his day ready to believe that these were the very tombs of Homer's heroes. It was a thrilling moment when the archaeologist asserted that he had found the very features of Agamemnon in his death-mask. Soon came the inevitable reaction. The theory did not bear investigation, and the scientific world drew away to the extreme of caution and placed unknown centuries between the tombs at Mycenae and the Achaians of whom Homer sang. Gladstone was one of the first scholars who reconsidered the evidence and showed how the discoveries at Mycenae could rightly be used to illustrate Homer. It was suggested that the poems of Homer might belong to a period of fusion between the two races: that they date from a time soon after a race of warriors from the North had established themselves in the homes of Mycenaean culture. These men with weapons of iron and habits of hardihood replaced but did not destroy the luxurious, art-loving subjects of Mycenae. In spite of the change of race there was continuity of tradition. The conquerors respected the refinements of the old civilization, and prided themselves on their treasures of Mycenæan workmanship, such as the elaborately ornamented shield of Achilles and Nestor's cup. A garment or a vessel "well-wrought," it was this that the northern spirit delighted in, and this that the southern craftsman could so well achieve. So Schliemann has proved his main point, and has shown that these Homeric epics have a basis of fact. After all, Homer was a poet dreaming of an age of gold, not an archaeologist describing the Bronze or Iron Age. Who can be sorry that he did not know the real Mycenæ well enough to write of heroines in flowered bell-skirts, stiff jackets, and high hats, instead of his own gentle chiton-clad women in their "great shining robes, light of woof and gracious"? There are some to whom the great Mycenaean Room in the museum at Athens must serve instead of a visit to Crete or Mycenae. To these I would commend the excellent reproductions in the glass case labelled "Knossos." Here are the faience figurines, the gilded bull, and many other of Sir Arthur Evans' most striking finds. Those who cannot travel even to Athens will find the same reproductions and many original objects from Knossos in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Some reproductions are also shown in the First Vase Room at the British Museum. Home