ART. III.-SCHLIEMANN'S DISCOVERIES AT MYCENE AND TIRYNS.

Mycenae; A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycena and Tiryns. By DR. HENRY SCHLIEMANN, Citizen of the United States of America; Author of "Troy and its Remains," "Ithaque, la Péloponnèse et Troie," and "La Chine et le Japon." The Preface by the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P. Maps, Plans, and other Illustrations, representing more than 700 Types of the Objects found in the Royal Sepulchers of Mycena and Elsewhere in the Excavations. Imperial 8vo., pp. lxviii, and 384. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1878.

NOTHING could be more natural than for Dr. Schliemann, after his remarkable success in unearthing the remains of what may reasonably be believed to be the ancient city of Troy, to turn his eyes with covetous glance to the district known as the Argolis. There, if anywhere, he was likely to obtain confirmation of the accuracy of his theory of the historic reality of the expedition which has been in men's mouths for the past three thousand years-in fact, of that entire cycle of song, whose renown Homer makes, even in the time of his heroes, to have "reached broad heaven." (Odyssey, viii, 74.)

If not beyond dispute the part first settled, the north-eastern corner of Peloponnesus was certainly the part that attained at an early period a very distinct predominance in the politics of the peninsula. One of the Argolic cities was the reputed birthplace of Heracles, or Hercules, the typical Greek hero, and in the vicinity was laid the scene of several of his renowned "labors." Another city was the capital of one of the three kingdoms apportioned among themselves by the Heracleidæ. That it was by far the richest and most powerful, not only of these three kingdoms, but of all the kingdoms of Greece, seems conclusively established. Except on this supposition it is well-nigh impossible to account for the supreme rank conceded to Agamemnon, a prince personally by no means the bravest or most warlike of his age.

Mycenae, then, the capital of Agamemnon's dominions, or as the poet is wont to say, "of central Argos and the islands," is the spot above all others in Greece where traces of that civilization which appears in the Iliad and to some extent in the Odyssey ought to be discovered. The very fact of the early

destruction of Mycena, just at the beginning of the brilliant period of Athenian supremacy, might be expected to be a favorable element in the search. As the total overthrow of the city by the inhabitants of the neighboring and rival city of Argos occurred only eleven years subsequently to the battle of Platea, whatever remains might be discovered must necessarily belong to a period antedating the great development of Attic art. In fact, in a city which like Mycena steadily declined after the end of the heroic age, apparently because of its inability to adjust itself to the new order of things, those remains should exhibit a culture and the marks of a civil life not dissimilar to those of the time of the rule of the son of

very

Atreus.

So, at least, thought Dr. Schliemann, and scarcely had he completed his excavations at Hissarlik, when he began to make arrangements for exploring the site covered with Cyclopean ruins in the neighborhood of the village of Charvati, long since identified, beyond any dispute, with Mycena.

Before speaking of the results of these explorations and discussing their significance, it may be well to recall the principal facts previously known respecting the city.

Mycenæ stood at the northern end of the plain of Argos, which, like all other level spaces in the mountainous country of Greece, is of very limited extent. From Mycena to the head of the Argolic Gulf, the length of the plain is barely ten miles, and the breadth, at its greatest, is only nine. North of Mycena the plain contracts into a narrow defile between hills of considerable height. Through this defile led in ancient times the road to Nemea and Phlius, as well as to Cleonæ, and thence to Corinth and northern Greece. If it be asked, What considerations led to the selection of a spot now altogether uninhabited for the chief city of early Greece, it may be answered that, apart from the strength of the situation itself, the command of the pass in question probably had considerable influence in the choice. Moreover, it must be remembered that, as Thucydides tells us, (i, 7,) the settlers of ancient times preferred to place their strongholds some distance back from the sea-shore, for greater security in view of the great prevalence of piracy. The plain itself, of which the Inachus was the chief stream, suffered in its upper portions rom the

scarcity of water, in its lower parts from a too great abundance of it. At present there are but two towns of any size. One of these is Nauplia, or, as the Italian sailors have christened it, Napoli di Romania, not precisely in the plain, but upon a rocky promontory projecting into the bay on the south-eastern side of its head. The position of the town at the base and on the sides of the Palamede, its fortress, commends itself to the eye of a soldier as peculiarly capable of defense, especially under the old system of warfare. Accordingly, for ages it has been the key of this part of Greece, and Franks, Venetians, and Turks have successively prized its possession. We have ourselves seen the winged lion of St. Mark on several parts of the gates and fortifications. The city of Nauplia, we believe, still continues to be the most populous place in the modern government (dioikesis) of Argolis. Next to it comes the town of Argos, nestling at the foot of the hill known by its old Pelasgic name of Larissa.

In ancient times there were three principal cities of note: Argos, Tiryns, and Mycenae. Of these Mycenæ, though according to tradition the latest founded, grew to be by far the most important, and especially about the time of the Trojan War had gained so distinct a pre-eminence that Diomede, king of Argos, figures in the Homeric poems in the light of a chief feudatory under Agamemnon, king of Mycena. The three cities formed the angles of an obtuse-angled triangle, with the obtuse angle at Argos. Of the three, Argos has left us (above-ground) by far the least interesting remains, for the reason chiefly, perhaps, that, having remained an inhabited city for many ages after the destruction of its rival, the massive Cyclopean constructions doubtless existing there at one time were destroyed, and the material either removed as rubbish, or broken up and employed in the erection of more recent works. Hence the only traces of the early period at Argos are found in some patches of the walls of the citadel, mixed up with Roman, Byzantine and later Medieval work; while the theater, etc., in the lower town are of an Hellenic or postHellenic origin, So much for the remains above ground. Yet we cannot doubt that judicious exploration would reveal much of interest buried for many centuries from the eye of man, of which even the inhabitants of the Hellenic Argos, five FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-3

or six hundred years before Christ, were entirely ignorant. So late, however, as the time of Pausanias (in the second century of the Christian era) there was pointed out* a subterranean building, apparently the counterpart of the celebrated treasuries of Mycena. Dr. Schliemann does not appear to have made any attempt to explore this doubtless very rich site.

Tiryns, the fabled birthplace of Hercules, is the first of the cities whose exploration Dr. Schliemann describes in the volume before us. The site was found without hesitation on the ruin-covered eminence lying between two and three miles north of Nauplia, in the lower part of the plain. The hill, rising solitary in the midst of a very level district, has been compared to a ship riding on smooth water. What strikes the traveler as most remarkable in the remains is the wonderful solidity of the walls. The stones are themselves ponderous, being so great that, to use Pausanias' expression, a yoke of mules could not move even the smallest. These huge boulders, rough and apparently unwrought, are piled one upon another, without attempt to bind them together by mortar or clamp of metal, or to observe regularity in the laying of courses. It is characteristic of this style of masonry, (generally credited by antiquaries with being the most ancient of the so-called Cyclopean modes of construction,) that frequently small stones have been forced into the interstices between the large masses; whether with a view to ornament or stability it is, perhaps, not always easy to determine. The walls thus heaped up at Tiryns vary, according to Dr. Schliemann, from twenty-five to fifty feet in thickness, and were, doubtless, when standing at their full height, of proportionate loftiness, constituting a peculiarly commanding object in the lower Argolic plain. Next to the general circuit of the wall so remarkably well preserved, the most singular feature of the ruins was some galleries in the walls, of which one in the south-east part of the circuit is particularly interesting. It is not less than ninety feet in length, with a breadth of nearly eight feet, running

*He classes it among the deaç užta, of his own day, (ii, 23, 7.) But the "brazen chamber," in which Danaë was confined by her father, Acrisius, when Jupiter visited her in a shower of gold, and which stood upon or by it, ¿ñ' avrệ, had been destroyed by Perilaus.

parallel with the length of the walls. The pointed top is not arched over, but is formed by causing the upper courses of stones to overlap until they nearly or quite touch. To add to the singularity, this passage has six side openings of similar form, toward the outside of the wall. Had they been in the opposite direction, the use of the gallery might have been supposed to be that of a store-house or armory. As it is, Dr. Schliemann suggests that the six niches may have been intended for arches, and the passage itself as a covered communication to guardhouses, towers, etc. The explanation, however, must still be regarded as obscure and unsatisfactory. Dr. Schliemann's excavations at Tiryns establish a few points of importance. To the walls, which he agrees with other observers in regarding as the most ancient in Greece, he ascribes an antiquity of sixteen hundred to eighteen hundred years before Christ. The only metals met with were bronze and lead. On the other hand, no stone implements were discovered. The archaic pottery, much resembling that subsequently found at Mycenæ, by no means establishes the existence of so low a civilization as the rude walls would lead us to expect; while the fact that pottery of a much later date was discovered outside of the citadel, induces our author to believe that here a new city arose, probably in the beginning of the fourth century before Christ. The majority of the houses of the more ancient city Dr. Schliemann conjectures to have "consisted of unburned bricks, which still form the building material of most of the villages in the Argolid."-P. 9.

It may be noted that at Tiryns Dr. Schliemann began to discover those terra-cotta figures, to which he gives the name of "cow-headed." Just as he believes that the designation "glaukopis," applied to Athena or Minerva, can only be understood as an allusion to the fact that originally that goddess was worshiped with an owl's head, so he is confident that the designation "boöpis," belonging to Juno, arose from the circumstance that the wife of Jove was represented with the head and horns of a cow. We cannot say that in either case he has brought forward demonstrative evidence, and yet we see much probability in the supposition. As was shown in a previous article, when the views of Dr. Schliemann on this subject, propounded in his "Troy and its Remains," were