Of greater importance than any of these in the pre-Doric period were the feudal states of the Peloponnesus. The strongest among these was the royal house of the Atridæ, upon whose glory terrible legends cast a dark and bloody shadow. From their capital at Mycenæ they ruled over the whole of Argolis; chieftains in Tiryns, in Argos and on the coast of the peninsula of Parnon acknowledged their authority. The remains of the citadel of this royal family are still preserved. The hill on which this citadel stood is surmounted by a small circular wall, and lower down is surrounded by a mighty wall which everywhere follows the edge of the cliff, and which in some places is built of rough layers of massive stones, elsewhere of carefully fitted polygonal blocks, but also for considerable stretches of rectangular blocks, in horizontal courses.
On the southwestern side is the principal gate, the famous Gate of the Lions, which takes its name from the oldest extant remains of sculpture in Greece. In the triangular gap in the wall above the lintel an enormous slab of yellow limestone is fitted; it is divided in the middle by a perpendicular column, on either side of which stands a lioness. In this acropolis Schliemann found graves with human remains, with vessels of clay, alabaster, and gold, ornaments of rock-crystal, copper, silver, gold, and ivory.
Near the Gate of the Lions begin the walls of the lower city, which stood on the ridge extending from the western declivity of the citadel to the south. In this lower city are a number of remarkable subterranean buildings, sepulchres and treasure houses of the ancient monarchs. The best preserved and largest of these is the noteworthy round building known as the “treasure house of Atreus” (also as the “grave of Agamemnon”), which is especially interesting on account of its tholos, or interior circular vault.
So in a large part of the Greek world a not inconsiderable degree of civilisation had already begun to flourish. War, to be sure, was governed, even down to the period of the highest culture, by a “martial law” that recognised no right of the vanquished, delivered conquered cities to the flames, and gave the person and the family of the captured enemy to the victor as booty. The battle itself however, was conducted according to certain mutually recognised chivalrous forms. The Greek knights, rushing into battle in their chariots, hurled their terrible javelins at the enemy, but made less use of the sword, and still less of the bow, sought single combat with a foe of equal birth, and as a rule avoided slaughtering the common soldier. The development of a class of slaves in consequence of the incessant feuds was of great influence in determining the whole future character of the later Hellenic states. On the other hand, it is worthy of note that the ancient cruelty and bloodthirsty savagery disappeared more and more, although breaking out frightfully on occasion when the heat of Greek passion burst through all restraint. But murder and even simple homicide, as they are recorded with traces of blood in the older legendary history, ceased to be daily occurrences.
Tradition shows traces of a beautiful moral idealism. The tenderest friendship, respect of the Greek youth for age, conjugal loyalty of the women, ardent love of family, and the highest degree of receptivity for the good and the noble shine forth from the traditions of the Achæans with a charm that warms the heart.
The beginnings of common religious assemblages, or Amphictyons, also appear to belong to this time. So Greek life had already a quite complex structure when a last echo of the ancient movement of peoples on the Illyrian-Greek peninsula once more produced a general upheaval in all the lands between Olympus and Malea, between the Ionian Sea and the mountains of the coast of Asia Minor, after which Greece on either side of the Ægean Sea had acquired the ethnographic physiognomy that it retained until the invasion of the Slavs and Bulgarians.e
FOOTNOTES
[2] [The Latin Græcus was, however, derived from the old Greek name Γραϊκός.]
CHAPTER II. THE MYCENÆAN AGE
At Mycenæ in 1876 Dr. Schliemann lifted the corner of the veil which had so long enshrouded the elder age of Hellas. Year by year ever since that veil has been further withdrawn, and now we are privileged to gaze on more than the shadowy outline of a far-back age. The picture is still incomplete, but it is already possible to trace the salient features.… The name “Mycenæan” is now applied to a whole class of monuments—buildings, sepulchres, ornaments, weapons, pottery, engraved stones—which resemble more or less closely those found at Mycenæ. I think I am right when I say that archæologists are unanimous in considering them the outcome of one and the same civilisation, and the product of one and the same race.—William Ridgeway.
MYCENÆAN CIVILISATION[3]
“Mycenæan” is a convenient epithet for a certain phase of a prehistoric civilisation, which, as a whole, is often called “Ægean.” It owes its vogue to the fame of Henry Schliemann’sc discovery at Mycenæ in 1876, but is not intended to beg the open question as to the origin or principal seat of the Bronze Age culture of the Greek lands.
The Gate of the Lions, Mycenæ
The site of Mycenæ itself was notorious for the singular and massive character of its ruins, long before Schliemann’s time. The great curtain wall and towers of the citadel, of mixed Cyclopean, polygonal, and ashlar construction, and unbroken except on the south cliff, and the main gate, crowned with a heraldic relief of lionesses, have never been hidden; and though much blocked with their own ruin, the larger dome-tombs outside the citadel have always been visible, and remarked by travellers. But since these remains were always referred vaguely to a “Heroic” or “proto-Hellenic” period, even Schliemann’s preliminary clearing of the gateway and two dome-tombs in 1876, which exposed the engaged columns of the façades, and suggested certain inferences as to external revetment and internal decoration, would not by itself have led any one to associate Mycenæ with an individual civilisation. It was his simultaneous attack on the unsearched area which was enclosed by the citadel walls, and in 1876 showed no remains above ground, that led to the recognition of a “Mycenæan civilisation.” Schliemann had published in 1868 his belief that the Heroic graves mentioned by Pausanias lay within the citadel of Mycenæ, and now he chose the deeply silted space just within the gate for his first sounding. About 10 feet below the surface his diggers exposed a double ring of upright slabs, once capped with cross slabs, and nearly 90 feet in diameter. Continuing downwards through earth full of sherds and other débris, whose singularity was not then recognised, the men found several sculptured limestone slabs showing subjects of war or the chase, and scroll and spiral ornament rudely treated in relief. When, after some delay, the work was resumed, some skeletons were uncovered lying loose, and at last, 30 feet from the original surface, an oblong pit-grave was found, paved with pebbles, and once roofed, which contained three female skeletons, according to Schliemann, “smothered in jewels.” A few feet to the west were presently revealed a circular altar, and beneath it another grave with five corpses, two probably female, and an even richer treasure of gold. Three more pits came to light to the northward, each adding its quota to the hoard, and then Schliemann, proclaiming that he had found Atreus and all his house, departed for Athens. But his Greek ephor, clearing out the rest of the precinct, came on yet another grave and some gold objects lying loose. Altogether there were nineteen corpses in six pits, buried, as the grave furniture showed, at different times, but all eventually included in a holy ring.