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.