Of rich Mycenæ; work on them thy will;
Destroy them, if thine anger they incur;
I will not interpose nor hinder thee;
Mourn them I shall; reluctant see their fall,
But not resist; for sovereign will is thine.'"[408]
In the opinion of Mr. Sayce, it is clear that Homer meant in this passage to refer to the destruction of at least one of the three cities which he names, and as Argos and Sparta were not destroyed, the city which was destroyed could have been no other than Mycenæ. Mr. Sayce believes that it may be inferred from the word διαπέρσαι that the destruction of Mycenæ must have been complete. If it was so, nothing can better prove the great antiquity of the event than this citation from Homer.
I must say that this hypothesis of Messrs. Sayce and Mahaffy, according to which Mycenæ must have been destroyed at a period of great antiquity, is but too strongly confirmed by the monuments. I recall to the reader here what I said on this subject near the end of Chapter IV.:—"On the west side the Cyclopean wall has been nearly demolished for a distance of 46 feet, and on its interior side a wall of small stones joined with earth has been built to sustain its ruins. It must remain mere guesswork when the Cyclopean wall was destroyed and the small wall built, but at all events this must have occurred long before the capture of Mycenæ by the Argives in 468 B.C., because the small wall was buried deep in the prehistoric débris."
I also recall the fact that the following inscription
which we know positively to belong to the sixth century B.C., is cut upon a fragment of that black Greek pottery which seems to be of at least three centuries' later date than the archaic Mycenian pottery, even the most modern, which is found at Mycenæ just at the bottom of the bed of débris of the Macedonian city.