The site of Mycenæ presented in the time of Pausanias just the same bare wilderness of rugged pasture land, interspersed with slopes and precipitous cliffs, as at the present day. No change can have taken place there, and the remnants of the lower city wall were undoubtedly in his time as trifling as they are now. Nay, such is their insignificance, that only the traces of the wall on the ridge seem to have been remarked by travellers, and nobody before me appears to have ever noticed the traces of the wall on the opposite side, which runs along the bank of the ravine torrent.
MEANING OF PAUSANIAS.
For these decisive reasons, I have always interpreted the famous passage in Pausanias in the sense that the five tombs were in the Acropolis. I proved this in my work 'Ithaque, le Péloponnèse et Troie,' which I published in the beginning of 1869, page 97. In February, 1874, therefore, I sank there thirty-four shafts in different places, in order to sound the ground and to find out the place where I should have to dig for them. The six shafts which I sank on the first western and south-western terrace gave very encouraging results, and particularly the two which I dug within 100 yards south of the Lions' Gate; for not only did I strike two Cyclopean house-walls, but I also found an unsculptured slab resembling a tombstone, and a number of female idols and small cows of terra-cotta. I therefore resolved at once on making extensive excavations at this spot, but I was prevented by various circumstances which I need not explain here, and it is only now that I have found it possible to carry out my plan.
I began the great work on the 7th August, 1876, with sixty-three workmen, whom I divided into three parties. I put twelve men at the Lions' Gate, to open the passage into the Acropolis; I set forty-three to dig, at a distance of 40 feet from that gate, a trench 113 feet long and 113 feet broad; and the remaining eight men I ordered to dig a trench on the south side of the Treasury in the lower city, near the Lions' Gate, in search of the entrance. But the soil at the Treasury was as hard as stone, and so full of large blocks, that it took me two weeks to dig only as far down as the upper part of the open triangular space above the door, from which I could calculate that the threshold would be 33 feet lower.
I had also very hard work at the Lions' Gate, owing to the huge blocks by which the passage was obstructed, and which seem to have been hurled from the adjoining walls at the assailants, when the Acropolis was captured by the Argives in 468 B.C. The obstruction of the entrance must date from that time, for the débris in which the boulders are imbedded has not been formed by a series of successive habitations, but it has evidently been gradually washed down by the rain water from the upper terraces.
Immediately to the left, on entering the gate, I brought to light a small chamber, undoubtedly the ancient doorkeeper's habitation, the ceiling of which is formed by one huge slab. The chamber is only 4½ feet high, and it would not be to the taste of our present doorkeepers; but in the heroic age comfort was unknown, particularly to slaves, and being unknown it was unmissed.
No ancient writer mentions the fact that Mycenæ was reinhabited after its capture by the Argives and the expulsion of its inhabitants. On the contrary, Diodorus Siculus, who lived at the time of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, after having described the tragic fate of Mycenæ, adds: "This city, which was in ancient times blessed with wealth and power, which produced such great men and accomplished such important actions, was thus destroyed and remained uninhabited till the present time."[177] That Mycenæ was uninhabited at the time of Strabo (that is, under Augustus), we must conclude from his remark, "So that of the city of the Myceneans not even a vestige can now be found."[178] It was certainly also uninhabited at the time of Pausanias (A.D. 170), who describes its ruins.
REOCCUPATION OF MYCENÆ.
But I have brought to light most positive proofs that it had been again inhabited, and that the new town must have existed for a long period, probably for more than two centuries; because there is at the surface of the Acropolis a layer of débris of the Hellenic time, which goes to an average depth of three feet. Though I cannot fix by the fragments of pottery the precise period of the re-occupation of the town, yet as painted pottery of the best Hellenic period is missing, and as the numerous terra-cotta figures and fluted vases which I find are evidently of the Macedonian age down to the second century B.C., I presume that the new colony may have been founded in the beginning of the fourth, and may have been abandoned in the beginning of the second century B.C. These two limits seem to be confirmed by the bronze medals found, nearly all of which show on one side a Hera head with a crown, on the other a column, having to its left a helmet and to its right a
