No. 210a. Bench of the Agora.
My esteemed friend, Professor F. A. Paley, has been the first to advance the opinion, accepted by Mr. Charles T. Newton and by myself, that the double parallel circle of slabs, having been in the most solid way covered with cross slabs, must necessarily have served as a bench to sit upon and as the enclosure of the Agora of Mycenæ. He thinks that the first idea for the form of an Agora was given by the circular-dances (κύκλιοι χοροί) and the recitation of the dithyrambs.[236] The assembled people sat in a circle, and the orator stood in the centre, as we see in Homer,[237] and in Sophocles[238]; and just in the centre of this enclosure at Mycenæ I found a rock forming a slight elevation, which might well have served as the platform (βῆμα), from which the speakers addressed those sitting on the circular bench.[239]
We therefore know with certainty, in the first place, that the Agora was round, and, secondly, that people used to sit there. The circular form of the Agora is also proved by Euripides,[240] who speaks of the "circle of the Agora" (ἀγορᾶς κύκλον). Professor Paley infers from the passage of Euripides already cited (Electra, 710), that the poet had known this Agora in the Acropolis of Mycenæ from personal inspection, and that by πέτρινα βάθρα he means the enormous circular stone bench by which the Agora is enclosed, and that consequently on this bench he makes the herald stand, when in a loud voice he calls the people of Mycenæ to the Agora; he also believes that Euripides had perhaps in mind the βῆμα in the Athenian Pnyx. I should not hesitate to accept Professor Paley's opinion, had I not found the Agora deeply buried in the prehistoric débris. But it may very well be that at the time of Euripides the Agora was not yet entirely covered, and that the greater part of the prehistoric débris, with which I found it covered, was only after his time washed down by the heavy winter rains from the five upper natural or artificial terraces of the Acropolis. At all events it appears from the pottery of the later Hellenic city that the latter was not built till after the time of Euripides.[241]
Mr. Charles T. Newton calls my attention to the passage in Thucydides, who says of Corcyra, "the houses which lie in a circle around the Agora."[242] Also to the following passages in Pausanias, which prove that the heroic tombs were in the Agora of Megara. "Here they built the place for council in order that they might have the tomb of the heroes within the place for council;"[243] for there can be no doubt that this βουλευτήριον was in the Agora. (It must be borne in mind that this was done at Megara by the advice of the Delphic oracle.) Further: "also the tomb of Coroebus is in the Agora of the Megarians."[244]
ROYAL TOMBS IN THE AGORA AT CYRENE.
Another esteemed friend also calls my attention to the passage in Pausanias: "Here is the tomb of Opheltes, with an enclosure of stones and altars in the walls; (here) is also the tumulus, the sepulchre of Lycurgus, the father of Opheltes."[245] But Opheltes was a son of the Nemean King Lycurgus and Eurydice, and he was killed by a serpent whilst his nurse, Hypsipyle, showed a spring to the seven heroes when on their expedition to Thebes. Owing to this event the people of Nemea founded in his honour the Nemean games, and he, as well as his father, was interred in the sacred grove of the Nemean Jove, where their tombs were seen by Pausanias, who mentions nothing of an Agora.[246]
Professor Paley reminds me of Pindar's Pythian Ode (V. 69-98), in which we read:[247] "(Apollo) caused the valorous descendants of Hercules and Aegimius to dwell in Lacedaemon, and at Argos, and at sacred Pylos. Now they say that from Sparta came my own much cherished race. Sprung from thence the heroes called Aegidae came to Thera, even my ancestors,—not indeed without the guidance of the god, but a certain destiny brought thither a festive rite attended with much sacrificing; and from thence receiving thy Carnea, Apollo, we honour at the banquet the grandly built city of Cyrene, possessed as it is by the brass-loving strangers, Trojan descendants of Antenor. For they came thither with Helen, after they had seen their native city become a smoking ruin in the war. And the horse-driving race is religiously received with sacrifices, and propitiated by offerings (at their tombs), by the men whom Aristoteles (Battas) brought, when he opened the deep highway of the sea for his swift vessels. He founded also larger groves of the gods, and laid down a paved road, cut straight through the plain, to be smitten with the feet of horses in processions to Apollo for averting evil from mortals; and there he lies in death, apart from the rest, at the furthermost end of the Agora. Happy did he live while among men, and afterwards he was blessed as a hero worshipped by the people. And away from him, in front of their palaces [but of course also in the Agora], lie other consecrated kings that have their lot with Hades."
From this passage in Pindar we see that Battas, also called Aristoteles, the founder of Cyrene, 640 B.C., and its first king, descended from Hercules, and that his ancestors, the Heracleids or Dorians, had emigrated from Sparta to Thera. As Pindar saw his tomb, as well as those of other consecrated kings (probably the successors of Battas), in the Agora of Cyrene, Professor Paley thinks that it was an ancient Doric and not an Achæan custom to bury the kings in the Agora. But this is in contradiction with the above statement of Pausanias (I. 43, §§ 4, 8), that the Megarians had the sepulchres of Coroebus and other heroes in their Agora, because Coroebus was an Elian Olympic victor in the stadium (Ol. I.), and, according to tradition, he killed Ποινή, sent by Apollo to the Argives.[248] Besides the Megarians had nothing whatever to do with Doric customs.
In like manner as at Megara and Cyrene, so in the Acropolis of Mycenæ, in honour of the illustrious personages who lie buried here, the Agora was erected in a circle around their tombs. Had the circle of slabs served only as an enclosure for the five royal tombs there would have been no necessity either to make it double and slanting and to cover it horizontally, or to build a huge wall for the sole purpose of sustaining it in the lower part of the Acropolis, and of raising it to the level of that part which rested on the rock in the higher part of the Acropolis; nay, one single circular enclosure, following the sinuosities of the rock, would in my opinion have done just as much honour to the five royal sepulchres as the artificially levelled and covered double row.
