At last woods of ancient olives, with great gnarled stems, told us that we were nearing some important settlement, and the pleasant town of Kyparissia came in view—now, alas! a heap of ruins since the recent earthquake. Here we took leave of our ponies, mules, and human followers; but the pathos [pg 455]of parting with these intimate companions of many days was somewhat marred by the divergence of their notions and ours as to their pay. Yet these differences, when settled, did not prevent them from giving us an affectionate farewell.
CHAPTER XV.
MYCENÆ AND TIRYNS.
I have set apart a chapter for Mycenæ and Tiryns, because the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann there have raised so many new problems, and have so largely increased public curiosity about them, that a book of travels in Greece cannot venture to avoid the subject; even long before Dr. Schliemann’s day, the learned and deliberate travellers who visited the Morea, and wrote their great books, found ample scope for description, and large room for erudite discussion. It is a curious thing to add, but strictly true, that all the new facts brought out by the late excavations have, as yet, contributed but little to our knowledge about the actual history of the country, and that almost every word of what was summed up from all existing sources twenty years ago, by Ernst Curtius, can still be read with far more profit than the rash speculations which appear almost weekly in the periodical press.
It is impossible to approach Mycenæ from any side without being struck with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down over the mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the [pg 457]valley of the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or east, into a secluded corner—“a recess of the horse-feeding Argos,” as Homer calls it, and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charváti. When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of Mycenæ—the Argion, as it was once called. The lower and longer was part of the outer city, which occupied both this hill and the gorge under the Argion. As you walk along the lower hill, you find the Treasure-house of Atreus, as it is called, built into the side which faces the Acropolis. But there are other ruined treasuries on the outer slope, and the newly-opened one is just at the joining saddle, where the way winds round to lead you up the greater hill to the giant gate with the Lion portal. If we represent the high levels under the image of a fishing-hook, with the shank placed downward (south), and the point lying to the right (east), then the Great Treasury is at that spot in the shank which is exactly opposite the point, and faces it. The point and barb are the Acropolis. The New Treasury is just at the turn of the hook, facing in[pg 458]ward (to the south). This will give a rough idea of the site. It is not necessary to enter into details, when so many maps and plans are now in circulation. But I would especially refer to the admirable illustrations in Schliemann’s Mycenæ, where all these matters are made perfectly plain and easy.
When we first visited the place it was in the afternoon of a splendid summer’s day; the fields were yellow and white with stubbles or with dust, and the deep gray shadow of a passing cloud was the only variety in the color of the upper plain. For here there are now no trees, the corn had been reaped, and the land asserted its character as very thirsty Argos. But as we ascended to higher ground, the groves and plantations of the lower plain came in sight, the splendid blue of the bay began to frame the picture, and the setting sun cast deeper shadow and richer color over all the view. Down at the river-bed great oleanders were spreading their sheets of bloom, like the rhododendrons in our climate, but they were too distant to form a feature in the prospect.
I saw the valley of Argos again in spring, in our “roaring moon of daffodil and crocus;” it was the time of growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple cistus, but there too of high winds and glancing shadows. Then all the plain was either brilliant green with growing wheat, or ruddy brown with recent tillage; there were clouds about the moun[pg 459]tains, and changing colors in the sky, and a feeling of freshness and life very different from the golden haze and dreamy calmness of a southern June.
