Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

It may not have been more than half a mile farther to the ruins, but it was up hill and very warm work reaching them. On either side of the high road, where presumably once lay the real every-day city of Mycenæ, there was little in the way of remains to be seen, save for the remarkable avenue leading to the subterranean tomb, or treasury, of which it will be best to speak somewhat later. The slopes were covered with grass, and here and there a trace of very old “Cyclopean” masonry was all that remained to bear witness to the previous existence of a city wall, or possibly an ancient highway with a primitive arch-bridge spanning a gully. Back over the plain the view was expansive. The several strongholds of Agamemnon’s kingdom were all in sight,—Mycenæ, Nauplia, Argos, and Tiryns,—at the corners of the great plain, which one might ride all around in a day; so that from his chief stronghold on the height at Mycenæ Agamemnon might well claim to be monarch of all he surveyed. Behind the valley, the twin peaks at whose base the stronghold lay rose abruptly, bearing no trace of the forests of oak that once covered them; and on a rocky foothill stood the acropolis of the city, admirably fitted by nature for defense. It was on this high ground that the ruins were found, and the visitor is informed that this was the citadel rather than the main town—the place to which the beleaguered inhabitants might flock for safety in time of war, and in which Atreus and his line had their palace. It was here that Dr. Schliemann conducted his remarkable researches, of which we shall have much to say. It is a remarkable fact that the events of the past twenty years or so have given a most astonishing insight into the dimness of the so-called “heroic” age—the age that long after was sung by Homer—so that it is actually possible now to say that we know more of the daily life and conditions of the time of Troy’s besiegers than we do of the time of Homer himself, and more about the heroes than about those who sang their exploits. Knowledge of the more remote periods seems to vary directly with the distance. The dark ages, as has been sagely remarked, were too dark altogether to admit men to read the story told by the ancient monuments such as survived at Mycenæ, and it is only lately that light has increased sufficiently to enable them to be understood with such clearness that the dead past has suddenly seemed to live again. From the remains at Mycenæ the savants have unearthed the houses, walls, palaces, reservoirs, ornaments, weapons, and daily utensils of the pre-Homeric age. Bones and other relics cast aside in rubbish heaps give an idea of the daily food of the people. The tombs have revealed how they were buried at death, and have yielded a wealth of gold ornaments showing a marvelous skill in working metals.

This upper city of Mycenæ was built on a rock, which we soon discovered to be separated from the rest of the mountain by ravines, leaving the sides very steep and smooth, so that on nearly every hand the place was inaccessible. The gorges toward the mountains were natural moats, and wide enough to prevent assault or even the effective hurling of missiles from above into the citadel. The stronghold, however, was vastly strengthened by artificial construction and proved to be walled entirely about, the fortress being especially strong on the more exposed portions, and most especially at the main gate, where the enormous blocks of stone and the tremendous thickness of the wall were most in evidence. The road winds up the last steep ascent until it becomes a mere narrow driveway, scarcely wide enough for more than a single chariot, and right ahead appears suddenly the famed Lion Gate, flanked on one hand by a formidable wall facing the side of the native rock, and on the other by a projecting bastion of almost incredible thickness. The stones are of remarkable size, hewn to a sort of rough regularity by the Cyclopean builders, and the wonder is that, in so rude and primitive an age, men were able to handle such great blocks with such skill. No wonder the tale gained currency that it was the work of the Cyclopes, imported from abroad—and indeed the tale is not without its abiding plausibility, since there are evidences enough in scattered Phœnician sites elsewhere to warrant the assumption that the builders of these numerous fortresses in Argolis did come from over seas.

Of all the ruins at Mycenæ the “gate of the lions” is unquestionably the most impressive. It spans the end of the long and narrow vestibule between the walls of rock, its jambs made of huge upright stones that even to-day show the slots cut for hinges and the deep holes into which were shot the ancient bolts. Over the top is another massive single stone, forming the lintel. It is a peculiarity of the Cyclopean doorways at Mycenæ that the weight on the centre of the lintel is almost invariably lightened by leaving a triangular aperture in the stonework above, and in the main gate the immense blocks of the wall were so disposed as to leave such an opening. Even the massive lintel of this broad gate would probably have failed to support the pressure of the walls had not some such expedient been devised. As it is, the light stone slab that was used to fill the triangular opening is still in place, and it is what gives the name to the gateway, from the rudely sculptured lions that grace it. These two lions, minus their heads, are sitting facing each other—“heraldically opposed,” as the phrase is—each with his fore feet resting on the base of an altar bearing a sculptured column, which marks the centre of the slab. The column is represented as larger at the top than at the base, a peculiarity of the stone columns of the Mycenæan age, and recalling the fact that the first stone pillars were faithful copies of the sharpened stakes that had been used as supports in a still earlier day. The missing heads of the lions were doubtless of metal,—bronze, perhaps,—and were placed so as to seem to be gazing down the road. They are gone, nobody knows whither. It used to be stated that this quaint bas-relief was the “oldest sculpture in Europe,” but this is another of the comfortable delusions that modern science has destroyed. Nobody, however, can deny that the Gate of the Lions is vastly impressive, or that it is so old that we may, without serious error, feel that we are looking on something that Agamemnon himself perhaps saw over his shoulder as he set out for Troy. Just inside the gate we found a narrow opening in the stones, leading to a sort of subterranean chamber, presumably for the sentry. The impression produced by the gate and its massive flanking walls is that of absolute impregnability, and it was easy enough to fancy the Argive javelin-men thronging the bastion above and pouring death and destruction down upon the exposed right hands of the invaders jammed tight in the constricted vestibule below.

Inside the gate, the old market-place opens out, and it was here that were discovered the tombs from which came the numerous relics seen at Athens. The market place is still encircled by a curious elliptical structure, which is in effect a double ring of flat stones, with slabs laid flat across the top, forming what looks like a sort of oval bench all around the inclosure. We were asked to believe that these actually were seats to be occupied by the old men and councilors of the city; but if that is the truth, there were indeed giants in the land in those times. Other authorities conjecture that it was a retaining wall for a sort of mound heaped up over the graves within—an hypothesis which it seems almost as hard to adopt. Whatever the purpose of this remarkable circle of stone slabs, it is hardly to be doubted that it did once inclose an “agora,” and it was within this space that Schliemann sunk his shafts and brought up so much that was wonderful from the tombs below. Tombs in so central a spot, and filled with such a plethora of gold, certainly might well be deemed to have been the last resting-place of royalty, and it is agreeable to believe that they were sovereigns of the Agamemnonian line, if the “prince of men” himself be not one of them. It is the fashion to aver that Schliemann was too ready to jump at conclusions prompted by his own fond hopes and preconceived ideas, and to make little of his claim that he had unearthed the grave of the famous warrior who overcame Priam’s city; and perhaps this is justified. But one cannot forget that the old legend insisted that Atreus, Agamemnon, Cassandra, Electra, Eurymedon, and several others were buried in the market place of Mycenæ,—which was doubtless what prompted the excavation at this point; excavations which moreover proved to be so prolific of royal reward.

AGORA—MYCENÆ

On the heights above, where it was far too steep for chariots to follow, there is a pathway direct to the royal palace itself, which it will doubtless do no harm to call Agamemnon’s. Of course it is practically flat to-day, with little more than traces of the foundation, save for a bit of pavement here and there, or a fragment of wall on which possibly one may detect a faint surviving touch of fresco. All around the citadel below are traces of other habitations, so congested as to preclude any application of Homer’s epithet, “Mycenæ of the broad streets,” to this particular section of the city. All around the summit ran the wall, even at points where it would seem no wall was necessary. As we explored the site the guide kept gathering handfuls of herbage that grew all about, and speedily led us to a curious Cyclopean “arch,” made by allowing two sloping stones to fall toward each other at the top of an approaching row of wall-blocks, which it developed was the entrance to a subterranean gallery that led down to the reservoir of the fort. It was a dark and tortuous place, and its descent to the bowels of the hill was quite abrupt, so that we did not venture very far, but allowed the guide to creep gingerly down until he was far below; whereupon he set fire to the grasses he had been accumulating and lighted up this interior gallery for us. The walls of this passageway had been polished smooth for centuries by passing goats which had rubbed against the stone, and it gleamed and glittered in the firelight, revealing a long tunnel leading downward and out of sight to a cavern far below, where was once stored the water supply conveyed thither from a spring north of the citadel. Stones cast down the tunnel reverberated for a long distance along its slippery floor, and at last apparently came against a final obstacle with a crash. Then came the upward rush of smoke from the impromptu torch, and we were forced hastily to scramble out into the open air. We returned later, however, for a passing shower swept down from the mountains and threatened a drenching, which rendered the shelter of the ancient aqueduct welcome indeed. It was soon over, however, and afforded us a chance to sit on the topmost rock of the acropolis, looking down over what was once the most important of the Greek kingdoms, from the mountains on the north and west down to the sea—a pleasing sight, which was cut short only by the reflection that we had still to visit the so-called “treasury of Atreus” beside the road below.

This is one more of the odd structures of the place over which controversy has raged long and fiercely, the problem being whether or not it was a tomb. There are a number of these underground chambers near by, but the most celebrated one just mentioned is the common type and is completely excavated so that it is easily to be explored. The approach is by a long cut in the hillside, walled on both sides with well-hewn stone, the avenue terminating only when a sufficient depth had been reached to excavate a lofty subterranean chamber. A tall and narrow door stands at the end of this curious lane, placed against the hill, its lintel made of a noticeably massive flat stone, with the inevitable triangular opening over it; but in this case the block which presumably once closed it is gone, and nobody knows whether it, like its mate at the main gateway, bore sculptured lions or not. Within, the tomb is shaped like an old-fashioned straw beehive, lined throughout with stone, which bears marks indicating that it in turn was once faced with bronze plates. It is a huge place, in which the voice echoes strangely, and it is lighted only from the door and its triangular opening above. Just off the northern side is a smaller chamber, where light is only to be had by lighting some more of the dry grasses gathered without. Those who adhere to the idea that this was a tomb maintain that the real sepulchre was in the smaller adjoining chamber. Respectable authority exists, however, for saying that these chambers were not tombs at all, but treasuries, and a vast amount of controversial literature exists on the subject, over which one may pore at his leisure if he desires. If it was a tomb, it is obvious from the other burial-place discovered on the acropolis above that there must have been at least two different styles of burial,—and the tombs above appear to have contained people of consequence, such as might be expected to have as honorable and imposing sepulchres as there were. No bones were found in the “treasury of Atreus,” and plenty of bones were found elsewhere, a fact which might seem significant and indeed conclusive if it were not known that bones had been found in beehive tombs like this elsewhere in Greece, notably near Menidi, where six skeletons were discovered in a similar structure. Of course it might be true that the bodies found on the heights at Mycenæ and taken to Athens belonged to an entirely different epoch from those that were buried in the beehive tombs, and that the beehive tombs might easily have been looted long before the existence of any such booty as the marketplace graves yielded had even been suspected. The layman is therefore left to suit himself, whether he will call this underground chamber a tomb or a treasury, and devote his time to admiring the ingenuity with which the stone lining of the place was built, each tier of stone slightly projecting above its lower fellow so as at last to converge at the top in a point. The perfection of this subterranean treasure-house seems no less remarkable than the ease with which the ancient builders managed large masses of rock.

As for the history of Mycenæ, its greatest celebrity is unquestionably that which it achieved in the time of the Atreidai, when it was the home of the kings of Argos. It is supposable that in the palace on the height Clytæmnestra spent the ten years of her lord’s absence at Troy, and that therein she murdered him on his return. The poets have woven a great web of song and story about the place, largely imaginative and legendary, to be sure. But the revelations of the later excavations have revealed that the poets came exceedingly close to fact in their descriptions of material things. The benches before the doors, the weapons and shields of heroes, the cups,—such as Nestor used, for example,—all these find their counterparts in the recently discovered actualities and give the more color to the events that the ancient writers describe. That Mycenæ was practically abandoned soon after her great eminence doubtless accounts for the wealth of relics that the excavators found, and her low estate during the centuries of neglect curiously but not unnaturally insured her return to celebrity, with a vast volume of most interesting testimony to her former greatness quite unimpaired.

From Mycenæ down to the Argive Heræum, the ancient temple of Hera which was once the chief shrine of this region, is something like two miles; but as it was over a rough ground, and as time failed us, it was found necessary to eliminate this, which to a strenuous archæologist might doubtless prove highly interesting as an excursion, and more especially so to Americans, since it was a site explored by the American school. It lies off on the hills that border the plain of Argos on the east, on the direct line between Mycenæ and Nauplia. Our own road led us back to Phychtia again and down the centre of the plain over a very good carriage road, passing through broad fields of waving grain, in the midst of which, breast deep, stood occasional horses contentedly munching without restraint. Almost the only buildings were isolated stone windmills, some still in use and others dismantled. At last the road plunged down a bank and into the sandy bed of what was doubtless at some time of year a river,—but at this season, and probably most of the year as well, a mere broad flat expanse of sand as destitute of water as the most arid part of Sahara. The railroad, which had borne us friendly company for a few miles, was provided with an iron bridge, spanning this broad desert with as much gravity as if it were a raging torrent, which doubtless it sometimes is. Just beyond we rattled into Argos.