Mycenae : a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns

Front matter

PLATE

Excavated by Mrs. Schliemann.

MYCENAE;

Preface

It has been with much reluctance that, at the persevering request of Dr. Schliemann. I have undertaken to write a Preface to his Mycenean volume. I have managed perhaps, though with long intermissions of the pleasant labour, to maintain a tolerable acquaintance with the text of Homer ; and the due establishment of the points of contact between that text and the remains from Mycenae is without question one of the essential aims, to which comment on this work requires to be addressed. But I have a horror of all specialism which travels beyond its proper province ; and in this matter I am at best no more than a specialist, probably, too, not one of very high pretensions. I have not that practised skill, that comprehensive outlook over the whole field of Hellenic, and other than Hellenic archaeology, which has conferred upon Mr. Newton his well-earned fame. The just conclusion from these premises appears to be, that I ought to have declined a charge quod ferre recusent humeri* But there was, in ancient poetry, a Destiny stronger than the will of gods. To me, on this occasion, Dr. Schliemann is the vicegerent and organ of that Destiny. In view of the splendid services which he has conferred upon classical science, a power, that thrusts argument out of court, brings me to perceive, that I cannot but accede to his desire. I have however given the reader fair warning where and why he should be on his guard ;

*

Hor. A. P. 39

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and I shall make all the use I can of the landmarks laid down in the report which Mr. Newton, after an ocular inspection of these remains, published in the Times of April 20, 1877; and of the valuable papers of Mr. Gardner in the Academy (April 21 and 28). I believe that the interest, excited by Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries, has been by no means confined to classical scholars. I shall therefore endeavour to be as little technical as possible, and to write, so far as may be, for a circle wider than that of the persons among us who are acquainted with the Greek tongue.

When the disclosures at Tiryns and Mycenae were announced in England, my own first impression was that of a strangely bewildered admiration, combined with a preponderance of sceptical against believing tendencies, in regard to the capital and dominating subject of the Tombs in the Agora. I am bound to say, that reflection and a fuller knowledge have nearly turned the scales the other way. There are indeed, not only gaps to be supplied, but difficulties to be confronted, and to be explained ; or to be left over for future explanation. Yet the balance, I will not say of evidence, but of rational presumption, seems as though it might ultimately lean towards the belief that this eminent explorer has exposed to the light of day, after 30c o years, the memorials and remains of Agamemnon and his companions in the Return from Troy. But let us endeavour to feel our way by degrees up to this question, gradually and with care, as a good general makes his approaches to a formidable fortress.

I find, upon perusing the volume of Dr. Schliemann, that the items of evidence, which connect his discoveries generally with the Homeric Poems, are more numerous, than I had surmised from the brief outline, with which he favoured us upon his visit to England in the spring.

1. He presents to us the rude figures of cows; and

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Vll upon a signet ring (No. 531) and elsewhere, cow-heads not to be mistaken. He then points to the traditional worship, from the first, of Hera in Argolis ; and he asks us to connect these facts with the use of Bo'opis (cow-eyed) as a staple epithet of this goddess in the Poems ; and he might add, with her special guardianship of Agamemnon in his interests and his personal safety (//. I. 194-222).

This appears to me a reasonable demand. We know that upon some of the Egyptian monuments the goddess Isis, mated with Osiris, is represented in human figure with the cow's head. This was a mode of exhibiting deity congenial to the spirit of an Egyptian immigration,* such as might, compatibly with the text of Homer, have taken place some generations before the Troica. But it was also a mode against which the whole spirit of Hellenism, according to the authentic type of that spirit supplied in the Poems, utterly revolted. We find there a Hera, who wore, so to speak, the mantle of Isis, besides carrying the spoils of one or more personages enrolled in the Golden Book of the old Pelasgian dynasties. Nothing could be more natural than a decapitation of the Egyptian Isis, not penally but for her honour She might consequently appear with the human head ; but, not to break sharply with the traditions of the people, the cow-head, and even the cow figure, might nevertheless be retained as symbols of religion. And the great Poet, who invariably keeps these symbols so to speak at arms’ length, in order that he may prevent their disparaging the creed of which he was the great doctor, might nevertheless select from the bovine features that one which was suited to his purpose, and give to his Hera, who was never a very intellectual

* Since this Preface was put in type, the fragments of an ostrich egg, originally mistaken for an alabaster vase, have been tested and verified. This object seems to afford a new indication of prehistoric relations between Mycense and Egypt.

VI 11 deity, the large tranquil eye of the cow. The use of the epithet for Hera in Ilomei is not, indeed, exclusive, and I admit that he may have inherited that use. But, though not exclusive, it is very special , and this speciality is enough to give a sensible support to the doctrine of our famous explorer.

2. The buildings improperly called Cyclopean, and still more improperly endowed with the alternative name of Pelasgian, have long been known, more or less, . to exist in Areolis : but Dr Schliemann has thrown some light on what I may perhaps be allowed to call their diversity of st\de. He admits three forms found in this kind of building I have objected to the current names, the first because it does not inform : the second because it misleads, for these buildings have no true connection with the Pelasgian tribes. What thev indicate is the handiwork of the great constructing race or races, made up of several elements, who migrated into Greece, and elsewhere on the Mediterranean, from the south and east, and who exhibit an usual, though perhaps not an invariable connection with the Poseidon-worship , a worship, with which the Cyclopean name is, through the Odyssey, perceptibly associated, and which is one of the main keys, as I have long been persuaded, wherewith in time to unlock, for Hellenic and Homeric regions, the secrets of antiquitv. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon ; that is, by a race who practised the worship of the god How far those walls conform to any of the minuter points of the descriptions of ‘Cyclopean’ architecture by Dr. Schliemann, (pp. 42, 123), I cannot say But if he is right, as seems probable, in placing Troy at Hissarlik, it is important to notice that this work of Poseidon had a solidity, which bore it unharmed through the rage of fire, and kept it well together amidst all the changes which have buried it in a hill of rubbish and promiscuous remains. And of course the modes, used by the very same race in the

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business of building, could not but vary much with the circumstances of each case, and especially with the material at hand. I am tempted, at least until a better name can be found, to call this manner of building Posejdonian ; at any rate, whatever it be called, to note it as a point of correspondence between the Poems and the discoveries, admitting at the same time that the matter is not sufficiently developed to warrant me in laying upon it any considerable stress.

3. The beehive-like building, which is rather loosely called the Treasury of Atreus, presents to us over the doorway (p. 43) two enormous slabs, one of them supposed to weigh from 130 to 135 tons. 1 only refer to

them for the sake of reminding the reader that, as I think, we must be prepared, in this and other matters, freely to recognise the hand of the foreigner at work ; who brought with him into Greece attainments, not to be despised, of material civilisation. More pointedly I wish to observe that in the interior of the Treasury, from the fourth course upwards, there are visible (p. 44) in each stone two bored holes, and in many of them the remains of ‘bronze’ nails still existing. Similar holes, it appears, are found (p. 45) in the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenos. The purpose erf these nails, says our author, could only be to attach to the wall what in one place he calls the bronze, and in another the brazen plates, with which the whole interior was once decorated. On the secondary question, what was the exact material employed, let me here observe that of brass those ages knew nothing, and that bronze, particularly in that stage of material development, was wholly unsuited for sheeting. But, as to the structural point, we have here a remarkable point of contact with the Homeric text. For in the palace of Alkinods, king of the Phaiakes, a splendour as of sun or moon dazzled the eve, for the walls were of chalkos ( Od . VII. 86, cited p. 44), which I hope

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I may now boldly translate copper : a metal unlike bronze (a) in being readily maileabJe, (/;) in being throughout the Poems most usually lustrous, a character I do not suppose we should assign to bronze. On the other hand, the comparative softness of copper was not well suited for the nails, so bronze might very well be employed. Nor does this conjunction of the two metals, pure and mixed, in the same work, carry us away from the text of Homer: for his wall-sheets of copper in Scherie were crowned with a cornice of Ins dark kitanos , which I take to be bronze. This copper sheeting is a feature of the supreme Olympian Palace (II. I. 426, Od. VIII. 321), built by Hephaistos of the skilful mind. I think I could show that it also adorned the palaces of Menelaos and Odysseus, and could point out, moreover, why all this is in accordance with the distinctly foreign and eastern character of the embellishment : but an exhibition of the evidence would lead me into too great length ; and I note only for the present purpose the remarkable correspondence of the archaeology with the Poems.

4. Passing from architectural to moveable objects, I observe that Dr. Schliemann found both knives and keys of iron in Mycenae, but that from their form he assigns them to a later and strictly historic period. Old Mycenae, therefore, in accordance with Hissarlik, has afforded us, up to the present time, no remains of this metal. In the Poems it is freely mentioned, but as a rare and valuable substance, used where great hardness was required, and for objects comparatively small and portable; except, indeed, in the case of the Gates of Tartaros (II. VIII 13), where the Poet could dispose of as much material as he pleased. The aggregate quantity, then, was small ; and the instruments were likely to be carried away on the abandonment or destruction of a city. Its absence may therefore be accounted for, in part by its value, but also, and more

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XI especially, because it so readily corrodes.* Therefore, although we cannot here establish a positive correspondence, neither have we any occasion to admit a discrepancy.

5. Neither need we, I think, suppose any variance between the chariot, as our author found it on the second tou.bstone of the Acropolis (p. 84), and the Homeric picture. True, he finds a wheel of four spokes, and the Olympian car of Hera had eight (//. V. 723) ; but this diversity of structure is probably introduced, like the diversity of material, by way of divine distinction, and to show the superior elaboration and strength of the vehicle.*

6. We have at Mycenae the Agcra, or place of Assembly, in full agreement with the Poems on the two points, first of its circular form (pp. 338, 339), and secondly of the smoothed horizontal slabs, bounding the circle, on which the Elders sate. I do not dilate upon these, as they are fully noticed in the text : but I shall return to the subject, in connection with the situation chosen for the tombs, and the inferences which are to be drawn from this important circumstance.

I will now hazard, before proceeding further with my list, one or two general remarks on the works of art and ornament, referring again to the reports of Air. Newton and Mr. Gardner, as the most trustworthy comment on the text of our author concerning them.

First, 1 have to offer some reflections on the general

* In the remarkable Museum of the Royal Academy of Ireland are two swords referred to the Danish period, which were taken out of a bed of mud. After a repose of perhaps a thousand years, they do not exhibit corrosion to the common eye. But the case is considered exceptional, and probably due to some peculiar ingredient in the moisture.

t I do not think it proved that, as Schliemann seems to convey (p. 84), the chariot-box was removed and fastened on each occasion of using it. The passages in II. XXIV. 190 and 267 refer to the peirins of the waggon. In Od. XV. 13 1, it is simply mentioned as a portion of the carriage, with no reference to detaching it.

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character of the discoveries, and on its relation to the state of Art exhibited in the Poems. It seems reasonable to believe, especially after what has been shown by Mr. Gardner respecting the four tombstones, that they constituted the contemporary seal of a great deposit. It results, 1 think, from the evidence before us that it is impossible to reduce to one school or style or stage of art the whole of the objects exhumed. But on this I would observe first that, although they were simultaneously deposited in honour of the dead, they might have been the productions of more than one generation : secondly, that not only are we not required, but, in so far as we draw light from the Homeric Poems, we are hardly permitted, to refer them collectively to a domestic origin.

I gather from Mr. Gardner's report that the Art exhibited on the Pottery is more uniformly backward, than that exhibited by the works of metal. But this pottery, which was, whether wheel made or hand-made, of an early stage in the manufacture, was far more likely to be domestic ; while the works in the precious metals might be imported. Or they might be the productions of foreign artists, attracted to the Court of Agamemnon ; in the same manner as we find that Daidalos, whose name, however mythical, represents a foreign influence, executed in Crete, for Ariadne, the representation of a dance in metal.

The discovery, or the inspection, of the works must without doubt in the first instance suggest a reference of them to a local school of goldsmiths. But, considering the numerous points of contact between the discoveries and the Homeric Poems, it is important to know whether, and how far, they really favour such a supposition. This is not the place for an examination in detail of all the works of Art mentioned by Homer. I believe there is no one of them, of which the purely Greek origin can be esta-

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blished by proof from the text, while the manufacture abroad and importation are frequently mentioned. At the same time, there are some considerations which tend to show that, if there were local workmen in Greece capable of producing objects such as those now exhumed, it is at Mycenae that we should expect to find them. First, on account of the wealth of the city, and of its position as the capital of the country. Secondly, on account of the wealth of Agamemnon personally, and his acquisitiveness if not his avarice, which made him eager to spoil those whom his spear had slain, and which is the subject of varied allusions in the Iliad. It must be remembered that in those days works of art were not merely ornamental, but were a favourite form, as their name ( keimelia ) shows, of stored wealth : and of these, even in Troas, Agamemnon possessed many (II. IX. 330). Thirdly, an indication, perhaps, more significant, may be drawn from the remarkable passage in the Eleventh Book ( 1 5-46), which describes the arming of Agamemnon for the field. The first portion of the armour, that attracts observation, is an elaborately wrought breast-plate, which had come from Cyprus, a seat of Phoenician settlement. We next come to the sword, which I shall presently describe. This is followed by the shield, adorned with many bosses of metal, but also carrying a representation of the Gorgon with the heads or figures of Fear and Panic. This shield must be considered as a work of art ; and the same may be said of its band or strap, which carried the figure of a three-headed snake. There is nothing said to connect these works with foreign manufacture. The family of Agamemnon was of a foreign origin comparatively recent ; but it may remain an open question, whether these arms are presumptively referable, or not, to a domestic manufacture.

The deposits appear, again, to differ extremely in point of merit. I set aside the objects directly symbolical, because,

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where religion, or idolatry, is in question, excellence in workmanship becomes secondary, or even ceases to be desired. Among the other objects, I gather that none exhibit a very high order of technical qualities. But, if we may rely upon photographic representation, they surely exhibit lively and forcible movement, as well as many of the elements of nobleness, beauty, and fertility of invention ; particularly in ornamentation, as distinguished from the representation of life, either animal or vegetable. Some of this diversity may be due to difference of date ; some, perhaps much, to the superiority of the immigrant hand, or of imported works. That there were foreigners resident in Greece at the time of the Tro'ica , we have every reason to infer from one conspicuous case, that of Echepolos, a son of Anchises, who was allowed to present the mare Aithe to Agamemnon, as the price of his exemption (//. XXIII. 29 6) from service against Troy. If there be anywhere in the Poems an account of a work of art produced in Greece or by a Greek, it is the bedstead of Odysseus,* wrought by himself (Od. XXIII. 190-201); and to him, after a good deal of consideration, I am inclined to ascribe a close connection with the immigrant or Phoenician stock; though this representation might also be due to his unequalled versatility and universality of accomplishment. There was indeed a Chrusochoos or gold-plater at the Court of Nestor (Od. III. 425) ; but the very same man goes by the name of Chalkeus or coppersmith {Ibid. III. 432). And it would even seem that working in metals cannot have been a principal or prominent employment in an Achaian community, for no such person is named in the remarkable

* Ikmalios is mentioned in Od. XIX. 57 as the maker of a chair inlaid with ivory and silver. I cannot doubt that this was foreign, since it is marked as the work of a former age : rjv ttotc t£ktu>v iroiqd ’Ik/xcLVios, “which erewhile lkmalion with cunning hand had made” (Norgate). ‘ Erewhile ’ will not be found in Todd or Latham : but it is in Shakespeare. and the Dictionary of Worcester and Webster contains it.

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XV passage of the Odyssey (XVII. 384) which supplies a sort of list, and where the wood-worker, or carpenter, appears.

The list of these objects, and of their ornaments, is on the whole richer and more diversified than the Pcems, with the exception of the famous Shield of Achdles, would have led us to expect. Possibly a knowledge of the Mycenean treasures may have prompted or aided a vigorous imagination, in that wonderful anticipation of excellences which had not been realized in practice. The most remarkable feature, I think, of all Homer’s delineations of art is the force and reality with which he confers animation on things inanimate. And perhaps the eye may be struck, in examining Schliemann’s illustrations, with the vigour of life and motion which asserts itself in many of the Mycenean works, where the delineation is technically most imperfect. But we cannot compare the text with these remains alone ; we are bound also to avail ourselves of such light as can be had from Hissarlik, what ever its effect upon our prepossessions or our arguments. Now I, for one, am struck with the wealth of Mycenae, and the comparative poverty of what is probably Troy. 1 do not mean merely as to the small number of valuable remains, for this may be due to chance ; though, indeed, fortune, for once renouncing her caprice, seems in both cases to have obeyed the dictates of archaeological justice, and to have treated Dr. and Mrs. Schliemann as her favourite children. But I mean that there is far less of luxe in the ornamentation of the works at Hissarlik ; I might, perhaps, say no representation at all of life, except in the rudest and most barbarous form. There seem to be very good forms in the gold and silver objects of Hissarlik, but always associated with plain work , no animal or even vegetable representation calling for notice from the present point of view, none of the repoussi work, nothing resembling the (apparently) beautiful cylinder (p. 2,87), or the elaborate rings photographed in this volume How are we to account for this ?

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And does an argument hence arise, that the Hissarlik remains belong to a period different from, and anterior to, that which produced the works at Mycenae ? That the adverse case may be made as strong as possible, let it be borne in mind that while Homer indicates Orchomenos, and above all Egyptian Thebes, as the wealthiest cities of his little world, lie seems designedly to assign the very same stage of opulence to Troy, which he gives to Mycenae ; for he describes by one and the same epithet, pohichrusos , which means gold-abounding, these two cities anti these two alone. Troy has it in II. XVIII. 289. For Mycenae it was almost a formula; see II. \ II. 180, XI. 46; Od. III. 305.

We have now before us, as is not improbable, the choicest samples of what the two cities had to boast of; and the question is, can we account for the difference in opulence, and stage of art, between them ? I conceive that we can, at least in a considerable degree ; but it is only by that acknowledgment, which some are still indisposed to make, ol the broad vein of historic reality, that runs through the delineations of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Three passages of the Iliad , in particular, convey to us that the city of Troy was suffering great impoverishment by the War. Indeed, if there be a grain of fact in the tale, it could not be otherwise. For the means of resisting the truly national attack of the Achaians, she was dependent neither on a good cause, nor on a soldiery commensurate with theirs. She had to seek strength from without ; first from the grudging support of Dardania, secondly from the neighbouring tribes both of Europe and of Asia. It might even be inferred from the text that nine -tenths of the fighting power (II. II. 123-33) were other than strictly domestic. But this support from without could only be got by paying for it. Accordingly Hector, in the Seventeenth Book speaks with the authority (220-32) of a general addressing allies, who are duly compensated for their services. So also we know that the great Eurupulos

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XVII and his Keteians,* or Hittites ( Od . XI. 520), fall in numbers on the plains of Troy, “ serving for gifts.” “ I wear out the Trojans,” says Hector, “ with presents and with victualling for you.” Again in the Twenty-fourth Book, Achilles, compassionately addressing Priam, says, “We hear that you once were prosperous, and exceeded in wealth, as well as in the number of your sons, all the neighbouring countries” (543-6). The inference is obvious; that at the time, though the city had not been captured, it was becoming comparatively poor. But the most express testimony is that of II. XVIII. 288-92, when Hector stimulates his countrymen to sally out, by reminding them that they are already well-nigh ruined. Once, he says, all men were wont to celebrate the wealth of Troy; “ but now the fine valuables have utterly disappeared from our mansions.”

1 rvv 8k 8r] i$air6\.u>\e 86fi(t)v Keifirj\ia koAu-

And, under the wrath of Zeus, multitudes of their possessions had been sent in exchange to Phrygia and Maeonia ; in exchange, that is, as I presume, for necessaries. But thegreat Mycenean deposit, if Schliemann be right in his view, was made before the time of any sack or depopulation of the city. Upon such an issue of life and death, as that offered to the Trojans, the best objects would naturally be parted with, as the most effective for their purpose (see II. XXIV. 234-7) ; and accordingly, if we are comparing Troy and Mycenae at all, we are comparing Troy in its exhaustion with Mycenae in its prosperity.

We have among the remains in the precious metals from Hissarlik, I believe, no representation of an animal, either chased or in the round. But the Poems give us several examples of such works in the possession of Greeks;

* ‘Homeric Synchronism,’ pp. 17 1 seq. I do not here enter on the curious question what is the precise meaning of yvvaia 8wf>a.

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though commonly under presumptions of foreign production, as it would not be difficult to show.

It is true, indeed, that Troy, in immediate contact with the large fertile districts of Asia Minor, had means of material growth by land-trade, which Greece, split by her mountain chains into comparatively narrow tracts of cultivable soil, did not possess. But it seems likely that even in those days the maritime commerce, stimulated by Phoenician ships and settlements, may have compensated, or more than compensated, for this disadvantage. Of the trade in metals and in corn, carried on by their race, we have distinct information in the Poems ( Od . I. 183-4, XIV. 333-5). They had, in all likelihood, already been followed by the Greeks. The voyage of the ship Argo seems to have been of a mixed character. The ships of the armament against Troy could hardly have been supplied by a people, who had not made a substantial beginning in maritime trade. The navigation of the coasts, without reference to purposes of war, is evidently a familiar idea in the Odyssey. But, in the Iliad, the construction of the ships of Paris is noted as the remarkable work of a remarkable man (II. V. 59-64) ; nor do we, except in this one ill-omened case, ever hear of Trojan navigation.

Once more. We are given to understand * that signs of the art of writing have been discovered at Hissarlik ; whereas the new volume supplies us with nothing of the kind for Mycenae. But nothing, I apprehend, can be affirmed of its existence either in Greece or Troas during the Homeric age, except as the secret of a few ; in Greece it was manifestly exotic, and perhaps it may have been the same in Troas. As long as the evidence remains in this state, we cannot infer from it with confidence any important proposition as to comparative advancement.

I now resume the list of points of contact between the

* ‘Troy and its Remains,’ pp. 369, 371.

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Mycenean discoveries and the Poems, by noticing such of them as are found in movables.

i. As the first of these I take the free use of copper for large utensils (pp. 274-277). We have also the analysis supplied by Dr. Percy of a sword and a vase-handle of bronze (pp. 372-5). In my judgment, we have no sign whatever from the Poems of the fusion of metals together as a domestic practice ; while we have abundant proof of the importation and foreign production of works of art and implements in bronze. This vase, then, may probably have been foreign. The same is likely with respect to the sword. We know that swords were exported and imported between different countries. Thrace was a seat of manufacture both for fine works of art (II. XXIV. 234) and for weapons (II. XXIII. 808) : and we find a sword, “beautiful and long,” from Thrace, in the possession of the Trojan Prince Helenos (II. XIII. 577). Moreover, copper was an abundant metal, tin a rare one. Bronze weapons, therefore, must have been expensive. And the swords of bronze found in the tombs, in conjunction with all other costly objects, are just where we should have expected them. Even so at Hissarlik, two battle-axes found in the Treasure, and presumably belonging therefore to distinguished persons, w'ere of bronze.* But axes made of pure copper may be seen in the Museum of the Irish Academy ; and the great layer of copper-scoriae at Hissarlik, without any tin, seems effectually to show that copper was the staple metal of the heroic period, and that our archaeologists will have to insert a copper age in their lists, between their age of stone and their age of bronze. If weapons of copper were to be discovered in the tombs at Mycenae, no circumstance could more enhance the proofs afforded by the Poems of the general use of copper;