Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/185

i64 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. the trenches and shooting it out on the slope. Schliemann did not live to see the completion of his work, which has now been accomplished by his widow under the direction of Dr. Dorpfeld. At a depth of from forty-three to forty-five feet he discovered foundations of walls extending far beyond the former circuit, proving that the third establishment to which they belong was far more important than had been suspected.^ The style of masonry they display entirely justifies the epithets used by Homer. This, then, would be the town seen and described by the poet. Even without this the data we before possessed were quite sufficient to enable us to determine the character and fix the relative date of the several erections, together with the products of human industry which the spade has brought to light in prodigious quantities, and which now fill two large rooms of the Ethnographic Museum at Berlin.^ Schliemann began to excavate from the top of the mound, levelled out into a small irregular platform, with main direction from east to west. Sitting under the grateful shade of a fine oak, the sole relic of a thick clump of similar trees that formerly crowned the top of the mound, the eye travels over the plain, the sea, and the far-off mountain range, to rest it presently on the gaping trenches at one's feet, where the work is being prose- cuted (Fig. 37). It is Schliemann*s trenches which have changed the mound into the strange shape which it presents to-day. The first strokes of the spades brought out sculptures, inscrip- tions, and remains of buildings of Novum Ilium, with founda- tions of limestone, whilst the apparent parts were of marble. Standing out from amidst these erections, was a temple of Ilian Athene, a goddess who found great favour with the Greeks of the Macedonian and of Roman times. Below this they came upon a perfect network of walls, bisecting one another in every ^ The above passage is corrected and amplified from later information. — Trans. ^ Our study of Troy, Tiryns, and Mycenae is greatly facilitated by Schuchardt*s book entitled, Schliemann^ s Ausgrabungen in Troja^ Tiryns^ Mykena^ Orchomenos^ Ithaka^ im Lichte der heutigen Wissenschaft dargestellt In it the main researches of both Schliemann and the explorers who continued his work in Argolis are summed up with much critical acumen. To express our acknowledgment in every instance is quite impossible, since it would involve citing him at every page.