Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/374

Mycen^^:. 347 tombs. Other graves, rock-cut instead of being built, have been noticed on several points of the vast area comprised be- tween the Kokoretza and the Chavos ravines in one direction, and the broad valley of the Dervenaki, ancient Cephisus, which forms the base of the triangle on the other (Fig. 88). The interesting results which have been obtained here are an earnest that shafts sunk almost in any artificial swelling of the ground would amply reward the explorer. Like the greater portion of the acropolis circuit, the rampart of the lower city is built in Cyclopaean style ; the blocks, however, being smaller, were easily removed and re-used in later buildings ; whilst the thinness of the wall itself could ill withstand the ravages of time, and in consequence of it great pieces are completely destroyed ; hence its length of line is more or less conjectural. The wall certainly passed along the western front of the acropolis ; its points of junction were north and south of the Lions Gate respectively, but the precise spot is mere guesswork. This much is plain : the circuit on the eastern side ran in a southern direction along the ridge overhanging the Chavos, thence sweeping with a bold curve towards the south-west it turned a huge block of rocks, the Makri-lithari, behind which the rampart was pierced by a gate- way ; from this point it circled back towards the west, running along the slope descending into the Kokoretza ravine. The plateau it enclosed was not quite 900 metres in length, and its greatest breadth barely reached 250 metres. It would seem to have been divided by a transverse wall into two distinct and equal portions ; in case of an attack during which the south gate had fallen in the enemy's hands, this barrier would enable the garrison to renew the defence under favourable conditions. Within the walled city is found a monument which with the Lions Gate long shared the honour of being the sole representative in this part of the world of what archaeologists then called the heroic age of Greece.'* We allude to the building which, since the end of the last century, explorers and local guides alike used to describe as the Tomb of Agamemnon or Treasury of Atreus indifferently. These names are of no great antiquity, and oral tradition knows them not. So far as I am aware, Greece furnishes no example of appellations of this nature which would have reached us from the dim past. This is true of Athens, where the population has never been anything but