Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/406

Mycen/e. 379 one who had seen them. This manner of describing things of which he had no personal knowledge, and which may be attributed to tricky exposition, is no strong argument against Schliemann's theory ; what condemns it in our eyes is the fate of the town. We know that the entire population was forcibly sent into exile, states Pausanias, or, as Diodorus gravely asserts, reduced to slavery;^ adding that **the site of Mycenae has remained un- inhabited until the present day." This is hardly correct ; late discoveries have confirmed Schliemann's observations to the effect that the potsherds covering the area of the acropolis did not belong to the best period of Greek pottery, but were manu- factured by the Hellenistic town, garrisoned by Macedonians, which seems to have lived at amity with Argos. The latter having lost its independence, had forgotten its old hatred, or at least lost the power of satisfying it. How long did these buildings preserve some show of importance ? We know not ; save that a few husbandmen tilling the land which descends into the valley of Cephisus, shepherds wandering in and out of the ruinous palaces of the heroes, were inadequate to pick up the thread X)f the existence which had been suffered to remain so long in abeyance. Is it conceivable that for three hundred years at least, field labourers and isolated huntsmen faithfully and accurately handed down the secret of these unseen sepultures, together with the names of their heroic inmates ? We wot not. Nevertheless, should we be required to choose between the two theories facing each other, we should assuredly side in with Schliemann rather than Schuchardt. According to Schuchardt, the buildings that were shown to Pausanias as the tombs of Atreus, Agamemnon, and his com- panions in death, are no other than the bee-hive graves of the lower city.- He lays stress on . the fact that, like those of Pausanias, these tombs are six in number. In the first place, we would observe that the tale reaches now to seven, and therefore no longer corresponds ; but what is much more im- portant is, that Pausanias places the tombs within a circuit wall, but the only bulwark he can have seen at Mycenae was the citadel rampart. Furthermore, it is plain from his description of Mycenae, and the fuller account of the stately sepulchre at Orchomenos, that Pausanias accounted the domed-chambers as treasuries. ^ Diodorus. - Schuchardt, Schliemann^s Ausgrabungen,