Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/33

12 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. in a curious passage of Herodotus.^ If we find it hard to accept this hypothesis as probable, it is because the notion of a wholesale massacre is distasteful to our better nature. Never- theless, there is nothing about these human sacrifices which is in disaccord with the general ideas which from other reasons we know to have prevailed here. The fact that the horses, wives, and domestic servants of the defunct were dispatched, like those of the Scythian king, to keep him company in the nether-world where he was supposed to carry on his existence, coincides with the impulse which prompted them to provide for his bodily wants, decking him out in his richest robes, and placing vases, arms, and ornaments within reach of his hand, together with clay idols which would procure him divine protec- tion (Fig. 246). We have adverted to the unparalleled quantity of the precious metals contained in the oldest Mycenian cemetery. The grave furniture could not of course be everywhere as sumptuous ; yet they strove, as much as in them lay, to surround the defunct with some of the best things which the house could furnish. There are very few graves which have not yielded glass and amber beads, ivory tablets, and golden leaflets, and above all pottery. This same idea ruled the external and internal decoration of the most important domed-tombs ; it seemed natural and fitting to the men of that age that their chieftains should find no less luxury in their eternal abode than they had been accustomed to in their brief span of life. These tombs were all family vaults, for all contained more than one skeleton ; in most of them M. Tsoundas came upon as many as five or six bodies, which had been placed there at comparatively long intervals from each other. This is proved both from the number of the corpses and the situation they occupied on the floor. Such of the skeletons as were discovered in the middle of the room had apparently never been disturbed ; but bone-heaps filled up the corners of the chamber. We have explained in another place how these heaps had been formed. Elsewhere a greater degree of reverence had been shown to these remains ; such would be those that were discovered in the clay vats formerly deposited in Cretan tombs (Figs. 167, 168, 245). Such vats are much too small for adults ; yet they cannot ^ Herodotus. We have done no more than sum up Tsoundas' observations and arguments (E^tifieptg, 1888).