After being depopulated by the Argives, Mycenæ seems to have been for a long time comparatively deserted, and even now it presents very much the same appearance as it did when seen by Pausanias nearly eighteen hundred years ago. Nowhere has the spade achieved greater triumphs than in this venerated spot. The story of Schliemann’s excavations, both here and at Troy, is one of the romances of the nineteenth century. From his childhood everything mysterious had a fascination for him, and he was possessed with a passionate admiration for the heroes of the _Iliad_. Though he was early thrown upon his own resources to earn a livelihood, and had a hard struggle for many years, he found time for the study of Greek and other languages, which he mastered chiefly by committing whole books to memory. Having succeeded in amassing wealth he devoted the remainder of his life to the interests of Greek archæology, cherishing his faith in the Homeric legends in spite of much ridicule, poured upon him sometimes by men of the greatest learning, until at length he was rewarded by discoveries which surpassed his fondest expectations. His conclusions may not all be sound. For example, it is the opinion of Zountas, the eminent Greek archæologist, in view of all the facts which have come to light, that the bodies found in the shaft-graves within the citadel were not, as Schliemann supposed, the remains of Agamemnon and other members of the house of Pelops, to whose graves Pausanias alludes, but those of an earlier Perseid dynasty, and that the beehive tombs found outside the citadel are those of Agamemnon and other Atreidan kings, being similar to a considerable number of other tombs found on the eastern side of Greece as far north as Thessaly. With this agrees the fact that the famous lion-gate and the adjoining part of the wall are not built in the same Cyclopean style as the rest of the wall, the latter being composed of rough blocks piled one upon another without order, and kept in position by means of small stones and clay inserted between them, while the portions above referred to are composed of carefully-hewn stones of a polygonal shape, fitting into one another.