Its fine military position is guarded by rocky defiles. Its watch-towers command every vale from which a land force could attack, and every space of sea-coast that might reveal a pirate’s raid. It is the very gate of the pass that leads from the plain of Argos to the beach of Corinth, and to this day the train takes travellers past its portals from Nauplia to the north-western gulf. Such land passages as this, from one sea to another, were of the highest importance to merchant-shipping in the old days of small light vessels, and continued to be so until comparatively recent times. The riches of the barons of Mycenæ were solely due to the fact that they could levy toll on passing caravans of merchandise without fear of an overlord. It was to guard the fortune thus amassed that the ramparts were constructed, which the astonished [Illustration: MYCENÆ, SHOWING THE SITE OF THE FAMOUS DISCOVERIES OF SCHLIEMANN The mass of so-called cyciopean masonry, on the right, buttresses the upper part of the Acropolis of Mycenæ. The wall at right angles to it contains the Lion Gate, and the large triangular stone above the lintel is the back of the well-known relief of lions or lionesses _regardant_, probably the most ancient piece of sculpture in Greece. In the foreground is shown the singular double wall and gateway of the enclosure, called by Schliemann the Agora, within which he found the treasures of Mycenæan art now in the Central Museum in Athens.] antiquarian (who could not see over them) describes as ‘built for the love of building.’” The modern traveller can hardly fail to be struck, as Thucydides was, with the limited dimensions of a city which is said to have sent a hundred ships to Troy, besides providing sixty for the Arcadians, while Athens only sent fifty. But it is evident from the ruins that the city was not confined within the walls; and, after all, the size of a city, like that of a country, is not always a safe criterion of its wealth and influence. According to Pausanias, the only genuine work of Hephæstus that was to be seen in his day was the sceptre which that divine artificer presented to Zeus, and which Zeus gave to Hermes, and Hermes to Pelops, and Pelops to Atreus, and Atreus to his brother Thyestes, and Thyestes to Agamemnon, that he might “have dominion over many islands and over all Argos.”