History for ready reference, Volume 3, Greece to Nibelungen — John Shaqi
History for ready reference, Volume 3, Greece to NibelungenLarned, J. N. (Josephus Nelson)
History
History for ready reference, Volume 3, Greece to Nibelungen
Larned, J. N. (Josephus Nelson)
History -- Dictionaries
See, also, DORIANS AND IONIANS;
ACHAIA; ÆOLIANS; THESSALY;
and BŒOTIA.
GREECE:
The Migrations to Asia Minor and the Islands of the Ægean.
Æolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies.
See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.
GREECE:
Mycenæ and its kings.
The unburied memorials.
"Thucydides says that before the Dorian conquest, the date of
which is traditionally fixed at B. C. 1104, Mycenae was the
only city whence ruled a wealthy race of kings. Archaeology
produces the bodies of kings ruling at Mycenae about the
twelfth century and spreads their wealth under our eyes.
Thucydides says that this wealth was brought in the form of
gold from Phrygia by the founder of the line, Pelops.
Archaeology tells us that the gold found at Mycenae may very
probably have come from the opposite coast of Asia Minor which
abounded in gold; and further that the patterns impressed on
the gold work at Mycenae bear a very marked resemblance to the
decorative patterns found on graves in Phrygia. Thucydides
tells us that though Mycenae was small, yet its rulers had the
hegemony over a great part of Greece. Archæology shews us that
the kings of Mycenae were wealthy and important quite out of
proportion to the small city which they ruled, and that the
civilisation which centred at Mycenae spread over south Greece
and the Aegean, and lasted for some centuries at least. It
seems to me that the simplest way of meeting the facts of the
case is to suppose that we have recovered at Mycenae the
graves of the Pelopid race of monarchs. It will not of course
do to go too far. … It would be too much to suppose that we
have recovered the bodies of the Agamemnon who seems in the
Iliad to be as familiar to us as Caesar or Alexander, or of
his father Atreus, or of his charioteer and the rest.
{1568}
We cannot of course prove the Iliad to be history; and if we
could, the world would be poorer than before. But we can
insist upon it that the legends of heroic Greece have more of
the historic element in them than anyone supposed a few years
ago. … Assuming then that we may fairly class the Pelopidae
as Achaean, and may regard the remains at Mycenae as
characteristic of the Achaean civilisation of Greece, is it
possible to trace with bolder hand the history of Achaean
Greece? Certainly we gain assistance in our endeavour to
realize what the pre-Dorian state of Peloponnesus was like. We
secure a hold upon history which is thoroughly objective,
while all the history which before existed was so vague and
imaginative that the clear mind of Grote refused to rely upon
it at all. But the precise dates are more than we can venture
to lay down, in the present condition of our knowledge. …
The Achaean civilisation was contemporary with the eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty (B. C. 1700-1400). It lasted during the
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