My esteemed friend, Professor F. A. Paley, has been the first to advance the opinion, accepted by Mr. Charles T. Newton and by myself, that the double parallel circle of slabs, having been in the most solid way covered with cross slabs, must necessarily have served as a bench to sit upon and as the enclosure of the Agora of Mycenæ. He thinks that the first idea for the form of an Agora was given by the circular-dances (κύκλιοι χοροί) and the recitation of the dithyrambs.[236] The assembled people sat in a circle, and the orator stood in the centre, as we see in Homer,[237] and in Sophocles[238]; and just in the centre of this enclosure at Mycenæ I found a rock forming a slight elevation, which might well have served as the platform (βῆμα), from which the speakers addressed those sitting on the circular bench.[239] We therefore know with certainty, in the first place, that the Agora was round, and, secondly, that people used to sit there. The circular form of the Agora is also proved by Euripides,[240] who speaks of the "circle of the Agora" (ἀγορᾶς κύκλον). Professor Paley infers from the passage of Euripides already cited (_Electra_, 710), that the poet had known this Agora in the Acropolis of Mycenæ from personal inspection, and that by πέτρινα βάθρα he means the enormous circular stone bench by which the Agora is enclosed, and that consequently on this bench he makes the herald stand, when in a loud voice he calls the people of Mycenæ to the Agora; he also believes that Euripides had perhaps in mind the βῆμα in the Athenian Pnyx. I should not hesitate to accept Professor Paley's opinion, had I not found the Agora deeply buried in the prehistoric _débris_. But it may very well be that at the time of Euripides the Agora was not yet entirely covered, and that the greater part of the prehistoric _débris_, with which I found it covered, was only after his time washed down by the heavy winter rains from the five upper natural or artificial terraces of the Acropolis. At all events it appears from the pottery of the later Hellenic city that the latter was not built till after the time of Euripides.[241] Mr. Charles T. Newton calls my attention to the passage in Thucydides, who says of Corcyra, "the houses which lie in a circle around the Agora."[242] Also to the following passages in Pausanias, which prove that the heroic tombs were in the Agora of Megara. "Here they built the place for council in order that they might have the tomb of the heroes within the place for council;"[243] for there can be no doubt that this βουλευτήριον was in the Agora. (It must be borne in mind that this was done at Megara by the advice of the Delphic oracle.) Further: "also the tomb of Coroebus is in the Agora of the Megarians."[244] [Sidenote: ROYAL TOMBS IN THE AGORA AT CYRENE.]