It is impossible to say how many years after its capture by the Argives (468 B.C.) Mycenæ was visited by Euripides, who was born in 480 and died in 402 B.C. But the particulars he gives us of the Agora, as well as his allusions to the royal palace, seem to leave no doubt that he saw these monuments, and that consequently they were not yet totally buried in the _débris_ when he visited the Acropolis. [Sidenote: EURIPIDES SAW MYCENÆ.] On the other hand, my excavations have proved that the Agora was already covered by a deep accumulation of _débris_ when the later Greek city was built on its top, and for the various reasons I have adduced[382] there can be no doubt that the new settlement was founded about 400 B.C. But as all the _débris_ which covered the Agora must necessarily have been washed down by the rain from the five upper natural or artificial terraces of the steep mount of the Acropolis, we are led to the conclusion that Euripides visited Mycenæ in his younger years, and thus shortly after the city's capture, for otherwise the enormous accumulation of _débris_ in about 400 B.C. would be altogether inexplainable. But though buried deep below the new city, the precise site of each tomb was perfectly remembered by the inhabitants of the Argolid. After an existence of about 200 years, the new city was, for some cause or other, again and finally abandoned. But still the tradition remained so fresh, that nearly 400 years after the destruction of the new town the exact place of each tomb was shown to Pausanias. Nay, the interest which the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus felt in the sepulchres was still so great sixteen or eighteen centuries after the tragic event, that, as Pausanias states, the Lacedæmonians of Amyclæ disputed with Mycenæ the honour of having Cassandra's tomb, which they thought they possessed in their own city. At all events, Pausanias[383] says that the Amycleans had in their village the sanctuary and the statue of Alexandra, whom they identified with Cassandra. The five tombs of Mycenæ, or at least three of them, contained such enormous treasures, that they cannot but have belonged to members of the royal family. But the period of the kings of Mycenæ belongs to a very remote antiquity. Royalty ceased there at the Dorian invasion, the date of which has always been fixed at 1104 B.C. Thucydides says that it took place eighty years after the war of Troy, which has been hitherto supposed to have ended in 1184 B.C. But, in agreement with all archæologists, I hold to the conclusion that, on the evidence of the monuments of Troy, the capture and the destruction of that city, and consequently also the Dorian invasion, must have occurred at a much earlier date.