Now not to speak of the improbability that statues of the heroic age should have been found, the above account is in no way confirmed by the old men of Charvati, the village nearest to the site of Mycenæ, nor by those of the other villages of the plain of Argos, all of whom agree that the excavation took place in 1810, and that the sole objects found in the Treasury were some half-columns and friezes, a marble table, and a long bronze chain suspended from the top of the dome, at the end of which was hanging a bronze candelabrum.[141] I have heard this account repeated so many hundred times by the old people of the Argolid that I believe it to be perfectly correct, except, of course, as to the candelabrum; because, not to speak of candles, even lamps were totally unknown to Homer, and I never found them either at Troy, or at Tiryns or Mycenæ, in the strata of prehistoric house remains. Nay, lamps appear not to have existed at Tiryns or Mycenæ before their capture by the Argives in 468 B.C., because I only found them in the latter place in the _débris_ of the more modern city, and none were found at Tiryns. Thus the object which the villagers had regarded as a candelabrum must necessarily have been something else. Moreover, this whole story of the excavations by Veli Pasha seems to relate to a spoliation of the treasury which took place at a much more remote period; for Dodwell, who began his journeys in Greece in 1801, and ended them at all events not later than 1806, gives a description and plans of both the exterior and interior of the great chamber. Gell (_Argolis_), who visited Mycenæ about 1805, also gives exact drawings of the exterior and interior of the Treasury. Clarke (_Travels_), who visited Mycenæ at the same period, says of the treasury of Atreus (vi. 492): "This chamber has evidently been opened since its construction, and its interior thus revealed; but absolutely nothing certain is known as to the time when this may have occurred. To judge by the present appearance of the edifice, it must have been at a very remote epoch." Dodwell, Colonel Leake, and Ernst Curtius speak also of excavations made by Lord Elgin in the treasury of Atreus. But in the collection of Lord Elgin's drawings preserved in the British Museum, nothing is found which relates to this treasury. [Illustration: No. 23_a_. A Terra-cotta Vase. (3 M.) Actual size.] [Sidenote: OBJECTS FOUND AT THE ENTRANCE.] According to Professor E. Curtius ('Peloponnes,' II. p. 408), the following fragments of ancient ornaments were found before the entrance of the Treasury:--