Yet further down, twenty-one feet deep, and close to the rock, were lying together a number of skeletons, which seemed to have been hastily or carelessly buried; but in the rock itself, in rudely hewn chambers, were found fifteen bodies buried with a splendor seldom equalled in the history of the world. These people were not buried like Greeks. They were not laid in rock chambers, like the Scythian kings. They were sunk in graves under the earth, which were large enough to receive them, had they not been filled up round the bottom with rudely-built walls, or pieces of stone, so as to reduce the area, but to create perhaps some ventilation for the fire which had partly burnt the bodies where they were found. Thus the splendidly-attired and jewelled corpses, some of them with masks and breastplates of gold, were, so to speak, jammed down by the earth and stones above them into a very narrow space; but there appears to have been some arrangement for protecting them and their treasure from complete confusion with the soil which settled down over them. This, if the account of the excavation be accurate, seems the most peculiar feature in the burial of these great personages, but finds a parallel in the curious tombs of Hallstadt, which afford many analogies to Mycenæ.(181) Dr. Schliemann boldly announced in the _Times_, and the public believed him, that he had found Agamemnon, and his companions, who were murdered when they returned from the siege of Troy. The burial is indeed quite different from any such ceremony described in the Homeric poems. The number of fifteen is not to be accounted for by any of the legends. There is no reason to think all the tombs have been discovered; one, or at least part of the treasure belonging to it, was since found outside the circle. Another was afterward found by M. Stamatakes. Æschylus, our oldest and best authority, places the tomb of Agamemnon, not at Mycenæ, but at Argos. They all agree that he was buried with contempt and dishonor. The result was, that when the public came to hear the Agamemnon theory disproved, it was disposed to take another leap in the dark, and to look upon the whole discovery as suspicious, and as possibly something mediæval.