The great period of Mycenæ seems therefore to date 1300–1100 B. C., with occasional traditional links with Egypt as far back as 1500 or 1600 B. C. Such is an abstract of Mr. Petrie’s estimate.(183) I will only here point out, in addition, the remarkable unity of style between the ornaments found at a depth of twenty-five feet in the tombs, the sculptured tombstones twelve or fourteen feet over them, and the lions on the gate of the citadel. It is, indeed, only a general uniformity, but it corroborates Mr. Petrie’s inference that there was more than mere importing; there was home manufacture. But still among the small gold ornaments in the tombs were found several pairs of animals placed opposite each other in this strictly _heraldic_ fashion, and even on the engraved gems this symmetry is curiously frequent. It seems, then, that the art of Mycenæ had not changed when its early history came to a close, and its inhabitants were forced to abandon the fortress and submit to the now Doric Argos. We are, indeed, told expressly by Pausanias and Diodorus that this event did not take place till after the Persian wars, when old Hellenic art was already well defined, and was beginning to make rapid progress. But this express statement, which I saw reason to question since my former remarks on the subject in this book, I am now determined to reject, in the face of the inconsistencies of these historians, the silence of all the contemporaries of the alleged conquest, and the exclusively archaic remains which Dr. Schliemann has unearthed. Mycenæ, along with Tiryns, Midea, and the other towns of the plain, was incorporated into Argos at a far earlier date, and not posterior to the brilliant rule of Pheidon. So it comes that historical Greece is silent about the ancient capital of the Pelopids, and the poets transfer all its glories to Argos. Once, indeed, the name did appear on the national records. The offerings to the gods at Olympia, and at Delphi, after the victory over the Persians, recorded that a few patriots—460 in all—from Mycenæ and from Tiryns had joined the Greeks at Platæa, while the remainder of the Argives preserved a base and cowardly neutrality. The Mycenæans were very few in number; sixty are mentioned in connection with Thermopylæ by Herodotus. They were probably exiles through Greece, who had preserved their traditions and their descent, and gloried in exposing and insulting Argive Medism. The Tirynthian 400 may even have been the remnant of the slave population, which Herodotus tells us seized the citadel of Tiryns, when driven out from Argos twenty years before, and who lived there for some years. In the crisis of Platæa the Greeks were not dainty or critical, and they may have readily conceded the title of Tirynthian to these doubtful citizens, out of hatred and disgust at the neutrality of Argos. However these things may be, the mention of Mycenæans and Tirynthians on this solitary occasion