If I were to attempt any full description of this wonderful place I should be obliged to copy out a great part of the fifth chapter in Dr. Schliemann’s book, in which Dr. Dörpfeld has set down very modestly, but very completely, the results of his own acuteness and research. Many things which are now plain enough were perfect riddles till he found the true solution, and the acuteness with which he has utilized the smallest hints, as well as the caution of his conclusions, make this work of his a very model of scientific induction. He says, rightly enough, that a minute description is necessary, because a very few years will cover up much of the evidence which he had plainly before him. The concrete floors, the remains of mud-brick walls, the plan of the various rooms, will be choked up with grass and weeds, unless they are kept covered and cleared. The rain, which has long since washed all traces of mortar out of the walls, will wash away far more now that the site is opened, and so the future archæologist will find that the book _Tiryns_ will tell him much that the actual Tiryns cannot show him. The lower platform on the rock is not yet touched, and here perhaps digging will discover to us the remains of a temple, from which one very archaic Doric capital and an antefix have found their way to the higher rock. There are traces, too, of the great fort being the second building on the site, over an older and not yet clearly determined palace. Two things are plain from these discoveries, and I dwell on them with satisfaction, because they corroborate old opinions of mine, put forth long before the principal evidence was forthcoming. First, the general use of wood for pillars and architraves, so showing how naturally the stone temple imitated the older wooden buildings. Secondly, the archaic or ante-Hellenic character of all that was found at Tiryns, with the solitary exception of the architectural fragments, which certainly have no building to correspond to them where they were found. Thus my hypothesis, which holds that Tiryns, as well as Mycenæ, was destroyed at least as early as Pheidon’s time (660 B. C.), and not after the Persian wars, receives corroboration which will amount to positive proof in any mind open to evidence on the point. CHAPTER XVI. MEDIÆVAL GREECE.