Studies of Travel: GreeceFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Greece
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Greece -- Description and travel
and we may deem that the house of the Pelopids was something which grew
up as a new thing beneath the shadow of the Cyclopean walls. That inner
fortress may well be to the Mykênaian empire of Homeric times what Roma
Quadrata on the Capitol was to the Rome which bore rule over all Italy.
But not a word is there in the Homeric tale to make us think that that
empire was a dominion of foreign princes, or that the patriarch of
the Pelopids was other than a son of the peninsula to which the race
gave its name. From the akropolis one may look down on the enclosure
which holds the rifled tombs, on the space beyond--the site of the
wide streets of Mykênê--which holds the treasuries, and so on to
destroying Argos and to Tiryns, the fellow-sufferer in overthrow. There
is no other spot where we are carried so deep into unrecorded ages,
and where unrecorded ages tell their tale so clearly. But the tale of
the akropolis, even the tale of the inner fortress, is enough for one
while. The tombs of the lower enclosure, the treasuries, if treasuries
they be, of the outer city, may supply their own materials for separate
thought.
The Treasuries and Treasures of Mykênê.
The Treasuries of Mykênê we have heard of all our days; the Treasures
have become famous only since the diggings of Dr. Schliemann brought
them to light. The names are perhaps unlucky; as, to those who have
not seen the spot, they may suggest a connexion between the treasuries
and the treasures which does not exist in fact. The treasures were
not found in the treasuries, nor even in the same part of the city as
the treasuries. The treasures come from the tombs, and all the tombs
that have been opened lie in the outer and lower enclosures of the
akropolis. The treasuries, one of which has long been famous, lie
altogether outside the akropolis, in what must have been the outer
city, among the wide streets of Mykênê. The word “treasures” again may
suggest a false idea. Objects thrown into tombs as part of the honour
done to deceased persons are hardly “treasures” in any ordinary sense
of the word. A treasure is something which may be drawn upon for use;
objects which are thrown into tombs are, in the nature of the case,
never meant to be used again. But, by whatever name they are to be
called, there they are; remains of a great age, of an age which, though
beyond the reach of chronology, we can hardly call unrecorded. Though
the great works of Mykênê are manifestly of various dates, yet all may
in a general way be said to belong to one period--the period, whatever
its length, whatever its distance from ourselves, when Mykênê was
the head of Hellas. To some stage of that period the objects found in
the tombs must belong. It is enough to say that they are work of the
period which Homer had before his eyes when he sang of the transfer of
the sceptre through the successive generations of the house of Pelops,
no stranger house in his song. To attempt to assign the tombs, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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