Studies of Travel: GreeceFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Greece
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Greece -- Description and travel
The ornaments and other objects have been described and discussed over
and over again by those who have a special object in their study. But
there is one among them which we do not remember to have seen described
in any of the published accounts, one which, if it has been already
mentioned, will certainly stand being mentioned again. Of all the
objects which Mr. Stamatâkês has under his care, and which he so fully
and clearly explains to all who can follow him in his own tongue, there
is none more curious in itself, none which speaks more directly home
to us, than those pieces of thin gilding which were found in one of
the tombs over the breast of one of the female bodies, and which, when
put together, were found to make the complete figure of a young babe.
There is nothing wonderful in this. A royal infant--a _clitunculus_,
as some of our own chroniclers would have called him--may have died
at Mykênê and have been buried with his mother, as well as anywhere
else. But the sight of the impression of the little limbs seems to
bring us more nearly into the presence of the home-life of those old
kings than any other object in the whole collection. Criticism for a
moment holds back; we are more inclined than usual to listen to the
voice of legend, when we are told that we are looking on the masks of
Kassandra and her child. Neither the Homeric nor the Æschylean story
would ever put it into our heads to attribute children to Kassandra;
but the local tradition in the days of Pausanias showed the tombs of
the twin sons of Kassandra and Agamemnôn, slain and buried with their
parents. In our fit of belief we even put aside the obvious question,
Where is the mask of the other brother? The legend doubtless erred;
in all cases where any tyrant seeks the destruction of a pair of twin
brothers, or of young brothers of any kind, one, whether in history or
in legend, escapes and lives. In our own eleventh-century history two
doubly widowed mothers are left with twin children, each pair sought
after by the Aigisthos of their own day. Of the original “clitunculi,”
the twin babes of Eadmund and Ealdgyth, both indeed were saved, but
one only lived. Of the second pair, the babes of Harold and the second
Ealdgyth, one fell into the hands of the Conqueror, safe in his hands
from death, though it might be to drag on life only in a dungeon; the
other lived to show himself like a shadow on the fleet of Magnus. And,
while we are believing, we may for a moment believe that, of a later
pair of princes, one escaped, and that Perkin Warbeck was truly Richard
the Fourth. The Mykênaian tradition must have erred in boasting of the
tomb both of Pelops and of Têledamos. One must have been carried away
along with Orestês his half-brother. The impression of the other’s form
in beaten gold we will for a moment indulge ourselves in believing that
our eyes have looked upon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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