that are growing black to vintaging. There too, skirting the furthest line, are all manner of garden beds, planted trimly, that are perpetually fresh, and therein are two fountains of water, whereof one scatters his streams all about the garden, and the other runs over against it beneath the threshold of the courtyard and issues by the lofty house, and thence did the townsfolk draw water. These were the splendid gifts of the gods in the palace of Alcinous.[2] A blue frieze just like the one described above has been found both at Mycenae and Tiryns. The furniture in these houses was very splendid. We read of well-wrought chairs, of goodly carven chairs and of chairs inlaid with ivory and silver; of inlaid seats and polished tables; of jointed bedsteads and of a fair bedstead with inlaid work of gold and silver and ivory; of close-fitted, folding doors and of doors with silver handles; and of rugs of soft wool. Rich and varied were the ornaments and vessels {31} used: goodly golden ewers and silver basins, two-handled cups, silver baskets and tripods, mixing bowls of flowered work all of silver and one that was beautifully wrought all of silver and the lips thereof finished with gold. The most famous cup of all was that of the clear-voiced orator Nestor; this had four handles on which were golden doves feeding and it stood two feet from the ground. Very skilful was all the work done in metal at this time, and the warriors went out arrayed in flashing bronze, bearing staves studded with golden nails, bronze-headed spears and silver-studded swords, their greaves were fastened with silver clasps, they wore bronze-bound helmets, glittering girdles and belts with golden buckles. Only a god could have fashioned a wondrous shield such as Achilles bore, on which were depicted scenes from the life of the time (the description of it can be read in the Iliad), but the tombs at Mycenae and elsewhere have yielded weapons and treasures very similar to those used by the heroes in Homer. IV. THE GREEK MIGRATIONS It was more than a thousand years after the Pyramids had been built that Crete reached her Golden Age. When Knossos was destroyed, the centres of civilization on the mainland, such as Mycenae and Tiryns, became of greater importance, and life was lived as Homer has described it. All this was the Greece of the Heroic Age, the Greece to which the Greeks of the later historical times {32} looked back as to something that lay far behind them. Nearly two thousand years ago the site of Mycenae was just as it had remained until the excavations of Schliemann, and in the second century A.D. a Greek poet sang of Mycenae: