history, though it is a history which can seldom be called honourable,
and one which never, in the days of contemporary record, places the
city in the first rank, along with Sparta, Athens, and, for a moment,
Thebes. In contemporary history Argos seems chiefly to live on the
memory of earlier days when she did hold such a place. And it is one
of Mr. Grote’s services to those parts of Grecian history which lie
rather out of the range of his main strength that he has brought out
clearly that there was a time when Argos did hold the first place in
Peloponnêsos. In the Iliad she is one of the three cities which Hêrê
best loved, but which she could endure to see overthrown as the price
of seeing the overthrow of hated Ilios. Argos there ranks with Sparta
and Mykênê. When the day of overthrow came, when Achaian rule gave way
to Dorian, when Argos in the wider sense became Peloponnêsos, the local
Argos appears as first of three chief Dorian powers, with Sparta and,
no longer Mykênê, but Messênê--the land and not the later city--as her
secondary yokefellows. _Prima inter pares_ among these, she gradually
loses the first place to Sparta, and spends the rest of her days as
a Greek city in feeble assertion of the place which she had lost. In
every age of Greek history, in the days of Persian, Peloponnesian,
Corinthian, Macedonian, and Achaian warfare, the name of Argos meets
us at every page, but the annals of the city are nowhere adorned by
any great strokes of heroism or wisdom. Her policy is often isolated,
often cowardly, almost always dictated by jealousy of Sparta. In her
last age Pyrrhos dies beneath her walls, and she joins the League under
a reclaimed tyrant. But the distance between Aristomachos and Lydiadas
may mark the distance between Argos and the first of Grecian cities,
when that name had passed away from Argos, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes
to Megalopolis, mother of Achaian statesmen.
Still with all this, Argos is a great name. A continuous being,
a continuous history, from the Homeric Catalogue to the War of
Independence, is something which Megalopolis and even Sparta cannot
boast of. Sparta--_Lakedaimonia_ in later phrase--gave way to Misthra;
modern Sparta is a new and artificial creation. But Argos, the Argos
that we now see, with its queer-looking streets and shops and open
spaces, is, by unbroken succession, the city of Diomêdês, the city of
Kleobis and Bitôn. We look in vain for the temple which witnessed the
filial piety of Kleobis and Bitôn, but the Larissa of Diomêdês, the
_Aspis_--the shield of Argos--which was stormed by the last Kleomenês,
is there still. The huge hill with the ruined buildings at the base,
with the castle containing remains of almost every age on its crest,
with the signs of human occupation covering almost every step of its
steep sides, all are now utterly desolate, but they bear witness to
the lesson that the modern town over which they soar is the unbroken
successor of the dwelling-place of man in præ-historic times. The
Larissa of Argos is an akropolis indeed, utterly dwarfing, as far as
the works of nature go, the far lowlier height of primæval Athens. No
Parthenôn, no Propylaia, crowned the hill of Argos. The nature of the
site could hardly have allowed them to stand there, and, if it could,
they would have seemed out of place on that mountain-top. The fortress
however is there, shattered and forsaken as it is; the walls of the
mediæval castle are propped on the walls of unrecorded days with their
vast Kyklopean masonry. Other parts rest on masonry of later date, but
still masonry of early Hellenic times, stones which were there before
Argos thought it her interest in the greatest national peril of Greece,
to find out that her hero Perseus was the forefather of the invading
barbarian. We look down from the height on the modern city, on the
plain, on the gulf which parts the Argolic _Aktê_ from the main mass
of Peloponnêsos; we mark the coast stretching away towards the hostile
Lakonian land; we gaze on the mountain heights of the central land of
the peninsula, fencing in the home of that old Arkadian race which
boasted that alone among Greeks it had never changed its dwelling.
There rises Artemision, there rises the hoary peak of Kronion, its
snow-capped crest seeming no unfit dwelling-place of the aged god
who reigned before Zeus and his children. At the foot of the hill
lie a number of buildings, all forsaken and shattered, witnessing to
the many changes which Argos has seen, to the many masters who have
ruled over her. There is one piece of mighty ancient walling strangely
brought together with sculpture of Roman times. There is the theatre
with its ranges of seats cut deep in the hill-side, a theatre looking
out on the wide expanse of city, plain, sea, and mountains. Almost
at its foot stands a ruin of the days when Argos formed part of the
subject lands of the city by the Tiber, a ruin which bespeaks its
kindred with the baths of Antoninus, and shows us in all its boldness
the great constructive invention after which men strove at Tiryns, but
which Greece, in all other things the mother of arts, had to learn
from her Roman masters. We look at the broken brick vault of the Roman
building, but if our eye turns a little to the right, we soon see how
it was the lands east of the Hadriatic which first learned how to give
the great constructive invention of Italy its noblest form and to
apply it to its highest use. At no great distance from the Roman ruin
stands a church of Byzantine days, which fitly finishes the series.
The forms to which men were feeling their way in the sally-port of
Tiryns and in the treasure-house of Mykênê reached their perfection
when the architects of the East taught the cupola, soaring or spreading
as it might be, to rise on its supporting columns over the centre of
the churches of Eastern Christendom. Primæval Greece strove after the
arch; historic Greece, if she knew its constructive use, confined it
to a few purposes of constructive usefulness. Primæval Italy strove,
and strove with more success, in the same path, and made the form
which Greece used so timidly the life of her national architecture.
On Roman ground the arch grew into the cupola, but it was on the
ground that was Greek and Roman alike, on the ground of the Eastern
peninsula, that the cupola took its noblest form. On the Larissa of
Argos a few traces have been found of galleries like those of Tiryns.
Pausanias bears witness that Argos once had her subterranean chamber
like those of Mykênê, and doubtless following the same construction.
At Tiryns and Mykênê the series goes no further; the destroying hand
of Argos decreed that it should go no further. The long life of Argos
allowed every form to stand there side by side, from the gallery and
the treasury to the Roman bath and the Byzantine church. Yet it is not
in Argos itself that the series can be really studied. In the life of
cities nothing preserves like early overthrow, nothing destroys like
continuous life. Of the members of the Argive series the latest alone
is perfect. The vault of the Roman bath is broken down; the gallery
can scarcely be traced; for the existence of the treasury we have only
the witness of a traveller seventeen hundred years back. It is among
the victims of Argos that early overthrow has preserved to us the works
of the earliest times. In forsaken Tiryns and Mykênê we learn more of
the earliest days of Greece than we can learn in the city which has
survived them by three-and-twenty centuries. We have mused over the
walls, the guarded gate, the sally-port of Tiryns; we must go on to
muse on the walls, the mightier gate, the treasuries, the rifled tombs,
of Mykênê, Imperial city of Hellas in her earliest day.
The Akropolis of Mykênê.
Euripides was perhaps after all not so far wrong as he seemed to the
mocking genius of comedy, when he raised the question whether life and
death were not in truth things which had exchanged their names:
τίς οἶδεν εἰ τὸ ζῆν πέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν, τὸ κατθανεῖν δέ ζῆν;
It is at least very often so in the case of cities; it is emphatically
so in the case of the great cities of the Argolic land. Argos, as we
have seen, if it has not altogether died, has at least been brought
down to a kind of life which, judged by its ancient standard, might
pass for little better than death. Its continued being has destroyed
well nigh every trace of its ancient state within the circuit which
still remains inhabited. Argos is thus dead because it has lived.
Mykênê, on the other hand, has remained alive because it died. Had
Mykênê remained a ruling city, or even a dwelling-place of men in any
shape, during all the ages which have passed since the fifth century
before Christ, we should not see, as we now see, what the imperial
city of the Pelopid house really was. Thanks to its happy destruction,
no work of Turk, or Venetian, or Roman has ever arisen to jar on the
associations of the primæval city. Even the works of those whom at
Mykênê we must call the later Greeks, the men who dwelled there from
the Dorian invasion to the days of Periklês, have passed away as though
they had never been. No columns rise, as at Nemea, over the forsaken
spot; we meet no tomb by the wayside, no legend graven on the rock,
such as we light on as we tread the holy way from Athens to Eleusis.
House and wall, temple and tower, were either utterly swept away by
Argive wrath, or else they have crumbled away into nothingness since
the scourge of Argos passed over the devoted city. Where once stood
the wide streets of Mykênê, we meet only the shepherd with his crook
to guide his flock, or the peasant woman, with Paionian industry,
plying her distaff as she gathers her sheep or her goats to watering.
For the hum of assembled citizens in the _agorê_, for the tramp of
gathering warriors on the akropolis, we hear only the pipe of the
shepherd himself and the bark of the shepherd’s dog. The shepherds who
wander over the site of Mykênê may not wholly answer to the pictures of
Theokritos or Virgil, but the crook, the pipe, the distaff, are here no
figures of speech. They may be seen and heard daily as the sun rises
over the deep gorge which fences in the Mykênaian akropolis, or when
he “reigns” at eve over the heights of Artemis and Kronos. But even
those few shepherds do not, like the few inhabitants of modern Corinth,
dwell on the old site of Mykênê, nor do they profess to carry on the
Mykênaian name. At the foot of the lower hill, the hill of the city as
distinguished from the hill of the akropolis, a small church and a few
houses, seeming almost to grow out of the rocky soil, form the small
village, not of Mykênê but of Chorbati. Yet in one sense Chorbati has
become Mykênê. Gathered there in a small museum are the less splendid
and precious of the relics which modern discovery has brought to light
on Mykênaian soil. And there too is one relic, torn from a rifled tomb
on the akropolis, which to the eye of faith must be more precious even
than the treasury and the lion-gate. There lies the nearly perfect
skeleton which those who have trodden doubts and difficulties under
their feet believe to be the very bones of Agamemnôn. The more cautious
Greek antiquary is less rash in committing himself. Mr. Stamatâkês, the
learned and zealous guardian of the Mykênaian treasury, points to it
with a wise qualification. The rest of his explanation is given in the
tongue which is alike his own and Homer’s. But, to express his doubts,
the Hellenic lips have learned to form a Teutonic genitive. He does not
commit himself to the belief that they are the bones of “Agamemnôn,”
pure and simple; they are the bones of “Schliemann’s Agamemnôn.” Yet
primæval Hellas, primæval Mykênê, has a history which may well live
through alike unreasonable doubts and undiscerning faith. Call him what
we will--Agamemnôn or anything else--the name matters little. It is a
marked moment in one’s life when one looks on the bones of one who, we
need not doubt, was, in days long before Hekataios wrote or even before
Homer sang, a lord of many islands and of all Argos.
The position of the akropolis at Mykênê differs widely from that of
either of the neighbouring akropoleis of Tiryns and Argos. The hill
of Tiryns is a mere mound in the plain. The loftier hill of Argos,
though far outtopped by the mountains behind it, still stands out as
a marked object. But the akropolis of Mykênê, though we find it to
be in a manner isolated, when we come to it, seems like an outpost
of the far loftier hills immediately behind it. On one side the rock
rises precipitously above a narrow gorge whose limestone cliffs at
once, to an eye familiar with the West of England, suggest the gorges
of Mendip, and, above all, the great pass of Cheddar. In the early
days of fortifications, when there was no missile to be feared but
darts and arrows, a fortress was not deemed to be in greater danger by
reason of being thus overlooked. Indeed, to be overlooked by high and
inaccessible mountains was in itself a kind of shelter. The Mykênaian
akropolis thus stands upon the rocks and among the hills in a way in
which its fellows at Tiryns and Argos do not. For that same reason
it does not stand out in the same way as an object in the distant
view. Its true form and position grow gradually upon us as we rise
from the modern village along the paths--paths only of the shepherd
and his flock--which are now all that represent the wide streets of
the city beloved of Hêrê. More than one path may be chosen, and each
will lead by one or more of the wonderful remains of the city itself,
the so-called treasuries, as distinguished from the remains of the
akropolis. But the path to be taken by choice, as it is the path to
which the traveller’s instinct will most likely lead him, is that
most to the right, that which skirts the brook which runs down from
the limestone gorge, and which will lead his steps by the greatest
monuments of all, the first and the second treasuries. But let the
treasuries wait for a moment; they are works, though of unrecorded
days, yet still of days far later than the defences of the akropolis
itself. We will gaze first at the very centre of all, the centre,
we may say, of præ-historic Hellas. And, as we draw near, we cannot
help having our wrath slightly kindled against the last discoverer of
Mykênê. Dr. Schliemann has done well in what he has brought to light;
we cannot think that he has done well in what he has hidden. As we
draw near, the height and outline of a great part of the outer wall
of the akropolis are utterly hidden, the general view is spoiled, the
proportion of the whole work is sadly damaged, because Dr. Schliemann
chose to throw the rubbish which he dug out of the tombs anywhere
where it might light. He has for the most part thrown it in vast heaps
over the wall, by which a really large part of the course of the wall
is hidden, and the whole view blurred and confused. A little trouble
might have avoided this at first; a little more trouble might get rid
of the rubbish now. In the last diggings at Athens much more care has
been taken. The rubbish has been all carried away, and is piled in
heaps where it does no harm. If in times to come those heaps should
grow into hills like the “mons testaceus” at Rome, no harm will have
been done, and an odd little piece of history will have been made. But
Dr. Schliemann’s heaps of rubbish do seriously mar the general effect
of the Mykênaian akropolis. They make it hard to understand the real
line of the walls until we come quite close to them. Among the rocks
and the walls, the walls growing out of the rocks, we see something
which is neither rock nor wall, but which confuses the outline of both;
as we come nearer, we find it to be the former contents of the royal
tombs and of the other works which have been brought to light within
the walls. As at Tiryns, there is a higher and a lower, an inner and
an outer fortress within the akropolis itself. But the greater height
of the Mykênaian hill makes this arrangement far more prominent, far
more effective than it is at Tiryns. Only at Mykênê the lower enclosure
has more of the air of an excrescence or an appendage than the lower
enclosure of Tiryns. But it is this lower enclosure, the enclosure
immediately entered by the famous lion-gate, which, whether an
addition or not to the fortress above, has become the great centre of
the associations of the place. There lie the empty tombs, thence came
the wondrous treasures, which have carried us back into the depths of
what we may fairly call præ-historic history, which have made us stand
face to face, if not with the personal heroes of Homer, at least with
the men of that age of Hellenic culture which the songs of Homer set
before us.
The buildings of Mykênê have been described over and over again till
their general effect must be almost as familiar to those who have not
seen them as to those who have. But here, as everywhere else, it is
the merely artistic character which can be thus taken at a distance.
To feel Mykênê, as to feel any other place, we must see it. And even
some of the artistic points can, as usual, be thoroughly made out only
on the spot. One must see the place thoroughly to take in the wide
difference between the masonry and artistic finish of the lion-gate and
of the two chief treasuries. The lion-gate--we mean the gate itself,
as distinguished from the lions--is a mere piling together of stones.
The work is done doubtless with great mechanical skill, and it has the
wonderful effect which all such primitive buildings have; still it is
altogether without any claims on the score of art. But in the gateways
of the treasuries, instead of the vast erect jambs of the lion-gate,
we find well-wrought courses of stone in two orders, with something
that may almost be called a moulding. These gateways had columns too.
Unluckily nearly all are gone, even the precious fragment which was
seen and drawn by the earlier travellers. This last, be it remembered,
was of a kind which would not have looked out of place in any
Romanesque building in England or Normandy. This is a most instructive
fact, as the likeness must have been purely accidental; and this may
serve to remind us that there are such things as accidental likenesses,
and to warn us against leaping to conclusions when such likenesses
are found in times and places far distant from one another. In the
second treasury, the one lately brought to light by Dr. Schliemann,
there is a fragment of another column, no longer in its place, which
looks like the first rude attempt at the later Doric. Now over both
these gateways, and also over the lion-gate, are openings of the same
triangular form, though of course wrought far more carefully in the
treasuries than in the lion-gate. In the treasuries these openings are
openings; they are at present filled up with nothing. That over the
lion-gate is filled, as all the world knows, with a basaltic stone
which would seem more natural at Bamburgh than at Mykênê, carved with
the famous lions, if lions they be, which guard a column that would
not seem out of place in the _duomo_ of Fiesole, in the apse of La
Couture at Le Mans, or even in the slype at Worcester. Can we believe
that the lion-gate and the lions, that the lion-gate and the gates of
the treasuries, are all of the same date? And in point of work the
lions at once connect themselves with the gateways of the treasuries,
not with the gateway over which they stand. Surely we have in these
gateways signs of an abiding type which lived on through several stages
of advancing art. Over the square-headed gate there was to be, for
whatever reason, a triangular hole, doubtless meant to be filled with a
stone of its own shape. In the treasuries either this stone was never
put in or it is gone. In the lion-gate it was put in, as it seems to
us, when art had passed the stage represented by the lion-gate itself,
and had reached the stage which is represented by the gateways of the
treasuries.
Another thought suggests itself. At Mykênê, as less clearly at Tiryns,
the lion-gate, with its skilfully guarded approach, does not lead at
once into the higher enclosure of the akropolis, but into the outer
and lower one. Does this go at all to show that this outer enclosure,
at Mykênê at least, was an addition to the primitive fortress of all,
fencing in the upper part of the hill? The fact that the tombs were
found in the lower enclosure also looks this way. There must have been
a time when this ground was looked upon as being outside the city, or
it would hardly have been used for purposes of burial. The argument
does not quite reach demonstration; burial within the walls was not
absolutely unknown even in historical Greece, and it may not be safe
to argue from historical to primæval Greece. Still the two arguments
so far fall together as at least to suggest the idea that we have in
the inner enclosure something yet more ancient and venerable than
all--something which may have been ancient and venerable, not only in
the days of Homer, but in the days of those whose tale Homer has told.
For the present we keep within the akropolis, within the old hill fort
which forms the inner circle of the Ekbatana of the imperial lords
of præ-historic Hellas. We stand here within the walls which struck
the minds of so many of the poets of Greece in the days when their
desolation was a thing of yesterday--walls which seemed too mighty to
be the work of mortal men, and which, like their fellows elsewhere,
were deemed to have been wrought by the same hands which forged the
thunderbolts of Zeus. Here we may in truth
Φάσκειν Μυκήνας τὰς πολυχρύσους ὁρᾷν, πολύφθορόν τε δῶμα Πελοπιδῶν
τόδε--
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.