Heinrich Schliemann

“ When I brought to light these wonderful signets, I involuntarily exclaimed: "The author of the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' cannot but have been born and educated amidst a civilisation which was able to produce such works as these. Only a poet who had objects of art like these continually before his eyes could compose those divine poems." Mr. Gladstone has already proved beyond any doubt in his celebrated 'Homeric Synchronism' that Homer was an Achæan, and I am constantly bringing to light in the depths of Mycenæ thousands of additional proofs that he is perfectly right. ”

“ I at once recognised in this curious monument a primitive altar for funeral rites, and was strengthened in this belief by two slabs, in the form of tombstones, 2 ft. 9 in. long, and 1 ft. 6 in. broad, and a short column, which lay in a horizontal position below the altar, and which, in my opinion, must have once been erected on the spot to mark the site of a sepulchre. Fragments of beautiful hand-made or very archaic wheel-made pottery and knives of obsidian continued to be the only objects of human industry I met with. ”

“ But in Tiryns as well as here in Mycenæ, where I am surrounded by the grandest Cyclopean walls in the world, I am, for brevity's sake and in order to avoid misunderstandings, bound to use the name "Cyclopean" even for the smallest walls of houses or water conduits which show the same kind of masonry. But it must be distinctly understood that I should of course not think of calling them so if I found them in places where there are no huge walls of that kind, for the name "Cyclopean" can only be applied to the gigantic. ”

“ Finally, we see near the top two waving lines which cannot possibly represent anything else than the sea, which is represented in like manner on the coins of Tarentum. From the sea rises to the left the sun in full splendour, the rays being well represented, and to his left (to the right of the spectator) rises the crescent of the moon. On seeing this marvellous ring, Mrs. Schliemann and I involuntarily exclaimed, "This ring must have been seen by Homer before he described all the wonders which Hephæstus wrought on the shield of Achilles." ”

“ Most likely some one sank a shaft to examine the tomb, struck the body in question, plundered it recklessly, and for fear of being detected, carried off his booty in such a hurry that he only thought of saving the large massive gold ornaments, such as the mask, the large breast-cover, the diadems and the bronze, swords, and, in remounting to the surface, dropped many of the smaller objects, such as the twelve golden buttons, etc., which I found at intervals in digging down. ”

“ Jove sent the royal sceptre to Pelops, by Hermes, as a symbol of dominion; Pelops gave it to Atreus, who dying left it to Thyestes; Thyestes left it to Agamemnon, and there is not even an allusion to dispute or violence. Hesiod speaks of the proverbial wealth and the royal majesty of the Atridæ, but he knows nothing of their crimes. Homer knows only the outrage of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra. During Agamemnon's absence in Troy, Ægisthus had succeeded in seducing Clytemnestra, and he was insolent enough to make thank-offerings to the gods for having succeeded. ”

“ The disk before us is divided by three concentric circles into three circular compartments, of which the outer and the central one represent a number of ornaments resembling horse-shoes. A glance at this shoulder-belt will convince every one that it is by far too thin and fragile to have been worn by living men. Besides, I feel certain that no living warrior has ever gone to battle with swords in sheaths of wood ornamented on either side with rows of gold plates, which are merely glued on the wood. ”

“ And perhaps the eye may be struck, in examining Schliemann's illustrations, with the vigour of life and motion which asserts itself in many of the Mycenean works, where the delineation is technically most imperfect. But we cannot compare the text with these remains alone; we are bound also to avail ourselves of such light as can be had from Hissarlik, whatever its effect upon our prepossessions or our arguments. Now I, for one, am struck with the wealth of Mycenæ, and the comparative poverty of what is probably Troy. ”

“ The lower part of the sculpture represents a warrior in a chariot, rather in a sitting than in a standing posture, for the lower part of his body is not visible; and whilst, in a very primitive manner, his head is represented in profile, the front side of his breast is given almost without any perspective diminution. He holds in his left hand a sword which is still in the sheath, its handle ending in a large knob. In his right he holds a long object, which ends at the horse's mouth, and which, being at first thick and becoming gradually thinner, resembles much more a lance than the reins ”

“ The list of these objects, and of their ornaments, is on the whole richer and more diversified than the Poems, with the exception of the famous Shield of Achilles, would have led us to expect. Possibly a knowledge of the Mycenean treasures may have prompted or aided a vigorous imagination, in that wonderful anticipation of excellences which had not been realized in practice. The most remarkable feature, I think, of all Homer's delineations of art is the force and reality with which he confers animation on things inanimate. ”

“ I perfectly agree with the common opinion that the Cyclopean walls of Tiryns are the most ancient monument in Greece; but, having the conviction that no city or fortress wall can be more ancient than the most ancient pottery of the site it surrounds, I was very anxious to investigate the chronology of the Tirynthian walls by systematic excavations. I therefore proceeded to Tiryns on the 31st ultimo, in company with Mrs. Schliemann and my esteemed friends, Castorches, Phendikles and Pappadakes, Professors of Archæology in the University of Athens. ”

“ Thus it will appear but natural that Hercules, as sun-god, should be fabled to have performed for Eurystheus, the king of Mycenæ, who possessed the whole plain of Argos, the twelve labours which have been long known to mean nothing else than the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which the sun appears to pass in the annual revolution of our globe. ”

“ The animal stands before him on his hind-legs, and has pounced with his fore-feet on the left leg of the hero, whom he is going to bite in the breast when he receives the deadly blow. The body of the lion appears to me to be faithful to nature, but not the head, which resembles more a bear's head; the mane is engraved with true art. I call particular attention to the large round knob at the end of the handle of the sword, because many such, all of alabaster or wood with golden nails, and frequently plated with gold, were found in the tombs successively discovered. ”

“ Thus the absence of sex in the Mycenæan terra-cottas leaves only the choice between bulls and cows; while religious tradition, as well as the epithet βοῶπις, constantly point out the cow as the symbol of Juno. It is this goddess, therefore, who is meant by the terra-cotta images. And as you have found them in great numbers in your excavations, this is a new proof of the importance given in Argolis to that divinity. These conclusions are moreover in perfect agreement with the Homeric texts and with the religious traditions of all Greek antiquity. ”

“ The golden handle with the dragon's head (No. 452) , which belongs to the cylinder, is hollow, and still contains débris of the wood with which it was filled. The head of the dragon, with its large eyes, of which one only appears in the engraving, as well as its open jaws, can be distinctly seen. The scales of the dragon have been skilfully imitated by means of small beautifully-cut pieces of rock-crystal, which fit so well into the small symmetrical hollows prepared for them in the gold, that only one of them has as yet fallen out. ”

“ As sun-god he must have had numerous sanctuaries in the plain of Argos and a celebrated cultus at Tiryns, because the marshy lowlands by which it is surrounded, and which even at present are nearly unproductive from want of drainage, were in remote antiquity nothing but deep swamps and morasses, which extending far up the plain engendered pestilential fevers, and could only be made to disappear gradually by incessant human labour and by the beneficent influence of the sun. ”

“ Schlie thinks, the technical treatment of the low-relief of all these stêlæ may not be vastly different from a whole series of archaic reliefs of ancient Greek art, yet such figures and such an ornamentation have never been found yet on Greek sculptures. The stêlæ of Mycenæ are, therefore, unique in their kind. It is true that the manner of filling up with manifold beautiful spiral ornaments the space not covered by the forms of men and animals reminds us of the principles of the painting on the so-called orientalizing vases. ”

“ In fact, the worship of the moon-goddess under the form of a cow could not have been brought from Egypt to Mycenæ, but necessarily must have been introduced from Mycenæ into Egypt, since Io was distinctly a Pelasgian goddess; she had a celebrated temple at Byzantium, and the legend even attributes the foundation of that city to her daughter Keroessa, also called "she who wears horns." The worship of Io seems to have been brought from Asia by the Pelasgians; at all events they introduced it at a very remote epoch into Argolis. ”

“ These are beyond contradiction the most ancient types of idols which have been found in Greece. All of them are discovered down as far as the surface of beds of archaic débris; it is therefore very certain that they were still in use at the time of the taking of Mycenæ. But it seems to us quite impossible that here the tutelary divinity of Mycenæ should have been represented as late as the fifth century B.C., under the form of a cow or of an idol showing the characteristic features of a cow.
It is evident that in the Homeric poems Hera is a woman, without any of the attributes of a cow ”

“ I may now boldly translate copper: a metal unlike bronze (a) in being readily malleable, (b) in being throughout the Poems most usually lustrous, a character I do not suppose we should assign to bronze. On the other hand, the comparative softness of copper was not well suited for the nails, so bronze might very well be employed. Nor does this conjunction of the two metals, pure and mixed, in the same work, carry us away from the text of Homer: for his wall-sheets of copper in Scheriè were crowned with a cornice of his dark kuanos, which I take to be bronze. ”

“ What they indicate is the handiwork of the great constructing race or races, made up of several elements, who migrated into Greece, and elsewhere on the Mediterranean, from the south and east, and who exhibit an usual, though perhaps not an invariable connection with the Poseidon-worship, a worship, with which the Cyclopean name is, through the Odyssey, perceptibly associated, and which is one of the main keys, as I have long been persuaded, wherewith in time to unlock, for Hellenic and Homeric regions, the secrets of antiquity. The walls of Troy were built by Poseidon ”

“ All this splendid pottery denotes a high civilisation, such as the men who built the Cyclopean city walls can hardly have reached. Hence, all this beautiful pottery was either imported, or (and this appears more likely) it has been manufactured by the nation which succeeded the Cyclopean wall-builders, and to these latter must belong all the hand-made monochromatic pottery which I found in Tiryns on and near the virgin soil. The colour of this pottery is that of the clay itself, which on the vast majority of the smaller vases has been wrought by hand-polishing to a lustrous surface ”

“ We are given to understand [7] that signs of the art of writing have been discovered at Hissarlik; whereas the new volume supplies us with nothing of the kind for Mycenæ. But nothing, I apprehend, can be affirmed of its existence either in Greece or Troas during the Homeric age, except as the secret of a few; in Greece it was manifestly exotic, and perhaps it may have been the same in Troas. As long as the evidence remains in this state, we cannot infer from it with confidence any important proposition as to comparative advancement. ”

“ Pausanias [172] writes: "Amongst other remains of the wall is the gate, on which stand lions. They (the walls and the gate) are said to be the work of the Cyclopes, who built the wall for Proteus at Tiryns. In the ruins of Mycenæ is the fountain called Perseia and the subterranean buildings of Atreus and his children, in which they stored their treasures. There is the sepulchre of Atreus, and the tombs of the companions of Agamemnon, who on their return from Ilium were killed at a banquet by Ægisthus. The identity of the tomb of Cassandra is called in question by the Lacedæmonians of Amyclæ. ”

“ Encouraged by my success, I resolved upon excavating the whole remaining space within the great parallel circle of slabs by which the Agora is enclosed, and my attention was particularly directed to the spot immediately west of the sepulchre last excavated, although the site was marked by no tombstone. But, at marked variance with the colour of the soil elsewhere, I found here only black earth, which, at a depth of 15 ft., was already intermixed with nothing else than hand-made and most ancient wheel-made pottery, showing that the site had not been disturbed since a remote antiquity ”