The walls of the citadel of Mycenae compare not unfavorably in solidity with those of Tiryns, though displaying more variety. Dr. Schliemann says:

The Acropolis is surrounded by Cyclopean walls, from thirteen to thirty-five feet high, and on an average sixteen feet thick. Their entire circuit still exists, but they have evidently been much higher. They are of beautiful hard breccia, with which the neighboring mountains abound. They follow the sinuosities of the rock, and show three different kinds of architecture. By far the greater portion of them is built exactly like the walls of Tiryns, although not so massively. *

Dr. Schliemann agrees with previous writers in regarding this as the most ancient style of masonry, older than that which he designates as "walls of the second period," consisting of "polygons, fitted together with great art, so that, in spite of the infinite variety of joints, they formed as it were one solidly united and neat wall, as if of rock." Last of all he places, as "walls of the third period," those walls to the right and left of the great gate, which consist of almost quadrangular blocks arranged in horizontal layers; but their joints are not always vertical, and they present lines more or less oblique." +

The celebrated "Gate of Lions," which Dr. Schliemann has taken extraordinary pains to investigate in all its details, and which is here presented to the eye of the reader with a profusion of illustrations, is the principal entrance to the citadel. Contrary to the statement of previous writers, who pretended to have dug down to the original threshold, and noticed the very ruts of the wheels of ancient chariots, Dr. Schliemann maintains that the unbroken accumulation of rubbish, requiring infinite trouble and no little time to remove, proved indisputably that the gate had never been cleared since the time when apparently the defenders hurled down great stones to block it up! The wheel-ruts exist only in the imagination of the writers. Upon the now uncovered stones there is nothing of the kind to be seen! ‡

46 'Mycenæ," p. 29.

Ibid., pp. 29-30. The classification is not an original one, being that, among others, of C. O. Muller, "Ancient Art and its Remains," p. 21, and Aldenhoven, "Itineraire descriptif de l'Attique et du Péloponnèse," pp. 387, 388.

Yet the proportions of the height and breadth of the gate, according to the engraving, for example, in Felton's Smith's "History of Greece," (Boston, 1855,)

The gateway opening is ten feet eight inches high, and widens from nine feet six inches at the top to ten feet three inches below. On this rests a lintel fifteen feet long, and on this in turn the triangular slab (ten feet high, twelve feet wide, and two feet thick) on which " are represented in relief two lions, standing opposite to each other on their long outstretched hind-legs, and resting with their fore-paws on either side of the top of an altar, on the midst of which stands a column with a capital formed of four circles inclosed between two horizontal fillets." The general belief that the heads of the lions have been broken off, Dr. Schliemann shows to be erroneous, for he has found that they were not cut from the same stone with the animals, but "were made separately, and fastened on the bodies with bolts." He thinks that, on account of the contracted space, the heads must have been protruding and facing the spectator, and inclines to the belief that they were of bronze, and gilded. As to the significance of the sculpture, his preference is for regarding the column as the symbol of "Apollo Agyieus," that is, the "guardian of the gate-way," whom Orestes and Electra, in fact, invoke when entering their father's house, (Soph. Electra, 1374.) *

To our knowledge respecting the mode of construction and use of the strange underground building commonly known as the Treasury of Atreus, or Tomb of Agamemnon, Dr. Schliemann does not add very much. Of its importance he rightly observes, that "this Treasury is the most important and the only complete monument of prehistoric times in Greece, and the interest attached to it is so much the greater, as tradition assigns it to Atreus, the father of Agamemnon, king of men." The photographic view given of the entrance corroborates the accuracy of the representations of Stuart and others. The dimensions of the enormous inner lintel which has long amazed those unacquainted with the marvels of building which men so destitute of mechanical labor-saving contrivances as the early inhabitants of the peninsula were able to accomplish, are given at three feet nine inches in thickness, twenty-seven and a half

p. 24, are strikingly correct, as may be seen by a comparison with the large view given by Schliemann from a photograph; and what look like "ruts" in the former nearly coincide with the "furrows" of the latter. "Mycena," pp. 121, 122. "Mycenæ," p. 34.

feet in length on its lower and twenty-nine feet on its upper surface, and seventeen in breadth. The weight is, therefore, about three hundred thousand English pounds, or, one hundred and thirty-eight tons! Others estimate it a little higher, at one hundred and sixty-six tons. Our author coincides in the opinion almost universal among antiquaries, that the entire inner surface of the principal circular dome-shaped chamber, fifty feet high and fifty feet in diameter, was originally covered with bronze plates, secured by means of great broad-headed nails of bronze, of which some have been found whole, and many traces of the rest may be seen embedded in the stones. Such were the brazen chambers of which mythology and primeval history have so much to say. "Thus it is certain that in a remote antiquity, before sculpture or painting came into use for wall decoration, polished metal plates were employed to give both splendor and dignity to the houses of the rich."*

The excavations of our author, which were productive of the magnificent results that have given his name a place among the names of the most fortunate of explorers, began at the "Gate of Lions," and were pushed southward from this point within the inclosure of the Acropolis. One reason for the selection of this spot was the conviction forced upon his mind by a careful reading of the celebrated passage of Pausanias already translated, that the topographer intended to state that the tombs of those he mentions by name were all, with the exception of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, situated within the walls of the Acropolis, or citadel, and not within the general walls of the city merely, as even such judicious writers as Colonel Leake, Dodwell, Prokesch, and Ernst Curtius had supposed.† And, certainly, a second reading of the passage will lead any candid mind to the same conclusion. For the walls referred to are unquestionably the same walls in which but a moment before Pausanias has located the "gate with the lions over it." The natural inference would seem, then, to be that the tombs in question ought to be found just within, or at least not very far distant from the Lions' Gate.

The excavation proved to be a difficult undertaking, not so much because of the natural accumulation of detritus as from "the huge blocks by which the passage was obstructed, and "Mycenae," p. 60, et passim.

* Ibid., p. 15.

which seem to have been hurled from the adjoining walls at the assailants, when the Acropolis was captured by the Argives in 468 B.C." The first discovery was of a small chamber on the left, immediately on entering the gate. Dr. Schliemann says that it was "undoubtedly the ancient door-keeper's habitation." This is not, however, quite so clear to our mind, for Dr. Schliemann himself makes it to be but four and a half feet high, or much too low for any but a dwarf to stand upright in, not to speak of men of the stature of the contemporaries of the persons whose remains were subsequently disinterred. It is true that Dr. Schliemann apologetically adds that, though the chamber" would not be to the taste of our present door-keepers, ""in the heroic age comfort was unknown, particularly to slaves, and, being unknown, it was unmissed."* But he gives no indication of the reason why a more rational height could not be afforded, and, unfortunately, on none of his elaborate plans is the chamber put down.

For a distance of about eighty feet the deep trench from the Lions' Gate disclosed nothing more interesting than a number of walls of Cyclopean style, so called, belonging partly to houses, perhaps, partly to cisterns. This interval past, an unexpected discovery was made. Two parallel rows of nearly vertical slabs were met at the distance of a foot or two apart, which, on further examination, were found to form two complete concentric circles. The slabs had a uniform inclination toward the center of the circles, being at an angle of seventyfive degrees with the horizon. It was Dr. Schliemann's first hasty supposition, before the circuit had been made out, that these slabs set on end were monumental stelai, or tombstones; but this had soon to be abandoned. Resting upon them in places were other slabs, which, when inspected, proved to be furnished with tenons fitting into notches in the upright slabs. Evidently, the whole circuit had been similarly provided, and thus a continuous bench had been formed around a space ninety or one hundred feet in diameter. Of this interesting discovery, Dr. Schliemann says:

My supposition that the double parallel row of large slabs would be found to form a complete circle, has been proved correct. One half of it rests on the wall, which was intended to support it in

*"Mycenæ," p. 62.

the lower part of the Acropolis; the other half is founded on the higher flat rock, and touches the foot of the Cyclopean wall before mentioned; the entrance to it is from the north side.

At first I thought that the space between the two rows might have served for libations or for offerings of flowers in honor of the illustrious dead. But I now find this to be impossible, because the double row of slabs was originally covered with cross slabs, of which six are still in situ; they are firmly fitted in and consolidated by means of notches one and a quarter to three and a third inches deep, and four inches broad in the upper edges of the aslant standing slabs of the two parallel rows, which received similar projections on the cross stones, forming a mortice and tenon joint. As these latter exist on all the slabs, there can be no doubt that the whole circle was originally covered in the same way. The vertical slabs are from four feet two inches to eight feet two inches long, and one foot eight inches to four feet broad, and the largest are in the two places where the double row descends from the rock to the supporting wall. Inside there is, first, a layer of stones one foot four inches thick, for the purpose of holding the slabs in their place; the remaining space is filled up with pure earth mixed with long, thin cockle shells in the places where the original covering remains in its position, or with household remains, mixed with innumerable fragments of archaic pottery wherever the covering is missing. This circumstance can leave no doubt that the cross slabs were only removed after the city had been captured and deserted, because all the fragments of archaic pottery must necessarily have been washed down by the rain from the five natural or artificial upper terraces of the Acropolis, and this can, of course, only have taken place after Mycense had been abandoned by its inhabitants.*

The inclination is such that a person sitting upon this bench, and facing toward the interior of the circle, would have convenient room for his feet; for it must be noticed that the two rows of slabs come to precisely the same height, and the cross slabs are accordingly perfectly horizontal. Of the identification of the spot with the Agora, or Place of Public Assembly, of Mycenæ, Dr. Schliemann remarks:—

My esteemed friend, Professor F. A. Paley, has been the first to advance the opinion, accepted by Mr. Charles T. Newton and by myself, that the double parallel circle of slabs, having been in the most solid way covered with cross slabs, must necessarily have served as a bench to sit upon, and as the inclosure of the Agora of Mycenæ. He thinks that the first idea for the form of an Agora was given by the circular dances, (Kúkλοi xopoí,) and the recitation of the dithyrambs. The assembled people sat in a cir

*"Mycenae," p. 123.