Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

Water-carrying and the Dana'ides 363

a season of drought1, forced to abdicate; and the chief of the new-
comers took his place. Why? Because he or his women-folk suc-
ceeded in getting water and so saved the Argive crops.

L. B. Holland2 has argued with much cogency that this dynastic
change corresponded with the transition from shaft-graves to thdlos-
tombs. The shaft-graves, on his showing, belonged to the Achaioi,
the thdlos-tonfos to the Danaoi. He even ventures upon an approxi-
mate dating of the events3:

'The marble chronicle from Paros, compiled in Athens in the third century
•c-> probably from older official Athenian documents,...specifically states that
1 e Penteconter of Danaus arrived in the year 1510—1509 B.C.4 Archaeology
5*°Ws that the change from the "shaft-grave" to the "tholos-tomb" dynasty at
ycenae occurred about 1500 or a little earlier, and that the great fortification
Wa"s, with the Lion Gate and the existing court and megaron of the palace there,
^Ve'e all built about 14005. Since these dates agree so perfectly with the tradi-
nal dates for the coming of the Danaans and the "founding" of Mycenae by
erseusc, is it not reasonable to accept the traditions as substantially historical?'
Th

°e people who dug the rectangular shaft-graves (the Achaioi?) dug
. So rectangular wells. Two such were found by A. T. B. Wace7 cut
'W 16 rock at Mykenai, one by the north-western angle of the
tb. arri0r ^ase House,' the other below its eastern wall: neither of
.... can be more recent than the beginning of the 'Late Helladic
th y^eri0c^- tne people who constructed the far more elaborate
0-r-tombs (the Danaoi?) may fairly be credited with the intro-
Oat**1011 °^ t'10'0'c^ reservoirs or wells, whether carved out of the
on 6 r° ^e tne bottle-shaped cisterns of later date to be seen
^ the site of Melite at Athens8, or lined with concentric courses of
0nry like the beautifully built and still serviceable Fountain of

SeQUel / a S not actunlly stated in our sources {supra p. 3*5), but is implied by the

' l! g lod-2- '■ *)■

74 f.: i'p " '^°"and 'The Danaoi' in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 1928 xxxix.
*e shoul(j a ^ l"ese literary traditions with the archaeological evidence at Mycenae,
lomb fcj naturally equate the rulers of the fifteenth to the twelfth centuries, the tholos-
^hose tribal * Danaoi; the earlier shaft-grave dynasty would then be Achaioi,

Period) "J a ancestors first occupied the land at the beginning of the Middle Helladic
'he Aegean"** kefore numan memory " to classical Greeks; and the still earlier inhabitants,
tei»nant Pe°ple of Early Helladic days, might be the Pelasgians whose scattered
3 Id , persisted m historic times.'

6 [Paus* ' 6 the A""- BriL Sch- Ath- 1921—1923 ""v. 13, 245 f.]

7 A r ' *• 4-]

^ J B

+g • • Wace in the Ann. Brit. Sch. Ath. 1921 —1923 xxv. 85 pi. I, nos. 53

plans but0""'"5 and J- A- Kaupert Atlas von Athen Berlin 1878 p. 18 ff. description, with
sections, W. Judeich Topographic von Athen Mltnchen 1905 p. 347-