DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0034
THE MYCENAEAN AGE
CHAPTER I
LANDMARKS OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD
The Heroic Age of Greece has never been left quite
■without a witness. From time immemorial certain of its
stately monuments have been known and un- Earing
challenged. The Greeks themselves, from Pin- Kf**8
dar to Pausanias, were of one mind about these eioIC
landmarks of their heroic foretime. Thucydides even goes
out of his way to reconcile the apparent insignificance of
the Mycenae of his own day with its ancient fame, and the
Tragedians repeople its solitude with the great figures of
tradition. So too with strong-walled Tiryns, — a wonder
even to Homer, — in which Pausanias sees not only a castle
of the Heroic Age, but a work to be compared with the
Pyramids of Egypt and to be accounted for only by its
attribution to superhuman builders, the Lycian Cyclopes.
And beside these enduring walls, there were other wit-
nesses less obtrusive but not less awe-inspiring. Of those
solemn and splendid sepulchres best known to us in the
so-called Treasury of Atreus, one at least — the Treasury of
Minyas — was even better known in Roman times, when it
could be named among the wonders of the world.1
Such landmarks, we may say, have been always in evi-
dence even through the ages that were too dark to read
1 Pausaniasj ix. 38.
CHAPTER I
LANDMARKS OF THE MYCENAEAN WORLD
The Heroic Age of Greece has never been left quite
■without a witness. From time immemorial certain of its
stately monuments have been known and un- Earing
challenged. The Greeks themselves, from Pin- Kf**8
dar to Pausanias, were of one mind about these eioIC
landmarks of their heroic foretime. Thucydides even goes
out of his way to reconcile the apparent insignificance of
the Mycenae of his own day with its ancient fame, and the
Tragedians repeople its solitude with the great figures of
tradition. So too with strong-walled Tiryns, — a wonder
even to Homer, — in which Pausanias sees not only a castle
of the Heroic Age, but a work to be compared with the
Pyramids of Egypt and to be accounted for only by its
attribution to superhuman builders, the Lycian Cyclopes.
And beside these enduring walls, there were other wit-
nesses less obtrusive but not less awe-inspiring. Of those
solemn and splendid sepulchres best known to us in the
so-called Treasury of Atreus, one at least — the Treasury of
Minyas — was even better known in Roman times, when it
could be named among the wonders of the world.1
Such landmarks, we may say, have been always in evi-
dence even through the ages that were too dark to read
1 Pausaniasj ix. 38.