DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0035
2 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
them or hand down any judgment upon them; and since
Greece has come "within the circle of modern civilization
the modern world has accepted them in the spirit of the
ancient. To Leake and Curtius as to Pausanias and Thu-
eydides, these monuments have accredited themselves as
actual landmarks of a real world lying back of Homer and
more or less faithfully mirrored in the Iliad and Odyssey.
But neither these splendid monuments nor the still more
splendid epics, nor even both together, could convey an
Monuments adequate and authoritative impression of the
Lndd|?omer Heroic Age. The monuments are too isolated and
distrusted Q£ tQ0 uncertain date? while the poets of the Epos,
as it has come down to us, are too remote from the heroic
foretime whereof they sing to be regarded as altogether
competent witnesses of it. And, indeed, their authority
has often been questioned, when (as we now know) they
were keeping close to actual fact. For example, we have
looked upon the Shield of Achilles, with its wondrous living
pictures wrought in precious metals of many colors, as a
pure invention of the poet's fancy; whereas now the Royal
Tombs of Mycenae have yielded up dagger-blades inlaid
with designs of the same technique with Hephaestus' handi-
work as Homer describes it, and hardly a whit behind it in
living reality. So, too, the splendid palaces of Alcinoua
and Menelaus we have thought of as owning no designer or
decorator outside of the minstrel's imagination; and the
" much-golden " Mycenae, even with Thucydides' plea for it,
has seemed to hold its wealth by the poet's gift. Indeed,
the world has distrusted the poet wherever his picture took
on a tone too bright to consist with the old saying of Hero-
dotus that "Hellas hath ever had Poverty for her consort."1
And this incredulity was not without show of reason.
1 Tj) 'EXAaSi Tttvii) ati KOrt a£vTpo<f>6$ Ion. — vii. 102.
them or hand down any judgment upon them; and since
Greece has come "within the circle of modern civilization
the modern world has accepted them in the spirit of the
ancient. To Leake and Curtius as to Pausanias and Thu-
eydides, these monuments have accredited themselves as
actual landmarks of a real world lying back of Homer and
more or less faithfully mirrored in the Iliad and Odyssey.
But neither these splendid monuments nor the still more
splendid epics, nor even both together, could convey an
Monuments adequate and authoritative impression of the
Lndd|?omer Heroic Age. The monuments are too isolated and
distrusted Q£ tQ0 uncertain date? while the poets of the Epos,
as it has come down to us, are too remote from the heroic
foretime whereof they sing to be regarded as altogether
competent witnesses of it. And, indeed, their authority
has often been questioned, when (as we now know) they
were keeping close to actual fact. For example, we have
looked upon the Shield of Achilles, with its wondrous living
pictures wrought in precious metals of many colors, as a
pure invention of the poet's fancy; whereas now the Royal
Tombs of Mycenae have yielded up dagger-blades inlaid
with designs of the same technique with Hephaestus' handi-
work as Homer describes it, and hardly a whit behind it in
living reality. So, too, the splendid palaces of Alcinoua
and Menelaus we have thought of as owning no designer or
decorator outside of the minstrel's imagination; and the
" much-golden " Mycenae, even with Thucydides' plea for it,
has seemed to hold its wealth by the poet's gift. Indeed,
the world has distrusted the poet wherever his picture took
on a tone too bright to consist with the old saying of Hero-
dotus that "Hellas hath ever had Poverty for her consort."1
And this incredulity was not without show of reason.
1 Tj) 'EXAaSi Tttvii) ati KOrt a£vTpo<f>6$ Ion. — vii. 102.