DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0037
4 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
ies, the Heroic Age began to be illuminated, the darkness
encompassing it began to lift little by little, and to-day our
knowledge of it has advanced so far that we can point con-
fidently to a great chapter of veritable history newly added
to the record of the Greek race. It is a chapter, indeed,
without precise chronology and almost without names, but
abounding in facts. We now know that the Homeric Age
was not the childhood of the Greek world. It was rather
an age of renaissance from national decline. Back of that
decadence w7e mount up to the meridian of national bloom.
This era of Mycenaean culture covers the period approxi-
mately from the sixteenth to the twelfth century b. o.
Our knowledge of this civilization does not rest upon
conjecture or vague poetic description, but upon its own
Abundance multiform remains, the mass of which increases
of real data w-^n fresn discoveries from day to day. Hence
we know the Mycenaean age in many aspects more exactly
and authoritatively than we know the Homeric. The
excavations have taught us how princes and people built
and adorned their palaces and dwellings; what was their
daily food and dress and armor; what was the character of
their art and their trade relations; how they fashioned
their tombs and were buried in them. All this we have
learned and much beside; so that, with all that still
remains obscure and enigmatic, this unearthing of the
Mycenaean age undoubtedly marks the greatest advance of
our times in rounding out the history of the Greek race.
Fittingly, it was from the ancient Achaean capital itself
the first clear light broke forth. After making
Discovery: his first essay at Ithaca (1868), and uncovering
Thera, ' the pre-Mycenaean city on Hissarlik (1873),
Dr. Schliemann turned his attention to Mycenae,
where in 1876 he cleared out the Lions' Gate, partially
ies, the Heroic Age began to be illuminated, the darkness
encompassing it began to lift little by little, and to-day our
knowledge of it has advanced so far that we can point con-
fidently to a great chapter of veritable history newly added
to the record of the Greek race. It is a chapter, indeed,
without precise chronology and almost without names, but
abounding in facts. We now know that the Homeric Age
was not the childhood of the Greek world. It was rather
an age of renaissance from national decline. Back of that
decadence w7e mount up to the meridian of national bloom.
This era of Mycenaean culture covers the period approxi-
mately from the sixteenth to the twelfth century b. o.
Our knowledge of this civilization does not rest upon
conjecture or vague poetic description, but upon its own
Abundance multiform remains, the mass of which increases
of real data w-^n fresn discoveries from day to day. Hence
we know the Mycenaean age in many aspects more exactly
and authoritatively than we know the Homeric. The
excavations have taught us how princes and people built
and adorned their palaces and dwellings; what was their
daily food and dress and armor; what was the character of
their art and their trade relations; how they fashioned
their tombs and were buried in them. All this we have
learned and much beside; so that, with all that still
remains obscure and enigmatic, this unearthing of the
Mycenaean age undoubtedly marks the greatest advance of
our times in rounding out the history of the Greek race.
Fittingly, it was from the ancient Achaean capital itself
the first clear light broke forth. After making
Discovery: his first essay at Ithaca (1868), and uncovering
Thera, ' the pre-Mycenaean city on Hissarlik (1873),
Dr. Schliemann turned his attention to Mycenae,
where in 1876 he cleared out the Lions' Gate, partially