DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0398
THE PROBLEM OF THE MYCENAEAN RACE 345
a practice which may have owed its origin to the wet ground
about Tiryns.1
There is but one theory on which these facts can be fully
explained. It is that of a change in the ruling race and
dynasty,'2 and it clears up the whole history of
Mycenae and the Argive Plain. The first Greek Amve
settlers occupied the marshy seaboard, where they
established themselves at Tiryns and other points;2 later
on, when they had learned to rear impregnable walls, many
of them migrated to the mountains which dominated the
plain and thus were founded the strongholds of Larissa,
Mideia and Mycenae.
But while the Danaans were thus making their slow march
to the North the Achaeans were advancing southward from
Corinth — a base of great importance to them then and
always as we may infer from the network of Cyclopean
highways between it and their new centre.4 At Mycenae,
already a strong Perseid outpost, the two columns meet —
when we cannot say. But about 1500 b. c, or a little later,
the Achaeans had made themselves masters of the place and
imposed upon it their own kings.
We have no tradition of any struggle in connection with
this dynastic revolution, and it appears probable that the
Achaeans did not expel the older stock. On the contrary,
they scrupulously respected the tombs of the Danaid dyn-
asty—-it may be, because they felt the claim of kindred
1 Rolide (Psyche, p. 32) calls attention to an analogous custom observed in
the graves of Northern Europe.
2 The assumption had already been made by Adler and is accepted by Per-
rot: Journal des Savants, 1892, p. 449 ; Myc. Art, ii. 26.
8 The scholia on Euripides' Orestes, v. 932, preserves a tradition that after
Deucalion's deluge Inachos was the first to gather the Argives from the moun-
tains and settle them in the present Argos, which he found wholly covered
with water.
4 See page 15 f.
a practice which may have owed its origin to the wet ground
about Tiryns.1
There is but one theory on which these facts can be fully
explained. It is that of a change in the ruling race and
dynasty,'2 and it clears up the whole history of
Mycenae and the Argive Plain. The first Greek Amve
settlers occupied the marshy seaboard, where they
established themselves at Tiryns and other points;2 later
on, when they had learned to rear impregnable walls, many
of them migrated to the mountains which dominated the
plain and thus were founded the strongholds of Larissa,
Mideia and Mycenae.
But while the Danaans were thus making their slow march
to the North the Achaeans were advancing southward from
Corinth — a base of great importance to them then and
always as we may infer from the network of Cyclopean
highways between it and their new centre.4 At Mycenae,
already a strong Perseid outpost, the two columns meet —
when we cannot say. But about 1500 b. c, or a little later,
the Achaeans had made themselves masters of the place and
imposed upon it their own kings.
We have no tradition of any struggle in connection with
this dynastic revolution, and it appears probable that the
Achaeans did not expel the older stock. On the contrary,
they scrupulously respected the tombs of the Danaid dyn-
asty—-it may be, because they felt the claim of kindred
1 Rolide (Psyche, p. 32) calls attention to an analogous custom observed in
the graves of Northern Europe.
2 The assumption had already been made by Adler and is accepted by Per-
rot: Journal des Savants, 1892, p. 449 ; Myc. Art, ii. 26.
8 The scholia on Euripides' Orestes, v. 932, preserves a tradition that after
Deucalion's deluge Inachos was the first to gather the Argives from the moun-
tains and settle them in the present Argos, which he found wholly covered
with water.
4 See page 15 f.