DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0416
362 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
that of Tiryns and it covers as large an area. It is two
and a half times as large as the earlier Burnt City, and
instead of the crude brick walls and houses of the older
settlement, it was both built and walled in with cut stone.1
With its scarped foundation and perpendicular superstruc-
ture wrought as smooth as the masonry of the Mycenaean
domes, with its unapproachable gates and mighty towers,
the circumvallation might well have seemed proof against
any artillery the age could bring to bear. As it stands
revealed to-day it justifies the muster of all Greece, and
accounts for the ten years' siege. If those walls were ever
mastered in a primitive age, we should say—what tradition
avouches — that it was by fraud and not by force.
But mastered they were, though we have not — as at
Tiryns and Mycenae, or in the older Troy — the clear
demonstration that the town was given to the flames. In
leveling down the mound of many cities to form their
new site the Romans destroyed all that was left of the
Mycenaean Troy except the circuit wall, with a band of
buildings some forty yards wide lying inside it. With the
terraced centre, which rose some twenty feet higher, the
palaces and statelier structures of the Pergamos of course
disappeared. Hence we cannot say whether Agamemnon's
prayer was actually granted him.2
The sack of Troy does not end the Mycenaean story.
The heroes return — that is a capital fact for us ; and the
xXka, avhy&v are heard in their halls. The lyre was theirs
already; it appears among their remains, and we have two
1 And it is here, at Troy, Homer tells us of " chambers of polished stone "
(Iliad, vi. 248, 6d\a/xoi ^aroio \lBoio).
2 "Zeus, most glorious, most great, god of the storm-cloud that dwellest in
the heavens, vouchsafe that the sun set not upon us nor darkness come near,
till I have laid low upon the earth Priam's palace smirched with smoke and
burnt the doorways thereof with consuming fire." — Iliad, ii. 412-15..
that of Tiryns and it covers as large an area. It is two
and a half times as large as the earlier Burnt City, and
instead of the crude brick walls and houses of the older
settlement, it was both built and walled in with cut stone.1
With its scarped foundation and perpendicular superstruc-
ture wrought as smooth as the masonry of the Mycenaean
domes, with its unapproachable gates and mighty towers,
the circumvallation might well have seemed proof against
any artillery the age could bring to bear. As it stands
revealed to-day it justifies the muster of all Greece, and
accounts for the ten years' siege. If those walls were ever
mastered in a primitive age, we should say—what tradition
avouches — that it was by fraud and not by force.
But mastered they were, though we have not — as at
Tiryns and Mycenae, or in the older Troy — the clear
demonstration that the town was given to the flames. In
leveling down the mound of many cities to form their
new site the Romans destroyed all that was left of the
Mycenaean Troy except the circuit wall, with a band of
buildings some forty yards wide lying inside it. With the
terraced centre, which rose some twenty feet higher, the
palaces and statelier structures of the Pergamos of course
disappeared. Hence we cannot say whether Agamemnon's
prayer was actually granted him.2
The sack of Troy does not end the Mycenaean story.
The heroes return — that is a capital fact for us ; and the
xXka, avhy&v are heard in their halls. The lyre was theirs
already; it appears among their remains, and we have two
1 And it is here, at Troy, Homer tells us of " chambers of polished stone "
(Iliad, vi. 248, 6d\a/xoi ^aroio \lBoio).
2 "Zeus, most glorious, most great, god of the storm-cloud that dwellest in
the heavens, vouchsafe that the sun set not upon us nor darkness come near,
till I have laid low upon the earth Priam's palace smirched with smoke and
burnt the doorways thereof with consuming fire." — Iliad, ii. 412-15..