Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/336

 MvCENiE. 1 1 1 The descriptions and representations of the travellers who visited Hellas early in this century seemed to have exhausted the subject of the ruins of Mycenae ; nevertheless much remained to be gleaned both above and underground. Nobody had noticed, before M. Tsoundas in 1889, the curious contrivance and real purpose of the flight of steps leading to the reservoir. But the researches carried on in the subsoil have more than aught else enriched science with discoveries of unequalled importance, and brought in their rear others, no less startling and no less in- structive. Schliemann's memorable campaign of 1876 at Mycenae marks an epoch in the annals of archaeology. The thirty-four shafts which he had sunk two years before on the acropolis had led to no result; but in August 1876, served by a large number of men, he cleared the Lions Gate and opened a trench south of but inside it, prompted thereto by the configuration of the ground, which led him to infer that he should find here the path which formerly led to the acropolis. A fortnight had barely gone by, when, within the obtuse angle made by the wall, a few paces from the Lions Gate, he lighted upon an undisturbed cemetery, where he literally handled the precious metals with the shovel ; where, too, no traveller before had dreamt of looking for such treasures on this particular spot. Much has been said about Schliemann s good luck ; but chance does not explain everything. Inde- fatigable explorers have undoubtedly been known more than once to stop work within a few feet of glorious finds, which fell to the lot of others almost with the first blow of the spade.^ Like other undertakings, excavations have their ups and downs, but nobody will deny that those who have been most successful courted fortune by their untiring perseverance. Had Schliemann allowed himself to be discouraged by the small results of his first campaign, had he not multiplied shafts at every point of the compass, everywhere laying the rock bare, it is quite certain that, like his predecessors, he would have come away empty- handed ; and out of the number of would-be explorers, few would have been capable of pointing out to him the spot by the gate Their shafts at the Golgos, a few years before de Cesnola's excavations there, had actually grazed without discovering the temple, of which a ground-plan would have been made, and its peculiar details noted down with more care and precision, than was the case by de Cesnola, whose training had not fitted him for the task.
 * This happened to MM. de Vogu^ and Duthoit at Athienau, in Cyprus.