Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/402

 MvcENiE. 375 passed the movement to and fro between the town and the stronghold, where the reigning family lived, surrounded by men-at-arms, and troops of servitors and slaves. Here, too, their situation was much more suitable for receiving the ex- pressions of regard, the expiatory offerings and annual sacrifices of successive generations. It is on this very spot that Schlie- mann lighted upon graves which, for reasons presently to be adduced, appear to have been the special object of reverence during a long series of years. Everything about these tombs was calculated to convey this impression : there is the astounding magnificence of the furniture of each grave, the memorial stela placed above it to the dead lying beneath, including bones heaped up high over the sepultures, the remains of victims burnt on the altar, in order that their blood and fat should trickle below and so feed the shades of great ancestors, who, in their temenos-like burial-place, were neither to hunger nor thirst. Nor is this all : the number of graves enclosed by the stone fence exactly corresponds with that given by Pausanias. If this be so, it is not because Schliemann was minded to discover six graves and no more ; since, as will be remembered, Stamakis stumbled upon the sixth just as the excavations were about to close. Perfect agreement, then, exists between literary evidence and the result of the excavations, both as to the position of the royal burial-ground and the number of the graves. It were passing strange, and unparalleled in the annals of archaeological research, should it turn out to be mere coincidence. The testimony of Pausanias so exactly harmonizes with the cemetery by the Lions Gate, as to render the conviction irresistible that the graves opened by Schliemann are those described by Pausanias. But even assuming the identification to have been proved does not dispose of every difficulty. How are we to explain that, having inspected the domed-graves of the lower city, Pausanias should have gone back to the citadel which he had previously visited, and without a word of warning he should forthwith have described the monuments rising before him ? Even supposing that in this particular instance he was more careless than usual, or that his note-tablets fell out of order, it is hardly conceivable that the bee-hive graves of the lower city and the citadel rampart, which some twenty years ago