Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/407

 380 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. This of course Schuchardt knows verv well, and he can cite Greek as well as anybody, including the passage relating to the so-called Treasury of Minyas ; but he tries to get out of the difficulty on the plea that the notions of Pausanias respecting the graves under discussion were of the vaguest, since he calls them treasuries at one place and tombs at another. We owe a debt of gratitude to Pausanias for much that he alone can tell us ; but this does not blind us to his shortcomings. We have no very exalted notions as to the extent of grasp, or his accuracy as a writer ; to assume, however, that he was so loose and indifferent about the words he used is equivalent to saying that he did not know their meaning, thus bringing him down to a level little removed from that of a boor ; and this we cannot concede. The type in question is distinct enough — nay, so distinct that, once Pausanias had seen it, he was not likely to confuse it with any other, but henceforth would connect it with a certain and uniform destination — whether true or false is beside the question. What this notion was we know from the two passages relating to the subterranean domed-buildings of Argolis and Bceotia, respecting which there can be no two opinions. According to Schuchardt, tradition connected the bee-hive graves, which, along with the fortress walls, were most prominent among the ruins, with the heroes of Homer and of the Tragedians, whilst some of the rock-excavated graves recently uncovered were shown to strangers under the title of ** Treasuries of Atreus and his children " ; but this assumption, by which Schuchardt tries hard to please all round, and soothe his con- science as a critic, will not bear looking into. It cannot be denied that these graves have a far-off resemblance to the Treasury of Minyas, which for Pausanias constituted the model of that class of buildings, but the features which most struck the Greek writer are to seek in them. Here is no circular form, no beautiful stone blocks set out in regular courses, no make-believe vault. Finally, all the tombs were found intact; one alone had been disturbed, probably by gold-seekers long after the Roman period. It is self-evident that if all these graves were discovered the other day, with all their contents untouched, they could not have been seen by the idlers and visitors generally of the second century of our era ; accordingly, they cannot be the chambers which Pausanias compared with