Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/51

 30 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. end they had in view, must dispel any lingering doubt on this head. Would they have laid so heavy a burden upon them- selves, had they been unaware that beneath the mound covering the pit-graves reposed the founders of the superimpending and redoubtable fortress, or at any rate of such of their successors whose prowess had assured the hegemony of ArgoHs to the warriors entrenched behind the walls ? The stelae were not put up without due consideration to the sex and quality of the dead above whose graves they rose. Uninterrupted tradition must still have kept alive in those days the names of the personages to whom they paid their regards. What we divine of the history of Mycenae, during the cen- turies which followed on the restoration of the sanctuary, is the reign of the Pelopidae, whose deeds and opulence find ample recognition in the Epos. Naturally, in an illiterate age written documents could not make good deficiency of memory ; hence is explained why the new-comers, by their brilliant exploits and conquests, caused their predecessors to fall in the background and soon to be forgotten. They came in, therefore, for every- thing that appealed to the eye ; they were credited with the erection of all the monuments of the glorious past of Mycenae. These appeared all the more stately by contrast with the poor condition of the place, which the Dorian conquest and the growing power of Argos had wrought. When and how the substitution of names occurred it is impossible to say ; we cannot, however, accept the denominations which Pausanias has handed down to us, except as a laboured, ingenious, and arbitrary inter- pretation. It is well known that in his day nine stelae were still in position on the esplanade, and that to account for their presence there they turned to the legendary circle of the Atridae, of which several versions were then current in the Hellenic world. There was no great difficulty in finding what was wanted, viz. the nine personages to whom the cippi could be attributed ; accordingly, they trotted out Atreus, Agamemnon, Cassandra and her twin babes, the charioteer Eurymedon, Electra and her two boys. The tale was complete, and additional evidence was discovered in the fact that outside the circle, but hard by, stood two separate cippi. To whom but to Clytemnestra and -^gisthus could these be assigned, whose crime had made them unworthy to lie in holy ground ?