Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/522

 General Characteristics of the Mvcenian Period. 465 other site can it be said that the precious metal was handled with the shovel. Orchomenos is another place that has borne as great a name for its wealth of gold as Troy and Mycenae. Achy lies, in his answer to the Greek envoys, declares that he will rather have his revenge than *' hold in his grasp all the treasures of Orchomenos and of Egyptian Thebes, cities wherein houses are brimful of gold." The spade, at Orchomenos, has not so far brought shining gold from the depths of its soil ; but the tomb said by Pausanias to be as noteworthy as the Egyptian pyramids, deserves the epithets which Homer applies to it. Its dimensions are nearly those of the Treasury of Atreus ; and though in a ruinous con- dition, it still preserves noble remains of its old decoration. Homer shows us Menelaus, also a prince of the house of Pelops, as established in '* hollow Lacedemon''; and in the valleys of Taygetus and the plain of Sparta have been uncovered tombs precisely similar to the domed-buildings of Argolis and Boeotia. P'rom the Vaphio grave, close to the Achaean towns of Pharis and Amyclae, where no doubt Menelaus resided, have come those beautiful gold cups wherein Mycenian sculpture has said its last say. Tombs of this class, with their usual furniture, occur in Thessaly, around the Pagassean and Malian Gulfs, on the border of Achy lies' dominions, whence the ships of the Minyi were wont to start on their distant expeditions. Several more of the highest interest, with their furniture intact, have been unearthed in Attica, where tradition places Pelasgi and lonians as domesti- cated there at an early date. Had the fortresses of Myceneu, Tiryns, and Orchomenos been in the grasp of foreign conquerors, had the singers not been authorized by unbroken tradition to honour the glorious heroes of their race in those ** sons of the Achaians" whose exploits they extolled to the skies, would the Epos, every line of which is palpitating with racial pride, have trumpeted abroad the adventures of the Argonauts and of the van- quishers of Troy ? If the auditors were never weary of listening to the tales of the poets, was not this because they were conscious of the link that connected the present with a past out of which such images as were deeply graven in men's memory had survived of a time when history, the daughter of writing, was not yet in existence ? How many years may have elapsed between the time when VOL. II. H H