Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/524

 Genkral Ciiakactekistics of the Mycenian Period. 467 grave. Nor is industrial progress, though more rapid, accom- plished in a day ; especially at an early date, when the materials are exceedingly few, and the processes employed in their manu- facture of the simplest. The use of iron is unknown to Mycenian culture ; and it only makes its appearance, in some rare instances, towards the end of the period. With the people whose every-day life is reflected in the Iliad, iron may not yet be as common as bronze, but is none the less on the high-road to it. Tiryns and Mycenae have supplied us with a surprisingly small number of brooches or fibular ; ^ but they are mentioned again and again in Homer. Garments at Tiryns and Mycenae were sewn together ; the contemporaries of the poet, however, not unfrequently fasten theirs by means of clasps. This fashion will grow apace, and when it has become general, will serve to distinguish the Greek costume from that of the Asiatics. These examples suflfice to show that the poet and his auditors are separated from the heroes by a considerable number of years. Opinions may not be agreed as to their precise number, but we think we have proved that the poems take for granted the knowledge of an older state of affairs in a world which had its centre in the ^gean, a knowledge necessarily scanty and re- ducible to a few facts, yet of inestimable value, and exact as far as it goes. The facts in question call up to the mind the remem- brance of royal cities uncovered on the very spots to which the poet pointed with raised finger. They show in a convincing manner the unbroken continuity between these two communities : that which has handed down to us the products of its manual labour, and that which has enriched us with two immortal poems. What we find in Homer of historical import is connected with the heroes and their adventures, and has been gleaned from traditions which preserved the remembrance of the princes who had held sway at Tiryns, Mycenae, Amycla.% Cnosus, lalysos, and Orcho- menos. The palaces and tombs of these princes have lately been and are even now brought to the light of day. Princes and subjects were already Greek, even in tongue ; but the dialectical peculiarities of the language they spoke will ever remain a sealed book to us, and if discovered, would not unlikely tax the ingenuity of our most accomplished Hellenists. ^ TsouNDAS, Mwr/rai, p. 57 ; Undset, Sur les plus ancicns types de fibules et Us fibules de provenance grecque ; and S. Reinack, L Anthropologie,