Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/528

 General Characteristics of the Mycenian Period. 471 Hellas had yet known ; with them were built and decorated vaster and more sumptuous edifices than any she had seen up to that time, whilst the large dealings her native princes enter- tained with the stranger facilitated the import of all the products of the latter. The palmy days of this culture coincide, very likely, with the reign of the Pelopidee, the /Racidse, and the Nelidse. If the Iliud places Agamemnon, a grandson of Pelops, above all his fellows, it is because the remembrance of this prince and of his house was bound up with the most brilliant phase in the existence of the Mycenian kingdom. Pausanias only went half wrong when he identified the corbelled domes of Mycenae with **the subterranean buildings in which Atreus and his sons kept their treasures " ; had he said *' tombs wherein they were buried," he would have been quite correct. Accordingly, it was under the influence of the Pelopidoi that those cupolas, so well calculated to show off the skill of the architect and the mason, were erected. The Tirynthian and Mycenian palaces, certain portions of the rampart of the latter, such as the Lions Gate and the walls surrounding it, as well as the graves of the lower city, would date from the same epoch. Out of the three handles for mirrors, apparently executed by the same hand, two came from a Mycenae domed-tomb, and the third from a bee-hive grave (Figs. 379-381). The remark applies to such metal vases and intaglios as are distinguished by greater freedom and truth of design. But for the fear of drawing upon oneself some of the ridicule which was meted out in no stinted measure to Schliemann, one might be tempted to say after him that Menelaus and Helen drank out of the Amyclae goblets. The Tirynthian bulwarks, however, and the most rudely-con- structed portion of the Mycenae citadel- walls, as well as the shaft-graves within the slab-circle, must belong to an older era. We shall not sin against the authority of tradition, according to which the Pelopidae were preceded here by the Perseidae, if we consider this group of erections as synchronous with. the latter. A pit cut in the rock is earlier in time than a circular grave — provided with a door capable of being opened to let in other bodies — in which to celebrate commemorative festivals. It is the same with the vases found in the royal necropolis. The style which they exhibit differs somewhat from the pottery collected, whether in the dromos of the domed-buildings, the