The History of Greece from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Hellenistic Age. John Bagnell Bury
whole civilisation to which Mycenae’s greatness belongs has been called Mycenaean.
Tiryns was the older of the two fortresses, and had played its part in the earlier epoch before the Aegean peoples had yet emerged from the stone age. It stands on a long low rock about a mile and a half from the sea, and the land around it was once a marsh. From north to south the hill rises in height, and was shaped by man’s hand into three platforms, of which the southern and highest was occupied by the palace of the king. But the whole acropolis was strongly walled round by a structure of massive stones, laid in regular layers but rudely dressed, the crevices being filled with a mortar of clay. This fashion of building has been called Cyclopean from the legend that masons called Cyclopes were invited from Lycia to build the walls of Tiryns. The main gate of entrance, on the east side, was approached by a passage between the outer wall of the fortress and the wall of the palace; and the right, unshielded side of an enemy advancing to the gate was exposed to the defenders on the castle wall. On the west side there was a postern, from which a long flight of stone steps led up to the back part of the palace. But one curious feature in the castle of Tiryns sets it apart from all the other ancient fortresses of Greece. On the south side the wall deepens for the purpose of containing store-chambers, the doors of which open out upon covered galleries, also built inside the wall, and furnished with windows looking outward.
The stronghold of Mycenae, about twelve miles inland, at the north-eastern end of the Argive plain, was built on a hill which rises to 900 feet above the sea-level in a mountain glen. The shape of the citadel is a triangle, and the greater part of the wall is built in the same “Cyclopean” style as the wall of Tiryns, but of smaller stones. Another fashion of architecture, however, also occurs, and points to a later date than Tiryns. The gates and some of the towers are built of even layers of stones carefully hewn into rectangular shape. No store-rooms or galleries like those of Tiryns have been found at Mycenae; but on the north-east side a vaulted stone passage in the wall led by a downward subterranean path to the foot of the hill, where a cistern was supplied from a perennial spring outside the walls. Thus the garrison was furnished with water in case of a siege. Mycenae had two gates. The chief was on the west, ensconced in a corner of the wall which at this point running in south-eastward then turned outward due west, and thus enclosed and commanded the approach to the gate. The lintel of the doorway is formed by one huge square block of stone, and the weight of the wall resting on it is lightened by the device of leaving a triangular space. This opening is filled by a sculptured stone relief representing two lionesses standing opposite each other on either side of a pillar, on whose pedestal their forepaws rest. They are, as it were, watchers who ward the castle, and from them the gate is known as the Lion gate.
The ruins on the hill of Tiryns enable us to trace the plan of the palace of its kings. One chief principle of the construction of the palaces of this age seems to have been the separation of the dwelling-house of the women from that of the men—a principle which continued to prevail in Greek domestic architecture in historical times. But the striking characteristic of Tiryns is that, while the halls of the king and the halls of the queen are built side by side in the centre of the palace, there is no direct communication between them, and they have different approaches. The halls of king and queen alike are built on the same general plan as the palace in the old brick city on the hill of Troy and the palaces which are described in the poems of Homer. An altar stood in the men’s courtyard which was enclosed by pillared porticoes; the portico which faced the gate being the vestibule of the house. Double-leafed doors opened from the vestibule into a preliminary hall, from which one passed through a curtained doorway over a great stone threshold into the men’s hall. In the midst of it was the round hearth—the centre of the house—encircled by four wooden pillars which supported the flat roof.
The palace of Mycenae crowned the highest part of the hill, and its plan, though it cannot be traced so clearly or fully, was in general conception, and in many details, alike. The hearth, of which part remains, was ornamented by spiral and triangular patterns in red, blue, and white. The floors of the covered rooms were made of fine cement; and in the open courts the cement was hardened by small pebbles. Sometimes the floors were brightened with coloured patterns. It was customary to embellish the walls by inlet sculptured friezes and by paintings. A brilliant alabaster frieze, inset with cyanus or paste of blue glass, decorated the vestibule of the hall at Tiryns, and the men’s halls in both palaces were adorned with mural pictures.
Besides their castle and palace, the burying-places of the kings of Mycenae are their most striking memorials. The men with whom we are now dealing bestowed their dead in tombs; there is no trace of the practice of burning corpses. At one time the lords of the citadel and their families were buried on the castle hill. Close to the western wall, south of the Lion gate, the royal burial circle has been discovered, within which six tombs cut vertically into the rock had remained untouched by the hand of man since the last corpses were placed in them. Weapons were buried with the men, some of whose faces were covered with gold masks. The heads of the women were decked with gold diadems; rich ornaments and things of household use were placed beside them. There was a stêlê or sepulchral stone over each tomb, and some of these slabs were sculptured.
But a day came when this simple kind of grave was no longer royal enough for the rich princes of Mycenae, and they sought more imposing resting-places; or else, as some believe, they were overthrown by lords of another race who brought with them a new fashion of sepulchre. Nine sepulchral domes, hewn in the opposite hillside, have been found not far from the Acropolis. The largest of them is generally known as the “Treasury of Atreus”, a name which arose from a false idea as to its purpose. These tombs, which are found, as we shall see, in other places in Greece, consist of three parts—the passage of approach, the portal, and the dome. A stone causeway leads up to the portal which admits into a round vaulted chamber built into the hollowed slope of a hill; and in some tombs (but this is exceptional) there is also a square side-chamber. The portal of the Treasury of Atreus had a striking facade, being clad with slabs of coloured marble and framed by dark grey alabaster pillars with zigzag and spiral patterns and carved capitals. The two massive lintel-stones were relieved by the same device which was adopted in the architecture of the Lion gate, and the triangle was filled by red porphyry. The vaulted room of beehive shape is formed by rings of well-joined and well-chiselled stones, which grow narrower as they rise, and a roof-stone. The walls were adorned with bronze rosettes arranged in some pattern. A door, similar to that of the portal and framed with pillars, admits to the side-chamber, which is hewn into the rock; its walls were decorated with sculptured alabaster plates. The doorway of another tomb was framed by two alabaster columns, fluted like the columns of a Doric temple.
But besides the stately burying-places of the kings, the humbler tombs of the people have been discovered. The town of Mycenae below the citadel consisted of a group of villages, each of which preserved its separate identity; each had its own burying-ground. Thus Mycenae, and probably other towns of the age, represented an intermediate stage between the village and the city—a number of little communities gathered together in one place, and dominated by a fortress. The tombs in these village burying-grounds resemble in plan the royal vaults. They are square chambers cut into the rock; they are approached by a passage which leads up to a doorway. The difference is that they are not round and have gabled roofs. Some of the things found in these sepulchres indicate that most of them are of later date than the royal tombs of the citadel and contemporary with the vaulted tombs below.
We have seen how in the royal graves on the castle hill treasures of gold, long hidden from the light of day, revealed the wealth of the Mycenaean kingdom. Treasures would perhaps have been found also in some of the great vaulted tombs if they had not been rifled by plunderers in subsequent ages. But for us the works of the potter, and the implements of war and peace fashioned by the bronze-smith, are of more value than the golden ornaments for studying from these early civilizations; and things of daily use have been found in the lowlier rock-tombs as well as in the royal sepulchres of hill or plain. From the implements which the people used, and also from the representations which artists wrought, we can win a rough picture of their dress, armor, and ornaments, and form an idea of their capacity in art.
Their civilisation belonged to the age of bronze and copper. Even in its later period iron was still so rare and costly that it was used only for ornaments—rings, for instance, and possibly for money.