138 TOMB OF AGAMEMNON. are nearly in the same state as in the time of Pausanias; for it is more than two thousand two hundred and eighty years since Mycena was destroyed. The Argives razed it to the ground, jealous of the glory which it had acquired by sending forty warriors to die with the Spartans at Thermopyla. We first examined the tomb to which has been assigned the appellation of the tomb of Agamemnon. It is a subterraneous edifice, of a circular form, which receives light by a dome, and has nothing remarkable except the simplicity of its architecture. You enter by a trench, which leads to the door of the tomb: this door was adorned with pilasters of a very common species of bluish marble, procured from the neighbouring mountains. It was Lord Elgin who caused this monument to be opened, and the earth with which the interior was filled to be cleared away. A small elliptical door conducts from the principal apartment to another of less di-, mensions. After an attentive inspection, I am of opinion that the latter is merely an excavation made by the workmen beyond the tomb, for I could not perceive that it had any walls. The use of the little door would still remain to be accounted for; it was perhaps simply another entrance to the sepulchre. Has this building been always buried under the earth, like the rotunda of the Catacombs at Alexandria? Was it, on the contrary, erected upon the surface of the ground, like the tomb of Cecilia Metella at Rome? Had it any exterior decorations, and of what order were they? These are questions which yet remain to be resolved. Nothing has been found in the tomb, and we are not even certain that it is the sepulchre of Agamemnon, mentioned by Pausanias.* * The Lacedæmonians also boasted that they possessed the ashes of Agamemnon. GATE OF MYCENE. 139 On leaving this monument, I crossed a sterile valley, and on the side of the opposite hill I beheld the ruins of Mycena. I particularly admired one of the gates of the city, composed of gigantic masses of stone, laid upon the solid rock of the hill, with which they seem to form but one whole. Two colossal lions on each side of this gate are its only ornament. They are represented in relievo, standing, and face to face, like the lions which supported the arms of our ancient chevaliers; but they have lost their heads. I never saw, even in Egypt itself, a more imposing specimen of architecture, and the desert in which it stands adds to its solemnity. It belongs to that species of buildings which Strabo and Pausanias ascribe to the Cyclops, and traces of which have been discovered in Italy. M. Petit Radel maintains that this kind of architecture preceded the invention of the orders: it indisputably belongs to the heroic ages. For the rest, it was a shepherd-boy, stark naked, who shewed me in this solitude the tomb of Agamemnon and the ruins of Mycena. At the foot of the door that I have spoken of is a fountain, which shall be, if you please, the same that Perseus found under a mushroom, and which gave name to Mycena; for myces is the Greek term for a mushroom, or the hilt of a sword: this story is told by Pausanias. On returning towards the road to Corinth, I heard the ground under my horse's feet sound hollow: I alighted, and discovered the vault of another tomb. Pausanias reckons up five tombs at Mycena: the tomb of Atreus, that of Agamemnon, that of Eurymedon, that of Teledamus and Pelops, and that of Electra. He adds, that Clytemnestra and Ægisthus were interred without the walls might : 140 ARRIVAL AT CORINTH. it not then be their tomb that I discovered? I have described the spot to M. Fauvel, who will examine it in his first excursion to Argos. How singular the destiny that brings me from Paris to fix the site of the ruins of Sparta, and to discover the ashes of Clytemnestra! Leaving Nemaa on our left, we pursued our route. We reached Corinth in good time, having crossed a kind of plain, intersected by streams of water, and broken by detached hills, resembling the Acro-Corinthus, with which they blend. The latter we perceived long before we arrived at it, like an irregular mass of reddish granite, with a winding line of wall upon its summit. All the travellers in Greece have described Corinth. Spon and Wheeler explored the citadel, where they discovered the lost fountain of Pirene; but Chandler did not ascend to Acro-Corinth, and M. Fauvel informed us, that the Turks will not now permit any person to see it. In fact, I could not obtain leave to walk round about it, notwithstanding the applications of my janissary to that effect. For the rest, Pausanias in his Corinth, and Plutarch in his life of Aratus, have given a complete description of the monuments and localities of Acro-Corinth. We alighted at a tolerably neat kan, situated in the centre of the village, and not far from the bazar. The janissary was dispatched for provisions; Joseph cooked the dinner, and, while they were thus engaged, I took a stroll in the environs of the place. CHAPTER V. Corinth-Present State-Historical Recollections-Journey to Megara Mount Oneius - Inhumanity of a Turkish OfficerMount Gerania — Megara―Knowledge of Medicine attributed to the Franks - The Author's Visit to a Patient - Tailless Fowls-Mount Kerato Pyrgo-Conversation with a GreekTemple of Eleusis-Salamis-Supper at Eleusis - View of Athens-The River Cephisus-Arrival at Athens. CORINTH stands at the foot of mountains, in a plain which extends to the sea of Crissa, now the Gulf of Lepanto, the only modern name in Greece that vies in beauty with the ancient appellations. In clear weather, you discern, beyond this sea, the top of Helicon and Parnassus; but from the town itself the Saronic sea is not visible. To obtain a view of it, you must ascend to Acro-Corinth, when you not only overlook that sea, but the eye embraces even the citadel of Athens and Cape Colonna. "It is," says Spon, 66 one of the most delicious views in the world." I can easily believe him, for even from the foot of Acro-Corinth the prospect is enchanting. The houses of the village, which are large, and kept in good repair, are scattered in groups over the plain, embosomed in mulberry, orange, and cypress trees. The vines, which constitute the riches of this district, give a fresh and fertile appearance to the country; they do not climb in festoons upon trees, as in Italy, nor are they kept low, as in the vicinity of Paris. Each root forms a detached verdant bush, round which the grapes hang, in autumn, like crystals. The summits of Parnassus and Helicon, the Gulf of Lepanto, which resembles a magnificent canal, Mount Oneius covered with myrtles, form the horizon of the picture to the north and east; while the Acro-Corinthus, and the mountains of Argolis and Sicyon, rise to the south and west. As to the monuments of Corinth, there is not one of them in existence. M. Foucherot has discovered among their ruins but two Corinthian capitals, the sole memorial of the order invented in that city. Corinth, razed to the ground by Mummius, rebuilt by Julius Cæsar and by Adrian, a second time destroyed by Alaric, again rebuilt by the Venetians, was sacked for the third and last time by Mahomet II. Strabo saw it soon after its re-establishment, during the reign of Augustus. Pausanias admired it in Adrian's time: and, to judge from the monuments which he has described, it must have been at that period a magnificent city. It would be interesting to know in what condition it was in 1173, when it was visited by Benjamin of Tudela; but this Spanish Jew gravely relates that he arrived at Patras, "the city of Antipater, one of the four Grecian kings, who divided among themselves the empire of Alexander." He thence proceeded to Lepanto and to Corinth in the latter he found three hundred Jews, under the superintendence of the venerable rabbis, Leo, Jacob, and Hezekiah; and this was all that Benjamin concerned himself about. : Modern travellers have made us better acquainted with what remains of Corinth after so many calamities. Spon and Wheeler here discovered the ruins |