Volume 8 — VIII THE MAINLAND OF GREECE (continued 2)

There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenæ in the second century A.D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyæ at Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most wonderful things in all Greece.

Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenæ, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. But one more remark seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Greek building in its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be seen at Eleutheræ, or any other Greek fort, but still the really analogous buildings are to be found in far distant lands—in the raths of Ireland, and the barrows of the Crimea.

"And yet how lovely in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men, are thou! Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now: Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow, Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough: "Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild: Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."

—From Byron's "Childe Harold."