chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _M. Duncker, History of Greece, book 2 (volume 1)._

_C. O. Müller, History and Antiquity of the Doric Race, introduction, and book 1, chapters 1-5._

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapters 3-8 (volume 2)._

See, also, DORIANS AND IONIANS; ACHAIA; ÆOLIANS; THESSALY; and BŒOTIA.

GREECE: The Migrations to Asia Minor and the Islands of the Ægean. Æolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies.

See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.

GREECE: Mycenæ and its kings. The unburied memorials.

"Thucydides says that before the Dorian conquest, the date of which is traditionally fixed at B. C. 1104, Mycenae was the only city whence ruled a wealthy race of kings. Archaeology produces the bodies of kings ruling at Mycenae about the twelfth century and spreads their wealth under our eyes. Thucydides says that this wealth was brought in the form of gold from Phrygia by the founder of the line, Pelops. Archaeology tells us that the gold found at Mycenae may very probably have come from the opposite coast of Asia Minor which abounded in gold; and further that the patterns impressed on the gold work at Mycenae bear a very marked resemblance to the decorative patterns found on graves in Phrygia. Thucydides tells us that though Mycenae was small, yet its rulers had the hegemony over a great part of Greece. Archæology shews us that the kings of Mycenae were wealthy and important quite out of proportion to the small city which they ruled, and that the civilisation which centred at Mycenae spread over south Greece and the Aegean, and lasted for some centuries at least. It seems to me that the simplest way of meeting the facts of the case is to suppose that we have recovered at Mycenae the graves of the Pelopid race of monarchs. It will not of course do to go too far. … It would be too much to suppose that we have recovered the bodies of the Agamemnon who seems in the Iliad to be as familiar to us as Caesar or Alexander, or of his father Atreus, or of his charioteer and the rest. {1568} We cannot of course prove the Iliad to be history; and if we could, the world would be poorer than before. But we can insist upon it that the legends of heroic Greece have more of the historic element in them than anyone supposed a few years ago. … Assuming then that we may fairly class the Pelopidae as Achaean, and may regard the remains at Mycenae as characteristic of the Achaean civilisation of Greece, is it possible to trace with bolder hand the history of Achaean Greece? Certainly we gain assistance in our endeavour to realize what the pre-Dorian state of Peloponnesus was like. We secure a hold upon history which is thoroughly objective, while all the history which before existed was so vague and imaginative that the clear mind of Grote refused to rely upon it at all. But the precise dates are more than we can venture to lay down, in the present condition of our knowledge. … The Achaean civilisation was contemporary with the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty (B. C. 1700-1400). It lasted during the invasions of Egypt from the north (1300-1100). When it ceased we cannot say with certainty. There is every historical probability that it was brought to a violent end in the Dorian invasion. The traditional date of that invasion is B. C. 1104. But it is obvious that this date cannot be relied upon."

_P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chapters 2-3._

ALSO IN: _R. Schliemann, Mycenæ._

_C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations,