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Updated: May 7, 2025
Of these there came fifty ships, and in each one embarked young men of the Boiotians an hundred and twenty. And they that dwelt in Aspledon and Orchomenos of the Minyai were led of Askalaphos and Ialmenos, sons of Ares, whom Astyoche conceived of the mighty god in the palace of Aktor son of Azeus, having entered her upper chamber, a stately maiden; for mighty Ares lay with her privily.
O Graces, ye Goddesses, adored of Eteocles, ye that love Orchomenos of the Minyae, the ancient enemy of Thebes, when no man bids me, let me abide at home, but to the houses of such as bid me, boldly let me come with my Muses. Nay, neither the Muses nor you Graces will I leave behind, for without the Graces what have men that is desirable? with the Graces of song may I dwell for ever!
So hail ye and farewell: I on Poseidon and holy Isthmos, and on the lake-shores of Onchestos will throw the mantle of my song, and will among the glories of this man make glorious also the story of his father Asopodoros' fate, and his new country Orchomenos, which, when he drave ashore on a wrecked ship, harboured him amid his dismal hap . But now once more hath the fortune of his house raised him up to see the fair days of the old time: and he who hath suffered pain beareth forethought within his soul.
Nay over all Hellas if thou searchest, thou shalt find more than one sight can view. O king Zeus the Accomplisher, grant them with so light feet to move through life, give them all honour, and sweet hap of their goodly things. This ode was to be sung, probably by a chorus of boys, at the winner's city Orchomenos, and most likely in the temple of the three or Graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia.
These arguments proving successful with the allies, they immediately marched upon Orchomenos, all except the Argives, who, although they had consented like the rest, stayed behind at first, but eventually joined the others.
It is impossible to find, in this extremely interesting monument or in the domed chamber of Orchomenos in Boeotia, any trace of future developments in Greek architecture. Both in intention and in its psychological background it seems almost as remote from the Doric Temple as the Great Pyramid itself. In point of fact architecture was still in a rudimentary stage.
In the southern, more congenial conditions permitted a form of civilization to commence, of which the rude Cyclopean structures here and there met with, such as the ruins of Orchomenos, the lion gate of Mycenæ, the tunnel of Lake Copais, are perhaps the vestiges. At what period this intrusive Indo-Germanic column made its attack cannot be ascertained.
The discoveries which were made during the last quarter of the nineteenth century by Schliemann and his successors at Mycencæ, Tiryns, Orchomenos, and elsewhere, were quite conclusive as to the former existence of a civilization quite equal to, and in all probability the original of, that which is described for us in the Homeric poems; but it was not until the treasures of Knossos and Phæstos began to be revealed in 1900 and the subsequent years that it became manifest that what was known as the Mycenæan civilization was itself only the decadence of a far richer and fuller culture, whose fountain-head and whose chief sphere of development had been in Crete.
In some cases a single county would have three or four cities, each hostile to the others, like the cities of Thebes, Platæa, Thespiæ, and Orchomenos, in Boeotia; standing ready, like fierce dogs each in its separate kennel, to fall upon one another with teeth and claws.
The primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the oldest one also of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly like the thesauroi of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping, and closed by a large stone cover. The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in Arpinum and in Mycenae.
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