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Updated: June 29, 2025
Great movements in the arts always owe some debt to the periods that have preceded them, but Minoan and Mycenaean art, at any rate in regard to architecture, was rather the last word of a decaying civilization than the first herald of the glorious art of Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C. We are still far back in remote ages, remote that is so far as Greek art is concerned, anywhere between 2000 and 1000 B. C. or even earlier, back in the Minoan age of Crete with its rudimentary architecture, and its relatively high excellence in the crafts, and in the age of Mycenae and Tiryns, the age that produced the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and that strange half-barbaric work, if I may be pardoned the term, the Treasury of Atreus.
Byamee is the originator of things less archaic and important than totemism. There is a large stone fish-trap at Brewarrina, on the Barwan River. It is said to have been made by Byamee and his gigantic sons, just as later Greece attributed the walls of Tiryns to the Cyclops, or as Glasgow Cathedral has been explained in legend as the work of the Picts.
The ancient citadel of Agamemnon stands in the plain of Argos, on an isolated hill 912 feet in height. 'Some remains of the circuit wall, says Pausanias, 'are still to be seen, and the gate which has lions over it. These were built, they say, by the Cyclopes, who made the wall at Tiryns for Proitos.
Then with Danae and Andromeda, his mother and his wife, he went from Seriphus. He did not go to Argos, the country that his grandfather had ruled over, although the people there wanted Perseus to come to them, and be king over them. He took the kingdom of Tiryns in exchange for that of Argos, and there he lived with Andromeda, his lovely wife out of Ethopia.
As he found one burnt and buried city under another, for many times was Troy destroyed, and extended his investigations to Tiryns and other ancient cities, one volume of splendid research followed another, until the trader had compelled the unwilling scholar to confess that he must dig for both history and art.
Our positive knowledge of Greek history begins about the middle of the second millennium B.C.; we have information of this period in the ruins of Mycenæ and Tiryns and other places.
Lycosura was walled by the Pelasgians between four and five centuries prior to the introduction of the Cyclopean masonry in the building of the city of Tiryns. Sir William Gell maintains the possibility of tracing the walls of Lycosura near the place now called Surias To Kastro.
For a short after-breakfast ramble nothing is comparable to that green space on the summit of the citadel. Hither I wend my way every morning, to take my fill of the panorama and meditate upon the vanity of human wishes. The less you have seen of localities like Tiryns the more you will be amazed at this impressive and mysterious fastness.
The chief cities of Hellas are Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Orchomenos. Crete, although its chiefs, Idomeneus and Meriones, are only of secondary rank among the heroes of the Iliad, is obviously one of the most important of Grecian lands. The centres of power, then, in the Homeric story are widely different from those of the historic period.
Even the dwelling-houses of the chieftains who ruled at Tiryns and Mycenae are known to us by their remains. The palace of Tiryns occupied the entire southern end of the citadel, within the massive walls above described. Its ruins were uncovered in 1884- 85. The plan and the lower portions of the walls of an extensive complex of gateways, open courts, and closed rooms were thus revealed.
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