The daily gazette., 1876-12-14
The tembs at Mycen@.


The Importance of the work accom-
plshed by DIR. Schliemann at MycenI
will be chiefly felt in its influence upon
the theories of modern historians, as re-
CARDS what is generally called the heroic |
or prehistoric age. Since Nicbuhr began |
the reconstruction of ancient history, and |
indeed before his time, the work had
been sedulously pursued, especially by |
German scholars, until not even the Ho-
meric poems had so moch as a peg left |
on which to hang historic fact Achilles
and PrIam and Hector, Agamemnon,
''the king of men," Menelaus, the hus-
band of Helen, and Paris, her paramour
disappeared at the breath of these recon-
structionists, and the Had was only a
collection of poems of which Homer was
not even the poet. ~When the heroic age
was exhausted and the ancient heroes of
Greece and Rome were disposed of in a
way that made them of no more impor-
tance than Oberon and Titania and puck
and the rest of the fairis Of the Mid
summer Nights Dream" the more OBJ
scure heroes Of still later ages were at
tackled and either blotted out altogether
or rehabilitated in all the glories and vir
tues of modern chivalry. Arminius of
the Romans-the Hermann of the Ger
mans-became a myth. Little more was
left Of Charlemagne than would consti-
tute petty predatory chieftain. Joan of
Arc was only crazy enthusiast, who
never led an army against the English or
suffered at the stake. 1t was not Colum
bus who discovered America. The story
of Pocahontas was only pretty inven-
ton of man by the name of Smith.
General Reid, our Minister to Greece,
wrote book to prove that the name of
Hendricli Hudson was in reality plain
Henry Hudson. Bacon wrote Shakes
peare, and the wonder is that nobody
sought TO show that Shakespeare wrote
Bacon.
OFF WITH THU OLD-oN WITH THE NEW,
With the progress of thework ofdestruc-
ton and reconstruction there were quite
delivers among the ruins of ancient cities
and tombs and monuments industriously
restoring the relics of past ages. Layard
uncovered many of the wonders of Baby
lon and Nineveh, and the glories related
by Herodotus were more than proved.
George Smith restored by his labors and
excavations sthe Chaldean story of the
deluge, which proved to be IN every way
more wonderful and interesting than the
Mosaic account of that rather remarkable
event, But the deluge, too, was myth,
anduthe Chaldean storyis unsubstantial in
| its relations to history as the Homenc
poems. The heoric age was synonymous
with the mythical age, and there never
| was any Agamemnon, Clytemnestaa or
Cassandra, Troy itself was a myth, and
even scholars began to doubt whether
| there ever was an ancient MycenH,
which Pausanius saw in its ruins within
| the period of yertiable history. 1t became
q Necessity that somebody should rescue
the legends of the past from the desecrat
| ing hands which brushed them aside with
as little ceremony rs if they had been
taken from the "Arabian Nights" and
were of no more historic value than il
they belonged to the same family with
"Jack and the Beanstalk" or the advent
ure of ",Jack the Giant Killer" Among
those who sought to arrest this devastat-
ing havoc was DIR. Henry Schliemann,
whose discoveries at Troy attracted so
much attention few years.aGo % and whose
more recent explorations mt Mycen:e are
at this moment attracting the profound-
stinterest of scholars and savans inevery
part of the world.
| EARLY LIFE OF THE ENPLoRER.
The man whose name is so prominently
! brought before the learned world by
these late excavations was of low birth
and iron fortune. But even as n child
his imagination was entranced by the
, story OF the Trojan war and the advent
| ures ofUlysScs and Agamemnon. "When
at Kalkherst, a village of Mecklenburg-
Schwerin, at the age of six years., writes
DIR. Schliemann in the preface to his
Ithsque, le Peloponnese, Troie," pub
| lshed in 1869, 81 presented to my father
as a gift for the Christmas of 1852 an ac-
count in bad Latin of the principal events
of the Trojan war and the adventures Of
Ulysses and Agamemnon, little thought
that thirty-siX years later 1 should pub
| lish book on the same subject after the
| pleasure of seeing with my own eyes the
scene of that war and the country If the
heroes awhose names Homer made IA
NOUS.
] But before young Schliemann was af-
forded this pleasure he was compelled to
I undergo years of penury and toll His
| first occupation was that of boy in a
grocery store at Faistenburg, but he quit
ted this place in 1841 to ship before the
mast in n vessel sailing from Hamburg to
Laguayra, in Venezuela. This vessel
was overtaken by a terrible hurricane,
when only fourteen days out, and was
compelled to seek safety at the Isle of
|: Texel. Young Schilemann then deter
| mined to remain permanently in Hol-
land, and by the aid of the German con-
sui at Amsterdam he obtained employ
ment rs an errand boy in a commercial
house, where he was paid 800 francs a
year, half of which he devoted to his
education, which had been much neglec-
ted. He subsequently obtained place
as bookeeper in another establishment
where he was paid 200 francs in the
beginning asd finally 1000 francs. While
! in this situation he continuedto cultivate
his mind, and by tho aid of an old gram
mar, dictionary and a bad translation
of "Telemaque" he succeeded in acquir-
| ing a fair knowledge of the Russian
language. This led to his being sent to
ST. Petersburg as the agent of CONNER
cial house, ,and in 1846 he established him
self in business on his own account in the
Russian capital, As his business in
creased his knowledge of the languages
was supplemented also, and he learned
| Swedish and Polish and subsequently
both modern and ancient Greek. In
1855 he made n tour of the Old World
visiting the different countries of Europe,
Egypt, Syria and Greece, returning to
CT Dafarshurp i'm 1S5D