The New York herald., 1876-12-11
Tho Tomb OF Ag.msmnon.

The startling discoveries on the site Of the
ancient Mycenm BY DIR. Henri Schliemann,
which the HERALD had the honor Of exclu-
siTely announcing yesterday, will deserve
and obtain the deepest attention OF
scholars and Hellenists all over the
world. They take us back to one OF
those dim periods called prehistoric" over
which wave of physical oblivion had swept.
and of which only shadowy story re-
mained. The body of things in these ages
died and was buried, and the spirit lived
only on the air of the breath. or foated,
clothed in spectral form, before the eye Of
the poet ..in fine frenzy rolling" To bring
these ages before us in something palpable-
that can be looked at, touched and weighed
is '.materialization" on the most exalted
scale What would Byron, who poured out
his enthusiasm upon mound in the Trojan
plain that he believed to have been the grave
of Hector, have given to lay his hand
upon the tomb reared above the dust
of Agamemnon, the mighty liking of men?"
The immortal interest centred in the great
epic of Homer secures for this discovery OF
the enthusiastic German doctor spell
bound audience larger than that listening to
the disinterred story Of any of tho other
great archaeological discoveries of modern
times. 1t possibly outdates them all in an
tiquity. If the chronologies are sus-
tanned it touches an epoch coeval
with the earliest discovered records
of Assyria-the reign of Tiglath Pileser I.
1t brings to light civilization four CEN
turies older than the foundation of Rome,
two centuries before the birth of Homer,
Corebus in the Olympic games at Ellis.
six centuries before a stone was laid
there of the temple of Jupiter, about which
the German savans are laboring by the
banks Of the Alpheus, five hundred years
before the Temple of Diana at Ephesus
WAS begun; yea, century before Saul was
King of Israel. When We look upon the
marvels of Grccian art the exquisite per-
fection of the workmanship, the complex
lines Of thought centred in the details Of
the Oldest Greek monuments previously
brought to light, we feel instinctively
that they are the products of century
after century of growing civilization.
feeling of artistic despair takes possession
Oft the beholder that the Oldest seems the most
perfect until the belief begins to grow taat
Grecian art and poetry and philosophy
must have sprung into the world
full grown and fully armed as the
fabled Minerva sprung in the divine
pangs of Jupiter from his brain. All that we
knew or apparently could know, reduced
itself to this fancy SO repugnant to the ex-
perience of mans toilsome progress in the
world around us. From the excavations of
Mycenm come apparently the corroboration
of what we think in all logic should
have been. Traditions that had been
embalmed in the brightest song we have
seen waved away by imperious theorists as
absolute myths. The patient German, with
his spade, digs the grave of theorists at the
same time that he brings the heroes to the
light of day. We shall await with the
greatest impaticnce the details of the
discoveries-an impatience which all the
learned, all the lovers of ancient Greece
will share The enthusiasm with which
the scholarly Emperor of Brazil is reported
lately to have spoken Of DR.. Schliemann's
discoveries after visit to Mycenm is now
explained Even an Emperor might feel
proud to stand beside the simple savant
when before them was the tomb of Agamem.
non.