THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
'
WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 101
WHO WERE THE MAKERS ?
and ashlar styles.
The former is universally and the latter is
generall}^ admitted to be later than the Cyclopean. Thus acconipauying Egyptian scarabs as going back to a period
the
when the Acheans had not yet set foot in the Peloponnesus.
archaeological evidence confirms the tradition that the great
Even if we had not the evidence of Homer for the existence
days of Tiryns were anterior to those of Mycenae.
of Proetus and Perseus, we might nevertheless place considerable
confidence in the native traditions. For in the Heraeum
Nauplia. Tliis was the ancient seaport of Argolis. It stood
we have an immemorial
twelve stades distant from Tiryns. Here, as we shrine, where the contirmity of religious
saw, Mycenean
cult and tradition remained unbroken, no matter who was the
remains including examples of the pre-Phoenician script have
master of
been found. Its founder was Nauplius, son of Poseidon and
Argolis. Hence it was that the Argive chronology
was
Amymone he was therefore an
; autochthon; Palamedes was
computed according to the year of the consecration of the
his son. The latter was the inventor of writing, according to
priestess of Hera^ The historian Hellanicus (480 39.5 B.C.)
a Greek tradition up to the wrote a
present treated with the same
history of tiie priestesses of the Ai-give Hera, which
scepticism with which the story of Cadmus must have been of
being the introducer
of the Phoenician letters into Greece was received until
priestesses which seem to have been set up in
great importance for Greek chronology. The
statues of the
our own generation, when increased the lifetime of each stood in front of the
knowledge has shown the
temple-, and thus
served to check the
statement to be intrinsically true. When we deal with
accuracy of written or oral tradition.
the question
Mycenean pictographs, we shall return to him Evidently much importance was attached to the.se statues, for
(p. 211).
According to Pausanias^ tells us
Paiisanias, Danaus planted an although the temple had been burned
Egyptian colony
down
there. In historic times the city still kept apart from the rest
(428 B.C.) through the negligence of Chrysis (or Chryseis)
of Argolis, and it was only at a later peiiod that it became the
yet "in spite of this great calamity the Argives did not take
down
port of the statue of
Argos, It continued long to be a member of Chryseis, and it still stands in front of the
tliat very
amphictjony which burnt
worshijjped Poseidon at Calauria.
temple."
In
We shall find Xau])lius in close relations with the temple there would have been the dedications of
Pelasgian
kings of Tegea, engaged in tra