On the lower level, the famous Lion Gate and the cyclopean walls, similar to those at Tiryns, forming courts and narrow passages, were impressive. It was intriguing to think of the vast fortune that had remained undiscovered for so many centuries in the oblong graves which pitted the stone-flanked circular enclosure that had formed the burial ground. But it was several hundred yards away down the slope that the most remarkable survival of Mycenaean building was to be seen.
This consisted of a great underground chamber, known as the Treasury of Atreus. It is a perfectly symmetrical hollow cone, over forty-five feet in diameter at its base and gradually narrowing in a graceful curve up to a small circular slab over forty feet above floor level. The inner surface of every stone in its walls is curved, and their courses are graduated from big blocks at the bottom to small ones at the top. Between there is no cement, yet there is not enough space to put the blade of a knife. The chamber is reached by a broad, deep corridor, having cyclopean walls, and the lintel stone above the seventeen-foot-high doorway is said to weigh one hundred and twenty tons.
Their guide said that no one knew how, with only human labour, it could ever have been got into position. Robbie could have told him. It had been dragged up a ramp, then rocked into place, in the same way as the Egyptians had built the Pyramids; but that did not detract from his admiration for the wonderful craftsmanship of those ancient people.
Just below the steep entrance to the Acropolis, there was a similar, though smaller, underground chamber called the Tomb of Clytemnestra and, as they walked back to their car, Stephanie asked why it was that Agamemnon should have been buried in the Royal Cemetery but his Queen outside it.
'She was a bad woman,' the guide replied. 'She murdered her husband; so, when she died, the people would not agree to her being buried in the Acropolis.'
As they had breakfasted early, they had brought biscuits, fruit and drinks with them. Leaving the guide by the car, they found a comfortable bank nearby and sat down to their 'elevenses'. When Stephanie had unpacked the basket, she said:
'What rotten luck for Agamemnon that, having survived ten years of fighting outside Troy, he should have been murdered.'
Robbie nodded. 'Yes; and when he got back, he didn't enjoy even one night in his old home. His cousin, Aegisthus, was the nigger in the woodpile, although Clytemnestra played the part of a Lady Macbeth. She never forgave Agamemnon for being the cause of her losing her eldest daughter, Iphigenia, and no sooner had he sailed for Troy than she took Aegisthus for what old-fashioned authors call her "paramour".
'After a while, they gave out that they'd had news from Troy and that Agamemnon had copped it; so they could live together openly as man and wife, and they ruled the kingdom between them. The ten years went by, then they had secret intelligence that Troy had fallen and that Agamemnon was on his way home.
'Some of the Heroes never got home, and others had very rough trips. Odysseus took years and years, because Poseidon had a grudge against him and kept on wrecking his ship in places where he had all sorts of terrifying adventures; but that's another story. Agamemnon was not delayed for very long, and as his wife had arranged for a chain of beacons to be lit as soon as his ship was sighted she had ample warning of his coming.
'His people were delighted when they learned that he wasn't dead after all, and the two younger children he had had by Clytemnestra, a girl named Electra and a boy named Orestes, gave him a terrific welcome. Clytemnestra, too, pretended to be overjoyed to see him; but Cassandra, Priam's daughter, whom Agamemnon had brought with him, threw a fit. You may remember that she had the gift of foreseeing the future, and she implored him not to go into the palace. But Apollo had decreed that no one should ever believe her prophecies, so Agamemnon ignored her warning.
'Everyone was bustling about preparing a huge banquet, and Agamemnon said that he would first like a bath. As soon as he was in it, Clytemnestra came into the bathroom with a big openwork woollen blanket made like a net. She chucked it over his head, and when he tried to push it off his hands got entangled in it. Then out popped her boy friend Aegisthus from behind a curtain. He was armed with a battle-axe and he sliced poor old Agamemnon to pieces with it, so that the water in the big silver bath turned scarlet with his blood.'
'What a horrible business. Did the people rise up and kill them?'
'No, they got away with it; at least, for some years. But Agamemnon's children avenged his death later on. Apparently Clytemnestra hated her younger daughter, Electra, and made her into a sort of Cinderella; but she was a good girl and very attached to her brother Orestes, who was only about twelve at the time. She found out that Aegisthus was planning to do a "Princes in the Tower" act on Orestes-'
'Who were the Princes in the Tower?' Stephanie interrupted to ask.
Robbie smiled. 'I forgot you might not know. They were two young English Princes who were believed to have been murdered by their wicked uncle. Anyhow, when Electra learned that Aegisthus intended to do Orestes in, so that he could not grow up and claim the throne, she managed to have him smuggled out and away to Phocis, where King Strophius gave him a home.
'Orestes and King Strophius's son, Pylades, became terrific buddies and when they reached "man's estate", as the saying is, they decided to take a trip to Mycenae. Of course, they went in disguise and with them they took an urn containing wood ash. On their arrival they went to pay their respects at Agamemnon's grave, and there they found Electra putting flowers on it.
'She didn't recognize Orestes; so he told her that they had come from Phocis, that Orestes was dead and that they had brought his ashes to be buried in the family vault. She was frightfully upset; so Orestes then told her the truth, and when she had dried her tears she took the two chaps into the palace.
'Producing the urn, Orestes told the same yarn to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. They were so pleased to hear that they no longer need fear Orestes turning up one fine morning with an army at his back, that they got up from the cellar a special bottle for their guests. No sooner was the butler out of the way than Pylades pulled a knife out of his stocking and stuck in into Aegisthus's middle and Orestes, only pausing to tell his mama who he was, did the same to her.'
Stephanie frowned. 'Whatever she had done, it was a terrible thing to kill his own mother.'
'Yes; that's just what his people thought. They were glad to be rid of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, but scared stiff that the gods would show what they, too, thought of Orestes' deed, by putting a curse on the country. None of them would even sit down to a cut off the joint with him. In fact, some of them actually suggested stoning him to death; but their priests said the gods would not take it out of them provided they drove him out of the country.
'By then the thought of what he had done was giving him awful nightmares and daily fits of the staggers; so, seeing that he was in such poor shape, his sister and his faithful friend went into exile with him. Apollo then appeared to him in a dream and told him that he must dree his weird for a year in the forests of Arcadia.'
'What is one's "weird" and how does one dree it?' Stephanie
asked.
'I gather it means traipsing around with everyone hating you on sight, and being haunted by every sort of bugaboo. Anyhow that's what happened to Orestes, and Electra and Pylades didn't fare much better. They got married; but they couldn't have had much of a honeymoon, living like gipsies in the woods and watching Orestes gradually going crackers. The Furies made the poor chap's life such hell that he seriously considered doing himself in, but before taking the plunge he thought he would try begging Apollo to let up and call off his tormentors.