with the debris brought down by the collapse of the roofs
lay human bodies, one in the smallest grave, five in the largest,
and three in each of the others; and along with them had been buried
one of the most remarkable hoards of treasure that ever greeted
the eye of a discoverer.

[Illustration VI: THE CUP-BEARER, KNOSSOS (_p_. 67)

From 'The Palace of Minos,' by Arthur J. Evans, in _The Monthly
Review_]

Gold was there in profusion, beaten into masks for the faces of the
dead (perhaps to protect them from the evil eye), into head-bands,
breast-pieces, plaques of all shapes and sizes, and wrought into
bracelets, rings, pins, baldrics, and dagger and sword hilts. Along
with the gold was store of wrought ivory, amber, silver, bronze,
and alabaster. One grave alone contained no fewer than sixty swords
and daggers; another, in which women only were buried, held six
diadems, fifteen pendants, eleven neck-coils, eight hair ornaments,
ten gold grasshoppers with gold chains, one butterfly, four griffins,
four lions, ten ornaments, each consisting of two stags, ten with
representations of two lions attacking an ox, three fine intaglios,
two pairs of gold scales, fifty-one embossed ornaments, and more
than seven hundred ornaments for sewing on garments! A few scattered
objects and a sixth grave were found later, the latter, however,
not by Dr. Schliemann. The mere money-value of the finds amounted
to something like four thousand pounds sterling!

Money-value, however, was nothing in Schliemann's eyes compared
with the thought that he had discovered the actual graves which
Pausanias saw, and in which Agamemnon and his companions were buried
after their tragic end at the hands of Aigisthos and Klytemnestra.
To his eager enthusiasm many of the circumstances of the discovery
seemed to lend probability to such a supposition. The disorder in
which the bodies were found, one with its head crushed down upon
the bosom, the half-shut eye of one of the mute company, and other
indications, seemed to point to such haste in the interment as might
have been expected in the case of a King and his companions who had
met with so tragic a fate. Accordingly, the discoverer announced
in his famous telegram to the King of the Hellenes, and maintained
in his works, that he had found Agamemnon and his household. For a
time this view and his enthusiastic advocacy of it gained the ear
of the public; but gradually it became apparent that the disorde