Lions in the rain

Lions in the spring rain

What is this desd man smiling about?

A myceneaean flower

Strictly speaking it is not lions, but lionesses. But no matter; exactness cannot overturn venerable usage. It is early summer and it has been raining on and off. I was counting on sunshine, but the sky above the citadel was heavy with clouds, the occasional drizzle bringing out the deep smells of the soil covered with wild flowers. The lionesses were smudged by the water sent down by the gods, but they stood their guard unperturbed, as they have done for the past three and a half millenia at least.

On Prophet Elijah hill flanking the ruins the world motor championship was holding one of its events. Ominous-looking race cars thundered down the dirt path winding around the hill sending clouds of dust into the sky. As I was coming in I thought that the brush was on fire. It was an odd encounter, the stillness of the glorious sepulchers trying to assert itself against the brashness of modernity. In the end the dead always prevail.

Pausanias says that Agamemnon and those slain with him during that fatal homecoming symposium (this is the tradition that he recounts) were buried inside the walls of the city. So were Cassandra (although Laconian Amyclae disputes this), as well as Electra and her children from Pylades. I must confess that it sounds like a pedestrian let-down to hear that Electra, after the sound and fury of those tragic events still dinning in our heads, married her brother's reticent companion and ended her days as a mere housewife. Still, Pausanias' matter-of-factness has its uses: he was after all Schliemann's guide in his quixotic enterprise. Clytemnestra and Aigisthos, on the contrary, were buried outside the walls we are told, for it was not "proper" to put them side by side with their victims. Two tholos tombs outside the fortifications have been conventionally named for them.

It all depends on what walls we are talking about. The ones still standing, the cyclopean foundations together with the gate plus the later additions, are certainly enclosing the royal fortress and palace. But is this the whole of the city? It does not seem ample enough to accomodate the entire population of tillers of the surrounding fields, artisans, soldiers etc. The northern quarter is a warren of very narrow passages and tiny cells: quite a cramped place One thinks there must have been a far wider enclosure. If this is true, then the stupendous tholos tomb designated as the "treasury of Atreus" (in full knowledge that it is no such thing) a few hundred meters from the citadel may have been situated inside the walls in this wider sense. Its magnificence attests to its being the resting place of an illustrious royal personage -why not that of Agamemnon?

That it is not the treasury of Atreus and his sons is clear from Pausanias' statement that they stored their gold in "underground vaults" (ὑπόγαια οἰκοδομήματα) near the palace. Just like the Lion Gate this tomb has been continuously visible since ancient times: it was never covered by soil and other debris. During his sojourn in this part of Greece Elgin took with him fragments of the decorative columns of its entrance (thank God he could not carry the whole structure too). So it has always just stood above ground, an empty shell of course after having been robbed of its funerary treasures, but a welcome place of refuge from the inclement elements for shepherds and travellers across the ages. In fact the most moving thing about it is, in one sense, its blackened roof, a record of fires lit by countless common people to protect themselves and their animals in the very halls of the great king.

The graves that Schliemann and Stamatakis unearthed are, of course, not those of the Atreids. They are about three centuries older, and probably belong to rulers of the dynasty of Perseus. We do not know their names, in fact there are no names of any kind on this precious hill. But who cares? We have their faces. We have the stern, grave, utterly imposing face of the bearded king, who is the epitome of sacred rulership. His eyes are closed but he is still staring at us across time. And then we have that other one, shaven and slightly pudgy, brimming with an understated joie de vivre. And then there is another one with a marked resemblance to a suffering Christ. And finally we have the king with the moustache sheletering a rather mischievous smile in his eternal sleep. It's up to us to give them names, to fill their empty places with vital bodies and their august attire, to remember their passions and defeats, to mould their poetic abscence into living symbols. And thankfully we have tragic song to lead us in this arbitrary, but so essential, journey.

And we must also name the two royal children covered in gold leaf. We have to create in mind the deeds of the great leaders that they did not live to be.