Strabo could not imagine where Mycenæ could have stood. He says, that not a single vestige remained. Pausanias, however, who lived at a much later period, found its colossal ruins, and described them as they are seen at this very day.
"It is not," says Dr. Clarke, "merely the circumstance of seeing the architecture and the sculpture of the heroic ages, which renders a view of Mycenæ one of the highest gratifications a literary traveller can experience; the consideration of its remaining at this time, exactly as Pausanias saw it in the second century, and in such a state of preservation, that an alto-relievo, described by him, yet exists in the identical position he has assigned for it, adds greatly to the interest excited by these remarkable ruins: indeed, so singularly does the whole scene correspond with his account of the place, that, in comparing them together, it might be supposed, a single hour had not elapsed since he was himself upon the spot."
Everything[7] conspires to render these ruins pre-eminently interesting; whether we consider their venerable age, the allusions made to them in such distant periods, when they were visited by Sophocles, Euripides and other poets and historians of Greece, as the classical antiquities of their country; or the indisputable examples they afford of the architecture, sculpture, mythology and customs of the heroic ages.
The walls consist of huge unhewn masses of stone, so fitted and adapted to each other, as to have given rise to an opinion, that the power of man was inadequate to the labour necessary in building them.
One of the first things that is noticed is a tumulus of an immense size. This has been opened, and the entrance is no longer concealed. This sepulchre has been erroneously called the "treasury of Atreus;" and the "monument of Agamemnon." "That this sepulchre," says Clarke, "could not have been the treasury of Atreus, is evident from Pausanias's description, because it was _without_ the walls of the Acropolis; and that it cannot be the monument of Agamemnon, because it was _within_ the citadel."
In regard to the tomb of Agamemnon, the following account has been given by Mr. Turner: "I entered by a subterraneous passage, opened by Lord Elgin, and was surprised to find myself in an immense dome, about ninety feet high, and fifty round the bottom. It had two doors, one into the open air, and another into an interior chamber, which was thoroughly dark, and, I was told, very small. It was built of immense stones, and was in excellent preservation. The tomb being subterraneous, there are no traces above-ground, and you might walk over it for years, without suspecting that you were walking over so interesting a ruin."