[Sidenote: Silence of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.]
I have long since explained (in Schliemann's _Mycenæ_) why I discredit the whole story. Holm is the only writer who seems to feel with me the difficulty of supposing such an event to have been passed over with indifference by the patriotic Greek States, whom the Mycenæans and Tirynthians had joined in the great Persian crisis. And when Holm urges political expediency to account for Sparta's non-interference, he surely forgets that the literary men of Athens were restrained by no such considerations. Thucydides (i. 102) mentions Argos at this moment: is it likely that even he would pass over this territorial aggrandisement of Argos without a syllable of notice? But apart from this mass of reticences, what of Æschylus, the comrade of the Mycenæans on the field of battle, what of Sophocles, what of Euripides, all of whom ought to have celebrated Mycenæ, and who celebrate Argos instead? They seem to have absolutely forgotten Mycenæ! What of the absolute reticence of the remains found by Schliemann, not one of which belongs to the fifth or sixth century B.C., but all to a long anterior period? The whole affair is, therefore, placed two centuries too late, and, for all we know, may not be derived from Ephorus at all, but from some inferior source, or from Diodorus' own combination. Even if Ephorus was the source, I refuse to accept his authority.
When we turn to Plutarch, whose object was indeed rather artistic and moral than historical, we are in a far better plight. For although his _Lives_ of Themistocles and Cimon do not give us much material of a trustworthy kind beyond what we know from Thucydides, this is not the case with the _Life of Pericles_, in which he has collected much valuable information from sources now lost to us, which all the researches of the Germans have not even succeeded in specifying by name. Our whole picture of the splendour of Athens in her greatest moment is derived not so much from the vague phrases of the speeches in Thucydides as from the deeply interesting facts preserved by Plutarch. His brilliant sketch and the narrative of Thucydides have been illustrated, since the days of Curtius and of Grote, by the recovery of a large number of inscriptions, chiefly from the Acropolis at Athens, recording the quotas paid from the tribute of the several allied cities to Athena and to the other gods. These lists, together with several fragments of treaties with the various cities, and the lists of offerings recently found at Delos, have afforded Holm the materials for his fascinating chapters upon Imperial Athens[96:1].