These were built, they say, by the Cyclopes,
who made the wall at Tiryns for Proitos. Among the ruins at Mycenae
is the fountain called Perseia, and some subterranean buildings
belonging to Atreus and his children, where their treasures were
kept. There is the tomb of Atreus, and of those whom Aigisthos
slew at the banquet, on their return from Ilion with Agamemnon....
There is also the tomb of Agamemnon, and that of Eurymedon the
charioteer, and the joint tomb of Teledamos and Pelops, the twin
children of Kassandra, whom Aigisthos slew with their parents while
still mere babes.... Klytemnestra and Aigisthos were buried a little
way outside the walls, for they were not thought worthy to be within,
where Agamemnon lay and those who fell with him.'
Persuaded in his own mind of the truth of this statement, Schliemann,
while clearing the Lion Gate, and investigating the already rifted
tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus, caused a great pit, 113 feet
square, to be dug within the walls at a distance of about 40 feet
from the Lion Gate. With the most extraordinary good fortune he
had hit upon the exact spot which he sought, and had even almost
exactly proportioned his pit to the area within which the treasures
lay. After only a few days' digging, slabs of stone, vertically
placed, began to come to light, and before long a complete double
ring of stone slabs, 87 feet in diameter, was disclosed (Plate
II.
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