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 disorder
of the graves and the condition of the corpses was due, not to hasty
interment, but to the collapse of the roofs of the graves; the grave
furniture was shown not to belong by any means entirely to one period;
and the number and sex of the persons interred did not agree with
the legend, or with the account of Pausanias. Admiration turned
to incredulity, and even to undeserved ridicule of the enthusiastic
explorer; but the lapse of time has made critics less inclined
to mock at Schliemann's eager belief, and it is largely conceded
now that while perhaps the tombs may not be actually those of the
great King of the Achaeans and his friends, they are at least those
which were long held to be such by tradition, and which Pausanias
intended to denote by his descriptions.
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