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Proto-Greeks
From Honour & Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History, 4th ed.
THE AEGEAN
Late in the third millennium BC, about the time the Middle Kingdom began in Egypt and Akkadian rule collapsed in Mesopotamia and two or three hundred years after the foundation of the cities of the Indus Valley,
another civilization emerged on the island of Crete in the Aegean, or eastern Mediterranean, about 350 miles
north-east of the Nile delta. It had contacts with Egypt and with Mesopotamia (through intermediaries in the
Levant), but was an autonomous growth, differing in many respects from the others. They were river-valley
civilizations. This was a sea-faring, island culture. Whereas the others controlled and were sustained by vast
territories, this was confined to a relatively small geographical area, Crete being only some 150 miles long and 36
miles across at its widest. The island enjoyed, however, a temperate climate, without the droughts and floods
which plagued the others, and was more than self sufficient agriculturally, producing grain, wine and enough
olive oil to export - and probably enough wool as well. It was much more fertile then than it is today. The sea,
which provided the means of communication for trade in raw materials and artifacts, also protected Crete from
foreign invasion, though for little more than 500 years (c. 2050-1450 BC). The influence if not the power of
Minoan Crete has recently been discovered in Egypt where the palace at Avaris (capital of the northern Egyptian
kingdom ruled by the Hyksos from about 1670 to 1570 BC) contains frescoes depicting typical Minoan scenes
and even costumes. Practically nothing is known of its history except that its buildings were destroyed about 1730
BC, probably by an earthquake, and were very soon reconstructed. A second disaster at the beginning of the
fifteenth century BC, perhaps the result of a volcanic eruption, was followed by an invasion from the mainland of
Greece.
Cretan civilization was centered on the palace rather than the temple (as in Sumer), the town (as in the Indus
Valley) or the tomb (as in Egypt). There were no large temples: religious shrines were in domestic buildings or
scattered through the countryside, in caves, by springs or on hilltops. Towns were simply unplanned
conglomerations of small dwellings without fortifications such as surrounded the settlements on the Cyclades and
also Troy (where the sixth of a series of towns built one on top of another is approximately contemporary with
those on Crete). The Cretans buried their dead collectively in communal ossuaries. The few more elaborate tombs,
like those at Knossos and Isopata which seem to have belonged to a ruling family, are stark and modest by
Egyptian standards. But the palaces at Knossos, Phaistos (each of which covered between 3 and 4 acres— about 1
to 1.5 hectares), the somewhat smaller ones at Mallia, Ayia Triadha and Zakros, and the several neighboring
'villas', lacked for nothing in richness of decoration and furnishings.
Whether these palaces belonged to different families of rulers or to a single one is not known. There may even
have been a transition from a confederation of princes to a unified monarchy. All that is certain from
archeological evidence is that Minoan Crete had a clearly stratified social structure that the economy functioned
by a process of redistribution (without money) and that government was effective enough for towns and
individual buildings to do without massive fortifications. The palaces were built near the richest agricultural land
and their vast storage areas reveal that they were centers for the collection and redistribution of the four main
products: wool, grain, wine and olive oil (the latter used for lighting, cleansing the body and as a base for scent as
well as for cooking). In a single store at Knossos there were more than 400 huge pottery jars, presumably for oil,
with a total capacity of some 20,000 gallons. It was in this context, intermediate between barter and commerce,
that Minoan writing developed for the palace accounts. Inventories of goods were inscribed on clay tablets in the
later of two scripts, called Linear B. The language was a primitive form of Greek.
The subject matter of Minoan art was derived mainly from the natural world. The sea provided many motifs:
underwater plants float and sway languidly, octopuses extend their tentacles with decorative rather than menacing
effect, and dolphins play happily on little gold cups and large pottery vases. Birds, beasts and plants enlivened
the painted walls of the palaces. On the island of Thera one house had a room entirely painted with flowers
springing from hillocks and with birds flying above. These are the earliest pure landscapes anywhere, certainly
painted before 1500 BC, although fragments suggest that there may have been others like them in the palaces and
villas of Crete itself. Indeed, flowers bloom everywhere on Minoan art….
MYCENAE AND THE MAINLAND
The early civilization of mainland Greece is generally called Mycenean, though this is something of a misnomer
and archeologists now prefer Helladic (a term also used for the earlier prehistoric culture). It flourished in a
number of small 'states' or kingdoms extending across the Peloponnese from Mycenae and nearby Tiryns in the
east to Pylos on the southwest coast and included Vaphio, Orchomenos and Lema, all of which seem to have been
independent of, and sometimes at war with, one another. They shared, nevertheless, a common background and
language (an early form of Greek, which belongs to the so-called IndoEuropean group), had similar buildings and
weapons, and the same burial customs. There is reason to think that this civilization initially followed a path
parallel to that of Minoan Crete. As bronze was increasingly used for weapons and implements, as larger and
more strongly defended towns were built and the land was more productively cultivated, a redistributive
economic system evolved. Helladic rulers accumulated the surplus necessary to build palaces and support artists
working in such costly materials as gold from Nubia in southern Egypt, ivory from Africa or India by way of
Syria, and amber all the way from the shores of the Baltic.
This mainland civilization differed in many respects from that of Minoan Crete. Its massive fortifications,
numerous weapons and other remains suggest a fiercer and more aggressive people. Local chieftains or kings of
the first half of the second millennium were buried with grave goods which, though modest in comparison with
those of the kings of Ur or the pharaohs of Egypt, are of an opulence unprecedented ill the Aegean world and give
some indication of their material wealth and power. There can be little doubt that by this date the Helladic states
were already moving towards the stratified social system recorded in Linear B inscriptions at Pylos –a pyramid
with the chieftain or king, sometimes assisted by a leader, at the top; then a 'nobility' who held land on a feudal
footing in return for agricultural produce and service in war; then the artisans and land-workers, followed at the
lowest level by slaves. .
Little is known about the early buildings at Mycenae contemporary with the first shaft graves, which, it has
recently been argued, may be as early as 1850 BC. They were probably of mud-brick and wood, not of stone. The
surviving remains of the city and citadel appear to date back to about 1700 BC, with the royal palace on the
hilltop isolated in the centre of a roughly triangular area enclosed by a massive stone wall following the contour
of the hill (2,53). A few houses and a granary (also the shaft grave circle) lay just inside the citadel wall. The mass
of the population lived below in a conglomeration of houses of varying size, simply constructed of sun-dried
brick, with flat roofs and beaten earth floors. None of these
houses is still standing, but unearthed fragments suggest that
some of them had painted decorations. In times of danger the
people presumably moved up to the citadel. The same general
system (similar to that established earlier at Troy) was followed
at Tiryns with variations conditioned by the nature of the site.
The contrast between these forbidding hilltop fortresses and the
very lightly defended cities and palaces of Minoan Crete could
hardly be more striking. Similarities with the Hittite
fortifications at Boghazkoy in Anatolia, on the other hand, are
quite evident.
The citadel walls, especially, are overpoweringly impressive
–obviously intended to look, as well as be, impregnable. Built of
2, 53 Plan of the Citadel, Mycenae
earth and rubble, they were faced with massive rough-hewn blocks
later called Cyclopean because they seemed to have been set in place by the mythical one-eyed giant Cyclops.
The main gate at Mycenae is constructed of three giant megaliths - i.e. a trilithon, as at Stonehenge – with a
carved panel filling a relieving arch above (a false arch made by corbelling the blocks of the wall to relieve the
lintel stone of the trilithon from the weight of the superstructure). As bold and forceful as the building it adorns,
this carving is the most imposing example of Mycenean sculpture to survive; but its precise significance is
unknown. The central column could be either a dynastic or a religious symbol, and although the two headless
creatures heraldically posed on either side are usually described as lions, they may well have been sphinxes or
griffins with human or bird heads of bronze, colored stone, or some other medium. (The heads were attached
separately.)
The economic system on which Mycenean civilization was based began to break down by about 1300 BC. A
change in climate affecting agriculture may have been the initial cause, but before the end of the thirteenth
century BC there was an invasion by people from the north, named Dorians in later literature. This was part of a
major movement of population which caused havoc throughout the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, bringing
about the fall of the Hittite civilization in Anatolia as well as threatening Egypt. A massive wall seems to have
been built across the isthmus of Corinth, but this final monument of Helladic architectural engineering was unable
to stem the tide of invaders and prevent the devastation of the Peloponnese. Cities were sacked, palaces destroyed.
Civilization was snuffed out and with it the art of writing. But the ruins of the great Helladic citadels survived,
inspiring myths and legends which have come down to us in the form of poetry, the greatest epics ever written,
the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer composed in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, the Odes of Pindar and the
supreme achievements of Classical Greek drama by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides of the fifth century BC.
From Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 10th ed.
In the Iliad, Homer wrote of the might and splendor of the Achaean host deployed for war against Troy:
So clan after clan poured out from the ships and huts onto the plain of Scamander, and. . . found their
places in the flowery meadows by the river, innumerable as the leaves and blossoms in their season. . .
the Locrians . . . the Athenians. . . the citizens of Argas and Tiryns of the Great Walls. . . troops from the
great stronghold of Mycenae, from wealthy Corinth. . . from Lacedaemon . . . from Pylos . . . Knossos in
Crete, Phaistos . . . and the other troops that had their homes in Crete of the Hundred Towns.
The list goes on and on, outlining the peoples and the geography of the Aegean world in intimate detail. Until
about 1870, historians of ancient Greece, although they acknowledged Homer's genius as an epic poet, discounted
him as a historian, attributing the profusion of names and places in his writings to the rich abundance of his
imagination. The prehistory of Classical Greece remained shadowy and lost, historians believed, in an
impenetrable world of myth.
That they had done less than justice to the truth of Homer's account, or for that matter, to ancient Greek literary
sources in general, was proved by a German amateur archeologist. Between 1870 and his death twenty years later,
Heinrich Schliemann uncovered some of the very cities of the Trojan and Achaean heroes celebrated by Homer:
Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns. In 1870, at Hissarlik in the northwest comer of Asia Minor, which a British archeologist, Frank Calvert, had postulated was the site of Homer's Troy, Schliemann dug into a vast tel, or mound, and
found there a number of fortified cities built on the remains of one another, together with the evidence of the
destruction of one of them by fire. Schliemann continued his excavations at Mycenae on the Greek mainland,
from which, he believed, Agamemnon and the Greeks had sailed to avenge the capture of Helen, as recounted by
Homer in the Iliad. Here his finds were even more startling; massive fortress-palaces, elaborate tombs, quantities
of gold jewelry and ornaments, cups, and inlaid weapons revealed a magnificent pre-Classical civilization.
But further discoveries were to prove that Mycenae had not been the only center of this fabulous civilization.
Nor had the lesson of Schliemann's success in pursuing hunches based on the careful reading of ancient literature
been lost on his successors. Another important Greek legend told of Minos, king of Crete, who had exacted from
Athens a tribute of youths and maidens to be fed to the Minotaur, a creature half bull and half man that was
housed in a vast labyrinth. Might this legend, too, be based on historical fact? An Englishman, Arthur Evans, had
long considered Crete a potentially fertile field for investigation, and Schliemann himself, shortly before his
death, had wanted to explore the site of Knossos. In 1900, Evans began work on Crete, and a short time later he
uncovered extensive Minoan palaces that did indeed resemble mazes. His findings, primarily at Knossos, were
augmented by additional excavations at Phaistos, Hagia Triada, and other sites.
More recently, important Minoan remains have been excavated at many other locations on Crete, and contemporary sites have been discovered on other islands in the Aegean, most notably on Santorini (ancient Thera). Art
historians now have a rich corpus of buildings, paintings, and, to a lesser extent, sculptures, that attests to the
wealth and sophistication of the peoples of the Aegean in that once obscure heroic age celebrated in later Greek
mythology. We also now possess a great many documents from the Aegean Bronze Age written in scripts that
scholars have dubbed Linear A and Linear B. The progress that has been made during the last several decades in
the deciphering of these texts has provided a welcome corrective to the romanticism that characterized the work
of Schliemann and Evans. Archeologists can now begin to reconstruct Aegean society by referring to
contemporary documents recording mundane transactions and not just to the heroic account of Homer.
From recent discoveries we now also know that humans inhabited Greece as far back as the Lower Paleolithic
peri0d and that village life was firmly established in Greece in Neolithic times. The heyday of the ancient Aegean
was not, however, until the second millennium B.C., well after the emergence of the river valley civilizations of
Egypt and Mesopotamia. Although close contact existed at various times between the Aegean and the Near East
and Egypt, each civilization manifested an originality of its own. The Aegean civilizations hold a special interest
for students of the later history of art. They were the direct forerunners of the first truly European civilization, that
of Greece, but, as we shall see, the art and architecture of the ancient Near East and Egypt also played a major
role in the early development of Greek art. It is also well to remember that the Minoans and Mycenaeans were not
Greeks, even though they inhabited a part of the Mediterranean that is today incorporated in the modem nation of
Greece.
The sea-dominated geography of the Aegean contrasts sharply with that of the Near East, as does its temperate
climate. The situation of Crete in particular, and the Aegean islands in general, at the commercial crossroads of
the ancient Mediterranean had a major effect on their prosperity. The sea also provided a natural defense against
the frequent and often disruptive invasions that checker the histories of land-bound civilizations like those of
Mesopotamia.
Historians, art historians, and archeologists alike divide the Bronze Age Aegean into three geographical areas,
and each has a distinctive artistic identity. Cycladic art is that of the Cycladic islands (those that circle around
Delos) as well as of the adjacent islands in the Aegean, excluding Crete; Minoan art, named for the legendary
King Minos of Knossos, encompasses the art of Crete; and Helladic art is that of the Greek mainland (Hellas in
Greek). Each area has been subdivided chronologically into early, middle, and late periods, with the art of the
Late Helladic period being designated Mycenaean after the great citadel of Mycenae, home of Homer's king
Agamemnon.
MINOAN ART
During the third millennium B.C., both on the islands of the Aegean and on the Greek mainland, hardly any large
communities developed. Most settlements consisted only of simple buildings and only rarely were the dead buried
with costly offerings like the Cycladic statuettes we have just examined. The opening centuries of the second
millennium (the Middle Minoan period on Crete) are marked, in contrast, by the foundation of palaces to house
kings and their retinues and by royal towns, which grew up around them. This first or Old Palace period came to
an abrupt end around 1700 B.C., when these grand structures were destroyed, perhaps by an earthquake.
Rebuilding began sometime after 1700 B.C., and the ensuing New Palace (Late Minoan) period is the golden age
of Crete, an era when the first great Western civilization emerged.
The circumstances under which the Minoan civilization came to an end are still disputed, although it is now
widely believed that Mycenaeans had already moved onto Crete and established themselves at Knossos at the end
of the New Palace period. From the palace at Knossos, these intruders appear to have ruled the island for at least
half a century, perhaps much longer. Parts of the palace continued to be occupied until its final destruction around
1200 B.C., but its importance as a cultural center faded soon after 1400 B.C., as the focus of Aegean civilization
shifted to the Greek mainland.
From Adams, A History of Western Art, 2nd ed.
Minoan Civilization (c. 3000-1500 B.C.)
The modern Greek island of Crete, to the south of the Cyclades and northwest of the Nile delta in the Aegean Sea,
was the home of another important Bronze Age civilization. It was destroyed twice, once in 1700 B.C. by an
earthquake and again two or three centuries later by an invasion from the Greek mainland. The civilization that
flourished on Crete was all but forgotten until A.D. 1900, when the British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans decided
to search for it. Inspired by his knowledge of later Greek myths about the pre-Greek Aegean, Evans initiated excavations that were to establish the historical basis of the myths. The civilization he discovered is called Minoan,
after Minos. This may be either a generic term for ruler, or the name of a particular ruler.
Palace of Minos The major Minoan site of Crete is the Palace of Minos at Knossos, which was the mythical
residence of Minos. The plan of the palace, with its maze of irregular rooms, hallways, and staircases, clearly
suggests the mythical labyrinth. The palace itself was built over the remains of an earlier Neolithic settlement on a
hilltop. Like other Minoan palaces, it was not fortified. The fact that Crete was an island was its main source of
protection against invasion. Minoan palaces reveal a well-organized system for receiving and distributing local
agricultural products, which were stored in large terra cotta jars. Records of these transactions were written on
clay tablets in a still undeciphered script called Linear A. A later form of Linear A, known as Linear B, is an early
version of Greek.
The Palace of Minos used post and lintel construction with low ceilings, stone masonry walls, and short,
wooden columns that taper slightly toward a thin square base. Their puffy capitals (fig. 6.5) are called pillow
capitals. Those shown here have been reconstructed on the basis of the fragments of fresco painting that originally
decorated the interior palace walls. These three painted columns come from the western portico, or porch, at the
north entrance to the palace.
The Myth of the Minotaur
In Greek mythology, Crete was the home of the tyrant King Minos, son of Zeus and the mortal woman Europa.
Minos broke an oath to Poseidon, who had guaranteed his kingship, and in revenge the sea god caused Minos's
wife to fall in love with a bull. The offspring of their unnatural union was the Minotaur, a monstrous creature, part
man and part bull, who lived at the center of a labyrinthine maze in the Palace of Minos at Knossos. Every year
the Minotaur killed fourteen Athenians-seven girls and seven boys-exacted as annual tribute by Minos.
Eventually, the Athenian hero Theseus killed the Minotaur and was rescued by Minos's daughter Ariadne from the
labyrinth. But when Theseus sailed home to Athens, he forgot the prearranged signal to his father, King Aegeus,
indicating that he was returning safely. Believing his son dead, Aegeus threw himself into the sea and drowned.
The Aegean Sea is named after the unfortunate king.
Religion Little is known of Minoan religion. Shrines were small and located outdoors on hilltops or inside the
palaces. Until such time as Minoan Linear A is deciphered, we can only guess at the religious beliefs and
practices of ancient Crete. Besides bulls, religious images found in large numbers at Knossos include the double
axe, trees, and other vertical forms such as pillars and poles. The meaning of the double axe is something of a
mystery, but trees, pillars, and poles had been worshiped since the Stone Age. It is likely that rituals connected
with these forms celebrated the annual rebirth of spring.
Another recurring motif in Minoan art is the goddess holding snakes. The precise significance of the small,
well-preserved statue of the so-called Snake Goddess is not known. However, the motif of a female goddess
dominating animals—called a "mistress of the beasts" –occurred both earlier in ancient Near Eastern culture and
later in Greek art. As creatures of the earth, snakes were associated with fertility and agriculture. They did not
have the evil connotations with which they later became endowed. Scholars believe the Minoan statue to be a
representation of a goddess or priestess in the guise of a goddess. As such, it would fall well within an iconographic tradition linking certain animals with divinity and associating an imposing frontal stance with worship.
Mycenaean Civilization (c. 1600-1300 B.C.)
In the late 1860s, at the age of thirty-six, a successful German businessman named Heinrich Schliemann decided
to become an archeologist. Like Sir Arthur Evans, Schliemann was convinced that certain Greek legends were
based on historical events. He focused his search on the legends of the Trojan War and its heroes as described by
Homer. In 1870, Schliemann found the site of Troy on the west coast of Turkey. Six years later he located
Mycenae in the northeast of the Peloponnese (the peninsula below the isthmus of Corinth which forms the
southern part of Greece) and identified it as the city of Agamemnon. The discovery of several other similar sites
on the Greek mainland led to the recognition of an entire Mycenaean civilization that flourished between 1600
and 1300 B.C. Also called Helladic (after Hellas, the Greek name for Greece), the Mycenaean civilization takes
its name from the site of Mycenae.
6.13 (above) Plan of a Mycenaean megaron. The megoron was rectangular. with four columns (I) enclosing a
circular hearth (2) in the center. It was preceded by an antechamber (3) and a front porch (4) with two
columns--an arrangement that had pre-Mycenaean antecedents on the Greek mainland, and would be
elaborated in later Greek temple architecture.
Citadels In Mycenae, as elsewhere, citadels were built on hilltops and fortified
with massive walls. It seems that the palaces were small, and each contained a
throne room, or megaron (literally "big room" in Greek) (fig. 6.13). Like the
Minoans, the Mycenaeans left no trace of monumental temple architecture, and the shrines that have been found are
inside the palaces. Most of the citizens lived in small mud brick houses below the citadel and in times of siege
sought refuge within its walls. The fortifications of the Mycenaean cities indicate a culture more oriented toward
war than the Minoan, and more concerned with protection from invaders.
These concerns must have determined the choice of the thick, monumental walls surrounding Mycenaean citadels
(fig. 6.14). They were constructed of large, roughly cut and irregular blocks of stone. Because of the enormous
weight of such stones, the Greeks called the walls Cyclopean—that is, they seemed to have been built by giants.
6.14 Lion Gate and Cyclopean wall, Mycenae. 1500-1300 B.C. Limestone relief, c. 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) high. The presence of
a Minoan column at Mycenae is an example of the kind of evidence used by archeologists to demonstrate trade and
travel between the two civilizations. The column itself may be a more elaborated architectural version of the trees, poles,
or pillars worshiped on Crete and elsewhere.
The Legend of Agamemnon
Mycenae was the legendary home of King Agamemnon, who led the Greek army
against King Priam of Troy in the Trojan War. Agamemnon's brother, King Menelaus
of Sparta, had married Helen, known to history as the beautiful and notorious Helen
of Troy. When Priam's son Paris abducted Helen, Agamemnon was pledged to
avenge the offense against his family. But as soon as the Greek fleet was ready to
sail, the winds refused to blow, because Agamemnon had killed a stag sacred to the
Greek moon goddess Artemis (see p.96). As recompense for the stag and in return
for allowing the winds to blow, Artemis exacted the sacrifice of Agamemnon's
daughter Iphigenia.
Ten years later the war ended, and Agamemnon returned to Mycenae, where he
was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. They, in turn, were killed by Agamemnon's
remaining children, Electra and Orestes, to avenge Agamemnon's death.
These tales were well known to the later Greeks--the Trojan War from Homer's eighth-century-B.C. epic the
Iliad, and the tragedy of Agamemnon's family from the fifth century-B.C. plays of Aeschylus and Euripides. Like
the myths of Theseus and the Minotaur, however, the account of Agamemnon's family remained the province of
imagination and legend until the end of the nineteenth century.
Cyclopean Masonry
Cyclopean masonry is named for the mythological race of Giants, or Cyclopes, who were believed strong enough
to lift the blocks of stone found at Mycenaean sites. The Cyclopes are described by Homer in the Odyssey as
having a single round eye in the center of their foreheads (the name derives from the Greek kuklos, meaning
"circle," and ops, meaning "eye"). In Book IX of the Odyssey, Odysseus escapes from the Cyclops Polyphemus by
putting out his single eye with a stake and tying himself and his men to the undersides of a flock of sheep.
Tombs The most dramatic structures at Mycenae also exemplify the culmination of Minoan-Mycenaean tomb
architecture in the thirteenth century B.C. The typical Mycenaean tomb is called a beehive tomb, or tholos (Greek
for "round building"). It is likely that the construction of large tombs was influenced by the design of smaller
tholoi used earlier for communal burials on Crete. There is also some connection with the earlier Mycenaean shaft
graves, which were set within circular walls. One such grave circle-called grave circle A-on the citadel itself can
be seen in the reconstructed aerial view (fig. 6.15). It shows the massive, Cyclopean walls and the disposition of
the grave circle within it. Toward the top of the picture, the inside of the Lion Gate is visible.
From Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 10th ed.
MYCENAEAN (LATE HELLADIC) ART
The origins of the Mycenaean culture are still being debated. All that is certain is that there is evidence for the
presence of these forerunners of the Greeks on the mainland about the time the old palaces were being built on
Crete that is, about the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Doubtless these people were influenced by Crete
even then, and some believe that the mainland was a Minoan economic dependency for a long time. At any rate,
Mycenaean power developed on the mainland in the days of the new palaces on Crete, and by 1500 B.C., a
distinctive Mycenaean culture was flourishing in Greece-a culture to which, some seven hundred years later,
Homer was to give the epithet "rich in gold." This is a characterization that the dramatic discoveries of
Schliemann and his successors have proven to be fully justified, even if today's archeologists no longer view the
Mycenaeans solely through the romantic eyes of Homer.
Architecture: The destruction of the Cretan palaces left the mainland culture supreme. Although this Late
Helladic civilization has come to be called Mycenaean, Mycenae is but one of several large citadels explored by
archeologists. Mycenaean remains have been uncovered at Tiryns, Orchomenos, and elsewhere, and Mycenaean
fortification walls have even been found on the Acropolis of Athens, home of the legendary King Theseus. The
best-preserved and most impressive Mycenaean remains are those of the fortified palaces at Tiryns and Mycenae,
both built about 1400 B.C. and burned (along with all the others) between 1250 and 1200 B.C., when the
Mycenaeans seem to have been overrun by invaders from the north or to have fallen victim to internal warfare.