archaeologist, and makes him think at first sight that it is of the Roman time. It is not till after looking at it for a while that he sees the mistake, and begins to refer it piece after piece to the Macedonian period; but afterwards, when he has examined it for a long time most carefully, and compared it with the Mycenean pottery, he at last fully realizes the antiquity of these terra-cottas, and becomes convinced that they belong probably to a time five centuries before the birth of Alexander the Great. What perplexes the archaeologist most are the fragments of a primitive monochrome glazed lustrous black pottery; for, until recently, we were accustomed to consider such as of the Roman or, at the utmost, of the Macedonian age. But I found at Mycenae a fragment of most excellent varnished. lustrous black Hellenic pottery, with an inscription scratched on it, the characters of which prove with certainty that it belongs to the sixth century B.C.[1] The fragment itself is in the Mycenean Museum at Athens, and it will be seen that it is as good as any pottery of that kind made in later times. But such excellent varnished lustrous black terra-cotta ware cannot possibly have been invented at once; it naturally leads us to suppose a school of potters, which had worked for centuries to reach such a perfection in the art, and, if all the other pottery of the tumulus of Achilles can claim the ninth century B.C. as its date, we must necessarily attribute to the same period the fragments of glazed lustrous black ware, which were found there. It should besides be considered, that such perfect pottery as the Mycenean fragment can never lose its beautiful lustrous black colour; whilst on the primitive pottery of the Achilles-tomb the glazed lustrous black colour has in a great many instances been more or less effaced. The other terra-cottas either have on the outside alternate lustrous black and red bands, with a uniform black on the inside, or they are light-yellow
- ↑ See this inscription in my Mycenae, p. 115.
