even at this time, were at the height or in the decadence of the Mycenaean civilization.[1] Furthermore, the discoveries reveal the fact that Cyprus,[2] before the beginning of the first millennium, had been settled by people bearing the Mycenaean culture.
If we assume that the civilization was foreign, then must the Greek hero-tales become unintelligible. When Homer speaks of Tiryns and Mycenae, "rich in gold" (γ, 305), of Amyclae (Β, 584), of Boeotian Orchomenos (Β, 511; λ, 284); when he mentions the tale of the Argonauts (μ, 79); when he brings Crete into touch with the royal house of Mycenae (Γ, 230; τ, 172); and when he has the blind bard Demodocus sing of the great events which occurred before the walls of Troy (θ, 44), the poet undoubtedly refers to Mycenaean times. It is altogether inconceivable that the singers of the Homeric times, in their recital of glorious deeds, would have magnified the achievements of barbarians. Rather is it true that the pride which everywhere appears in the Homeric epic extols the exploits of the ancestors of the Greeks.[3]
The heroic age of the Homeric poems coincides essentially with the Mycenaean civilization, and the chief heroes were princes of people who possessed Mycenaean civilization. Thus we are led to infer that the bearers of this civilization, at least on the mainland, were largely Greeks.
Tsountas has shown that two strata of Mycenaean
