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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1901 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. WHO WERE THE MAKERS? AeT Ae, oScriep errl Tion Aaacjn, Ti86ntac Ta jain6m6na Kai npcirOn Aianophcantac Oytcj Abiknynai Maaicta Men Nanta Ta Inaosa Tiep) Tayta Ta Na6h, el Ae Mi$, Ta nAeTcr& Kai Kypiitatae&n r&p Ayhta! re Ta AyCxepfi Ka! K&r&AeirmT&i Ta Inaosa, AeAeirMnon An efH Ikanic. Aristotle, Eth. Nic., vn. 1, 5. What people produced the Mycenean civilization is the most important problem in archaic Greek history1. Any attempt to solve it must be conducted with extreme caution and freedom from dogmatism. It is evident from the wide diffusion of their remains that the race which produced these works was one which must have possessed in its time great political power around the basin of the eastern Mediterranean. Such a race can hardly have perished without leaving some echo of its deeds behind, for in some parts of the area which they once occupied, as in Attica at the tomb of Menidi, there seems to be evidence that there has been no break in the continuity of the local worship and local art of pottery from the Mycenean age proper down to the Attic red-figured vases. The Greeks above all other people have left to us copious traditions respecting the early history of their land, its first occupiers, their inter-relations, and their racial divisions. As we find an unbroken continuity in the history of the pottery produced in Attica, and know that the people who once made the gold rings found in the tombs of Mycenae, which may be 1 W. Ridgeway, "What People made the objects called Mycenean?" Jour. Hell. Stud., xvi. (1896), pp. 80 sqq., of which this chapter is an expansion. dated as at least prior to 1200 B.C., and the rings and gold ornaments found in a Mycenean grave in Aegina of about the eighth century B.C., used the same standard for weighi...