BUT LATER INDICATIONS OF GROWTH OF MAINLAND 551

'Achaean' Saga.1 It may well be suspected that a man of Mycenae could
have equally fitted heroic names to the warriors of the scene of combat on
the o-old signet from the Fourth Grave (Fig. 511 bis). On an engraved gold
bead of the Thisbe Treasure we seem to have actually a pictorial record of
the crowning drama of Agamemnon's house at Mycenae while two others, as
has been shown, record the Cadmean myths in which Oedipus figures.2

If we may believe that the lion still existed in Greece itself in Minoan
days, as it is recorded to have done on the Macedonian side over a thousand
years later, it is obvious that the artists of the Mainland branch were at a
oreat advantage over their Cretan rivals in portraying the King of Beasts
in his various aspects. That a Mainland school grew up showing special
proficiency in this subject is highly probable. A series of intaglios exist
illustrating this theme and still belonging to a fine artistic period, all of which,
so far as any record has been preserved, are of Mainland provenance.3 The
most distinctive type, however, that of the wounded lion endeavouring to
extract the lethal shaft, still fits on to the earlier Cretan tradition.

The existence of a provincial school does not indeed affect the funda-
mental fact that the general unity of Minoan culture was still maintained in
its broad lines. In the same way the script of Class B, with a few modi-
fications due to dialectic differences, continued, as we shall see, in use in the
great Minoan centres on both sides of the Gulf to a considerably later date.

Later
indica-
tions of a
Mainland
(Mycen-
aean)
School.

1 P. of M. iii, Fig. 80 (facing p. 126).

2 See above, p. 513 seqq.

3 At the head of the series are two ' flat
cylinders' ofgold, Fig. 507 from the Third Shaft
Grave at Mycenae and Fig. 479, p. 531 above,
from Thisbe, the form of which almost ex-
clusively belongs to the L. M. I a phase of

of Crete. Of lentoids, the fine example, Fig.
481, p. 532 above (Suppl. PI. LV, e), was from
Athens, itself an important Mycenaean site,
and two others from the Vapheio Tomb
(/>. of M., iii, p. 124, F'g- 7* ar,d P- 545> Fig-
300, above).

Fig. 511 bis. Combat Scene on Gold Signet. Grave IV, Mycenae.
(From photograph of original kindly supplied me by Prof. G. Karo.)