MYCEN.E. 513 
it was here that kings and magistrates held CHAP. 
..I . ., A . VIII. 
tneir sittings upon solemn occasions. It is _- T __f 
said of the kings of Israel and Judah, that they 
sat on their thrones in a void place 3 , IN THE 
ENTRANCE OF THE GATES OF SAMARIA, where 
ALL THE PROPHETS PROPHESIED BEFORE THEM. 
The Gate of Mycence affords a perfect commen- 
tary upon this and similar passages of Scripture: 
the walls of the Acropolis project in parallel 
lines before the entrance, forming the sort of 
area, or oblong court, before the Propyltca, to 
which allusion is thus made ; and it is in this 
open space before the Citadel that Sophocles has 
laid the scene in the beginning of his Eleclra. 
The Markets were always in these places 4 , as it 
is now the custom before the Gates of Acre, and 
many other towns in the East : hence it is 
probable, that, in the mention made by So- 
phocles of the Lycean Forum*, he is not 
alluding to one of the public Fora of Argos, 
but to the Pylagora or Market-place at the Gate or the 
of Mycencc, whose inhabitants, in common with rylagor ' 
all the Ar gives, worshipped the Lycean Apollo. 
(3) Or floor, according to the Hebrew. See 1 Kings xxii. 10. 
(4) See 2 Kings \. 18. 
Soph. Elect, v. G. pp. 176, 178. torn. I. Paris, 
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