Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/160

Thera and its Prehistoric Ruins. 139 felt on the one side than on the other. Each of the settlements whose ruins we are sounding has a distinct physiognomy and individuality of its own, every one of which ought to be found in the general picture wherein is imaged, under its manifold aspects, the strange and incomplete civilization we are endeavouring to reconstitute. In such conditions, the historian must needs transport himself to the main sites where excavations on a grand scale have been carried on most successfully. These at first so startled and confused the learned world, that it is only just recovering its equanimity. We shall describe them one by one, briefly indi- cating the result of those memorable campaigns, both from Schliemann's and Dorpfeld's observations which they made on the site of their discoveries, verifying at the same time their assertions and conjectures. We shall say how we are led to picture to ourselves the arrangement and aspect of this or that town, so marvellously exhumed by them. Such monographs will appear in chronological and geographical order, in so far at least as this is possible. Not until they have passed before the reader shall we venture to submit to him our general con- clusions and formulas, which sum up all it is possible to know at this date in regard to the industry and arts of the so-called Mycenian epoch. Thera and its Prehistoric Ruins. The island of Thera, now Santorin, naturally heads the list of sites which still preserve traces of the earliest culture effected on Grecian soil ; here are evidences which, when juxtaposed, enable us, if not to date the extant monuments of this period, at least to indicate approximately the extreme limit over which they cannot be led without offending probability.^ ^ We have throughout this chapter followed M. Fouqu^, who spent several years at Thera, that he might study an the spot the volcanic manifestations of which quite recently it has been the scene. For ampler information we refer the reader to his capital book entitled, Santorin et ses Eruptions, He has also allowed us to see an unpublished Memoir and drawings of another geologist, M. Gorceix, who, with M. Mamet, a member of the French school at Athens, visited the island. See also Gorceix and Mamet, BulUiin de VJkcoh fran^aise ctAtKtnes, 1870; Camptes rendus de VAcadkmie des sciences; Mamet, De insula Thera, Nor