Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/216

Troy. 193 of soil and ruin. As on this side the mound rose very little above the plateau, from which it is separated by a shallow depression of the ground, the character of the fortifications was as unlike as it could well be from that where the hill rises sheer from the plain ; hence the builder, finding that he had no need of a talus, suppressed it; and he contented himself with building a stone substructure with vertical faces, of barely one metre in height. A plinth, so low as to be well within man's reach, was a poor barrier against the assailant : the brick wall, whose lowest course he could touch, was therefore run up to a great height, given a depth of four metres, and strengthened with towers three metres twenty centimetres wide, spaced the one from the other six metres forty centimetres, with a projection beyond the curtain of two metres thirty-five centimetres (PI. . ba, be, bd). Others doubtless lie underground. The tracing of the wall on the northern face is as yet purely conjectural ; this is the reason why it is indicated by dots on the plan. If on the last one (PI. I.) the line representing it is carried a little more backward, it is because recent excava- tions have revealed the fact that the town extended further in this direction than at first was imagined. Like the circuit- walls, the erections whose ruins are more or less apparent on the platform were not all built at one time. The excavations, of which Fig. 46 is a graphic illustration due to M. Durm's pencil, have shown that their foundations near the south-west gate intersect and cover one another. Thus, on certain spots towards the centre of the plateau, opposite to the erections ab, three distinct and successive periods may be traced, in the superimposed ruins of buildings which not only differ as to their orientation, but in their plan and details as well. The edifices of what is called the third period appear to have been on a grander scale than their predecessors ; built last, they are found in a far better state of preservation, and in places still retain a height of one or two metres. The most important buildings have their face turned to the south-eastern gate (f o), which from beginning to end constituted the principal entrance to the citadel. Fifteen metres in front of and almost opposite to this same gate, though not in the pro- longation of its axis, is a second one, parted from the first by a free space in which we guess a courtyard ; but having only been VOL. I. o