Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/302

TiRYNS. 277 The broad threshold of limestone, four metres long by two metres wide, is still in position. Inside the building portions of a concrete pavement of pebbles and lime are preserved ; the walls, made of rubble and clay, are standing to about fifty centimetres above ground ; antse and columns have retained their bases. Consequently, the ground-plan of the building can be restored with the utmost certainty. The shafts of these columns and the upper portion of the antae were of wood, for neither stone drums nor monolith shafts have been found ; whilst the upper face of the antae exhibits holes clearly meant to receive metal or wood clamps, which served to fasten the cross-beams superimposed on this species of plinth. Such a mode of joining can only have been applied to materials of different nature. The inner vestibule is some- what deeper than the external one. A door in its northern side-wall gave access on the right to some secondary apartments, and to a passage leading to the women's quarter. This was the private entrance ; strangers passed through the central gateway, with its two vestibules, and reached a great court encompassed on three sides by the citadel wall, the remaining one being taken up by the facade, which was turned to the great bastion described above. The principal doorway was not on this front, but at the south-west corner. Its plan is the same as that of the great gate ; but its dimensions are smaller, hence the name of small propylseum which Dorpfeld has given to it. This gate led to the great inner court of the palace, the court of the men's apartment, occupying the culminating-point of the citadel. Hitherto the way has been one continuous ascent ; for whilst the threshold of the castle gate is twenty-one metres thirty-six centimetres above sea-level, that of the great propylaeum is twenty-four metres sixty-three centimetres, and that of the follow- ing gate (k) twenty-six metres eighteen centimetres above the level of the sea. The second court forms a rectangle measuring fifteen metres seventy-seven centimetres by twenty metres twenty-five centi- metres. The pavement throughout consists of small stones and lime, resting on a deep stratum of concrete. The court is surrounded by porticoes, which afforded a pleasant lounge to the inmates during the noon-day heat, or in bad weather. Before entering the palace, we wish to call attention to a