Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/448

The Domed- Tomb at Orchomenos. 421 has undergone many vicissitudes : it was twice razed to the ground by the Thebans (368 and 348 B.C.), rebuilt by the Macedonians, and seems to have again enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity in Roman times. What remains of the city ram- part, strictly so called, appears on the broadest level of Mount Hypantheion, a mere spur of the Akonteion, where it enclosed the public and domestic dwellings. It is older perhaps than the disasters which overtook the town, but its style of building is not Cyclopcean {Fig. 157). As to the walls circling round a species of recess or donjon towards the upper portion of the hill, they Flc 157. — Orchomenos, pl.in date from the fall of Thebes and the victories of the Macedonians. Schliemann's excavations reached the Orchomenos of the Minyans through the deposits formed by the Hellenistic city. The great explorer was irresistibly drawn towards this ancient centre, where he sank trial trenches on three different occasions : in 1880 and 1881, returning in 1886 with Dorpfeld, when his trenches cleared here and there house foundations of the old town. Some of these walls are of unbaked brick, others are built of unsquared stones bonded with clay mortar. This, it will be remembered, is precisely the mode of construction which we have everywhere met in centres coeval with Troy and Mycenae. Schliemann collected nothing but a monochrome pottery, red, black, or yellow, at the bottom of the pits. But though a little