Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/481

1 454 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. decoration. Hard calcareous banks are separated from beds of soft limestone, which easily decompose under the action of atmospheric agents. Accordingly, here and there vents" will occur, and where this takes place towards the surface, the super- incumbent mass breaks into great boulders which lie on the ground. Relics torn from deposits laid in horizontal zones, these masses present faces as smooth as if polished by the tool. Many can be used without any artificial help, and the rest with hardly any dressing at all. The builder's preference for Cyclo- paean construction is accounted for as that which involved the least expenditure of labour. All he had to do was to raise and pile the blocks upon one another, using for the purpose ropes, levers, and strong arms. For the common portion of the rampart he could dispense with trained artisans ; the work was of a nature requiring no skill, and could be done by press-gangs of serfs and slaves. We have an instance of this in the wall of Mideia, whose aspect is even more uncouth than that of Tiryns (Fig. 176), where stones are heaped upon one another in a confused, haphazard sort of fashion, exactly as they came from the quarry. In the Troad, the calcareous bank does not present itself in quite the same condition as in Argolis ; the stone texture is less firm and looser ; nor does it appear in great masses on the surface, ready to be fixed. Under the action of the weather, it crumbles away and easily splits; but the hammer has no great work to do in cutting it into units of mediocre or small size. Hence it is that the early inhabitants of the Troad almost entirely built with small materials ; they reserved their limestone for rare occasions, such as the corners of their walls and thresholds. Similarly the Hellenes, whether in Laconia or Argoli«, Attica or Boeotia, employed rubble instead of heavy, unwieldy blocks, when there was no need to impart to their constructions that inde- structible character of solidity, owing to which the circuit-walls of the oldest citadels have been preserved to this day. They had, close at hand, stone in plenty, which they cut into squares of medium size. Thus, a little way out of Charvati, are ex- cavations open to the sky, whence the Mycenians quarried a large proportion of the material with which they built their private and public edifices. The common native stone did very well for the body of the