Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/494

Mode of Construction. 467 (Figs. 97, 99) and the domed-tombs (Figs. 118, 120, 121) of Mycenae, is practically identical in all its essential and distinctive peculiarities. Calcareous blocks had only to be piled up one upon another, and horizontal courses would naturally follow with- out almost any artificial aid. We know that the Tirynthian builder had the necessary skill to cut stones of the required shape for the place they were to occupy, especially at the angles of the structure. Many of the blocks have had their external face roughly dressed. It needed very little additional effort to set up, as soon as he felt inclined, rectangular blocks, instead of the time-honoured irregular polygons. Masonry made up of units, uniform in size and dressed to an even front, was pleasing to the eye, and suggestive of the master-mind that had conceived it, served by a skilful artisan. It had at the same time the advantage of presenting a smooth and even surface, which would give no opportunity to the assailant of obtaining a foot-hold or catch at the projecting stones to help himself to scale the wall. Hence the tendency to horizontal beds which we scent here and there in the Mideian wall (Fig. 174), whilst in the rampart of Tiryns (Fig. 170) regular masonry is almost universal. If at Mycena; this same tendency is still more accentuated, even where the aspect is rudest (Fig. 92), construction with horizontal and vertical joints is found in such parts of the circuit only as were most exposed, and provided therefore with additional strength, i. e, near the gates and the bastion that forms so bold a resault in the middle of the south-eastern front (Fig. 90). The inference that these portions of wall may be contemporary with those much more rudely constructed, is based upon the fact that Steffen noticed in places oblong stones, exactly like those of the most regular courses, found below Cyclopaean masonry. Thus, to make a solid footing for the rampart on the north-eastern face of the citadel, the rocky edge was cut away, and a well- dressed stone beam laid across the gap thus made, in bridge- like fashion ; above it were piled stone masses almost in their native rudeness, and the hollows between the single blocks filled in, as at Tiryns, with pebbles (Fig. 18 ly It is plain, then, that the same set of masons executed the Cyclopaean and the regular system of masonry ; the latter is already found in embryo in the first, from which it tends to shake itself free towards the date of ^ Steffen, Karten,