Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/502

Mode of Construction. . 475 worked with metal quoins, or simply picks ; but when the limestone was very hard they bored a deep round hole, into which a thick wooden stave was introduced, which on being wetted swelled out and loosened the block. Two of these stones are given below (Figs. 185, 186). In the first, the hole appears on one of the faces, and in the other on the edge. The solution to the problem why ramparts and sepulchres that have been in a poor condition since the fifth century b.c. should have survived to our day, when the temples and other public buildings which Pausanias saw at Argos have utterly disappeared, is to be found in the magnitude, and above all the irregularity of the materials of which they were made. To have re-used them would have involved quite as much expenditure of time and labour as when the old builders had slowly and painfully hauled them up in Fics. 185, 186.— Tiryns. Bored stones. position. If they must needs have walls of great strength, it surely was much simpler to go straight to the quarry and cut ■ what blocks they required, rather than demolish old structures whose stones had all to be dressed anew. In after times, when the ancient civilization became extinct, the new and needy gener- ations used whatever they could get to build them wretched hovels, whether with sun-dried brick or small stones ; these were set up either in the rough or dressed fair on all their faces. Timber had no place in such constructions as these, where none but materials of great magnitude were used, except for doors or tower coverings perhaps, and parapets along the curtain. That wood should have been put in this latter position is not so imaginary as it may appear ; traces of fire are everywhere visible on the top of the Trojan rampart and flanking towers. Buildings, however, chiefly composed of rubble and crude brick, opened wide their gates to timber ; the welcome was all the