Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/560

Decoration. 533 quiescent among this people ; all its surfaces are dull and grey. The case is quite different in Argolis. Though the tombs and minor apartments of the palaces are paved with concrete inter- spersed here and there with pebbles,^' the beton floor of the reception-rooms is everywhere overlaid with cement. The con- crete floor of the megaron at Tiryns has a design composed of incised lines, which still preserve distinct traces of red colour on the larger central squares (Fig. 85). These are separated by narrow strips, on which are preserved faint traces of blue. ** Hence the floor had originally the aspect of a many-coloured carpet*' (Fig. 83). Very similar patterns furrow the concrete pavement of the Mycenian megaron. If generally the tones have faded away, they were found still fresh and vivid on the stuccoed surface around the hearth. The horizontal layers are painted white, red, and blue, and the brush has traced a band of spirals 2.40 KiG. 239. — The hearth of the megaron. Section. of which so many varieties have been figured by us. For obvious reasons the colours soon faded away, so that the plaster had often to be renewed ; the hearth shows no less than five superimposed layers of stucco (Fig. 239), on which the artisan has twice at least repeated the same form (PI. XIII., Fig. 2). As the eye travelled round the room, or was raised to the ceiling or lowered towards the floor, it met no surface but such as would divert and cheer it. There are no doors in the megarons ; their entrances were closed by curtains fastened to the lintel, whose brighter and gayer colours added to the embellishment of an otherwise well-appointed apartment. The character of the construction suirsfested the universal employment of fresco-painting, so that we meet it in one of the ^ This is the case both in the tombs of the acropolis and of the lower city at Mycenae, as also in the bee-hive tomb of the Heraeum {Athenisc/ie Mittheilungen), As regards the pavements of private buildings, see Schliemann, Tiryns^ and TSOUNDAS, UpatCTUcu,