Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/120

CHAPTER VI. KKLIGIOUS ARCIIITliCTURE. If in the introduction nothing was said of religious rites expressive of the beliefs which once had swayed the tribes fated to become the Hellenic nation, it is because there is no docu- mentary evidence to hand referable to that subject. The vague and faint reminiscences which the Hellenes preserved of the period answering to the infancy of their race have no passing allusion to them. The parts assigned to the gods, the exact and rich terminology by which they are distinguished in the Iliad, indicate that, like the heroes, they already had a long past behind them. Images drawn with so distinct and clear an outline are the result of an elaboration many centuries old ; whether at Troy, Thera, Tiryns, and Mycenae they should be placed towards the beginning, the middle, or the end of the primitive period, is not easy to say. Plastic art was not yet sufficiently advanced to translate with any degree of clearness the notions formed by the men of that day in respect to superior powers. Terra-cotta idols from these localities are too coarse and rude to give us any clue as to the feelings and thoughts which they express (Fig. 246). On a shockingly mutilated tablet of limestone are apparently represented two women in the act of worshipping the statue of a god. Other paintings and engraved stones show us the evanescent outline of fabulous, strange-looking creatures, akin to the simulacra which Asiatic art multiplied, griffins and sphinxes, winged personages, and human bodies with animals