Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/133

I04 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. around the wall, at least in places. There were wooden uprights, spaced about two metres fifteen centimetres, resting on stone bases, along the inner side of the rampart, here four metres forty-five centimetres ; without rose a continuous brick wall, pierced by windows for the defence, and roofed over with joists, clay, and baked tiles. Built up flush with the great stone wall, at this point nearly five metres high, the back wall of the passage added to the elevation of the vertical face. It is supposed to have been covered with wood and clay, and furnished with openings for the defence.^ The arrangement is akin to that of the Athenian walls, at the top of which ran a covered gallery, consisting along the inner side of a row of separate piers, and a continuous brick wall outside, etc. These walls were restored towards the year 323 of our era, and it is from the decree ordering the execution of the work that we gather their dis- tinctive peculiarities. A restoration of these same walls, which is doubtful only on details of minor importance, has lately been made.^ With Mycenae the case is different. The principal buildings were placed on the summit of the rock, at a considerable distance from the circuit (Figs. 89, 90) ; they were not therefore sup- ported by, nor did they lean against it, as at Tiryns ; so that their mutilated limbs did not protrude above and form a pre- serving mattress for the crest of the rampart. The upper part of the wall was everywhere exposed, and in process of time the stone and brick constituting it got loose and rolled down the sides of the rock. We should, then, not be surprised because we find no traces of fire, or of bases for uprights as at Tiryns and Troy, where they afford clear indications towards a restor- ation of the crowning members of the rampart. These at Mycenae can only be put back by analogy. Then, too, it is more than probable that here, as at Tiryns and Troy, wood and brick went to the making of breastworks, at any rate on such points as were most exposed to the attacks of the enemy, and therefore in need of additional strength. Our attempts to restore ancient strongholds have not ex- tended to Trojan Pergamus. The excavations carried on there ^ Tiryns. ^ C. I, Attic, A. Choisy, iLtudes hpigraphiques sur F architecture grecgue^ 1884.