Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/153

ii8 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. local art, which during a long life had here its being and organic development. It may be argued that although the Phoenicians never owned these acropoles, they yet furnished skilful Giblite masons to the chiefs who had them built, as they did to Solomon when he raised a temple to lahveh at Jerusalem.^ The presumption, however, is traversed by the significant fact that there are positively no data, either historical or mythical, which would point to such close relations having existed between the Achaean chiefs of Peloponnesus and the Syrian kings. Mycenian Hellas had doubtless already brought together the elements of the style which characterize her plastic art, ere Sidonian barques began to frequent the bays and sounds of the Hellenic peninsula. What is there against the acceptance of a simpler explanation ? The so-called Cyclopsean style of construction belongs to and is the monopoly of no particular race or people, but is rather what may be termed a human phenomenon. We find this same style of masonry pervading the walls of lands where the native rock — breccia, schist, or limestone — lends itself to be easily cut into slabs requiring little or no dressing, or into great blocks piled upon one another. Should we wonder to find such walls both in Italy, Greece, and elsewhere, outside the boundaries of the ancient world, where in this or that country they assume an exceptional appearance of massive grandeur, which is due to the nature of the materials or the bolder spirit of the chiefs of particular tribes ? This was the case in Argolis, where dynasties, served by the configuration of the ground, had no difficulty in selecting appropriate sites for their strongholds ; whilst, what with the quality of the stone at hand and the abundant resources which were denied to their rivals, they built in this system, and with simple methods raised bulwarks whose stupendous mass excites the wonder of an age possessed of better appliances and greater technical skill. The best work of this primitive archi- tecture was produced in Argolis, where singularly favourable conditions worked together to bring about this happy result ; in the same way as Athens will presently furnish the noblest examples of classic art. The excavations, in clearing ramparts and palaces which had hitherto eluded our researches, have shown and will show at no distant date, perhaps, that during ^ History of Art