Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/209

1 68 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. assertion. Even when the craft of the Greek mason shall be at its best, when he will make his walls — those beautiful " Hellenic walls " — with regular courses of tufa and even marble, the smallest scrap of which permits us to appreciate the marvellous precision which he carried into his work, he will none the less, here and there, still employ the processes which once had been popular with his ancestors of Tiryns, of Troy, and of Mycenae. This was the case with the Long Walls which connected Athens with the Piraeus. We learn from the decrees ordering their reconstruction, that the walls in question greatly resembled the ramparts by which the Trojan citadel was enclosed. The masonry evinced more ease and greater regularity than in the prehistoric rampart. Here as there, however, the wall, which was begun with stone, was con-^y tinued with unbaked brick ; and a species of wood-framing, made up of intersecting timbers, was inserted in the depths of the walls.^ These were given coatings made of clay mixed with straw. We think we can divine the reason which induced the builder to make use of such a process. These frames rendered the not unimportant service of distributing over a larger surface the pressure exercised on the fortification wall by the battering-ram and other attacking engines. The employment of timber ties at that comparatively recent period, whose one drawback is to serve as means of union to heterogeneous elements within the mass with which they have no affinity, can only be explained on the basis of atavism, a harking back to ancient methods, noticeable both in the Long Walls and buildings entirely made of stone. The abiding influence of habits contracted by the Greek builder during his season of apprenticeship never ceased to be exercised on the later mode of fabrication. Look well at the construction of any temple dating between the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., be it that of Poseidon at Paestum, of Zeus at Olympia, the Parthenon, Theseion, or Erechtheion at Athens, and you will perceive that although the masonry within and without shows great regularity, the wall foundations up to the level of porch ^ A. Choisy, Jktudes sur ParchiteOure grecque : II. Les murs d'Athhus tPaprh h devis de ieur restauration. The information supplied by the r^ulation papers in question has enabled Choisy to establish the existence of wooden ties in the con- struction of the Athenian fortification walls. Some thirty years ago, pieces of wall were discovered at the Piraeus, composed of stone courses alternating with beams, in length sometimes over ten metres.