Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/250

Representations ok Human Life. 207 capable of an effort such as that which is implied and was necessary for building the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae, felt early the need of employing nascent art to perpetuate the remembrance of princes whose influence and wealth were far superior to those of the petty island chiefs. Portraits, in the strict sense of the word, were not to be thought of, but in default of this the sculptor and painter sought to preserve green the memory of the main episodes in the warlike and adventurous life of their kings, conquerors, and pirates, mighty hunters of lions and wild bulls, every man of them. The oldest monuments due to this innate craving are stelae rising over the royal graves of the Mycenian acropolis. One of these stelae, with a maeander- like pattern, is shown in Fig. 252. This, it is conjectured, not without some show of reason, covers the tomb which in antiquity went by the name of Cassandra. Mycenian pundits may have recognized in the volutions of its unending curves those snakes which, said tradition, kept the ears of persons beloved by Apollo open, that they might hear coming events.^ The stelcc, whether whole or in a broken condition, have been recently subjected to a minute study at Athens by Reichel. The collection consists of five sculptured stelae almost perfect, and twenty-nine fragments. Of these nine have remains of figured decorations, whilst designs of a purely ornamental character appear on the rest. Reichel's attempts to form four other stelcC with the several broken pieces were without result ; for not only are the bits too small and therefore more or less meaningless, but the gaps are much too large to permit of a restoration being made. This would have brought up the total number of the stelae to nine ; that is to say, to that of the bodies contained in the pits. Plain cippi, without figuration or mouldings, are held to belong to women and children. The single stela which has been restored, though smaller — forty-seven centimetres broad by one metre two centimetres deep — ^greatly resembles that of Fig. 252. Close inspection of these antiquities has brought out the fact that Schliemanns illustrations leave something to be desired. Of course, being engraved from photographs, they reproduce the character of the form and the grain of the stone ; but certain ^ Wolfgang Reichel, Die Mykenischen Grahstelen, The volume is entitled, Eranos Vindohonensis, published on the occasion of the forty-second Congress of German savants.