Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/46

Pit-Graves in the Mvcenian Citadel. 25 and III., are unsculptured ; these tombs have therefore yielded but women's and children's bones. The difference is easily accounted for : figured bas-reliefs, however roughly executed, involved an enormous effort from the inexperienced sculptor of that period, and could not be undertaken for the sake of women and children, who had con- tributed nothing towards the general welfare of the tribe, and whose chief claim to be remembered was their having been associated with the master or father, as the case might be. F[G. 253.— Sepulchral stela. The pit-graves are all grouped on the west side of the precinct (Fig. 90), of which they take up the half, and though roughly arranged in two parallel lines, they are neither on the same axis nor of uniform size. Over them stood, as already remarked, two rows of stelse, of four and five single slabs respectively. The position of the cippi approximately coincides with that of the pits. Four out of the nine stels are sculptured on the side facing west* The orientation of the graves, as well as that of the bodies, seems to have been determined by the con- figuration of the ground ; hence great variety prevails in this ' See passages cited by Belger, Mycena.