Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/89

64 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. which makes so brave a display of undulating and endless cur- vilinear lines on the ceiling at Orchomenos (Fig. 217). It is not conceivable that so sumptuous a facade should have been left without a crowning member which fulfilled the function of cornice. A cornice is to architecture what peroration is to a speech ; it bounds and arrests the ascending lines of the edifice, exactly as in the speech the flow of ideas and the whole sequence of proofs cumulate towards the con- clusion. Fragments r and p {PI. IV.) are well suited to occupy FiC. a^o.^Tomli I. Tixigiiienl of ilecoralion of fa^nilc. l^wer poition. Height, o m., 09. this place, both from their size and the ornament they exhibit. On the one (Fig. 271) we have a row of spirals, and below, a line of discs, similar to those beheld on the pillar of the bas- relief over the Lions Gate (PI. XIV.). Below this, again, we have placed an ornament recalling the arrangement of triglyphs and metopes of the Doric frieze (Figs. 225, 226), and so much affected by the Mycenian ornamentist. The excavations of 1878 have brought out two specimens bearing this same pattern, though slightly modified and on a different scale.' On account ' Represented in the upper jxirtion of Fig. 270 are two other diminutive fragments of fascife decorated in the same style.