Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/398

 382 MYCENAE. ciiit, witb the exception of a small open space above the precipitous cliff on the southern side, which per- haps was never defended by a wall. The walls are more perfect than those of any other fortress in Greece; in some places they are 15 or 20 feet high. They are built of the dark-coloured limestone of the surrounding; mountains. Some parts of the walls are built, like those of Tiryns, of huge blocks of stone of irregular shape, no attempt being made to fit them into one another, and the gaps being filled up with smaller stones. But the greater part of the walls consists of polygonal stones, skilfidly hewn and fitted to one another, and their faces cut so as to give the masonry a smooth appearance. The walls also present, in a few parts, a third species of masonry, in which the stones are constructed of blocks of nearly quadrangular shape; this is the case in the approach to the Gate of Lions. This difference in the masonry of the walls has been held to prove that they were constructed at different ages; but more recent investigations amidst the ruins of Greece and Italy has shown that this difference in the style of masonry cannot be regarded as a decisive test of the comparative antiquity of walls; and Col. Mure has justly remarked that, as there can be no reason- able doubt that the approach to the Gate of Lions is of the same remote antiquity as the remainder of the fabric, it would appear to have been the custom with these primitive builders to pay a little more atten- tion to symmetry and regularity in the more orna- mental portions of their work. The chief gate of the Acropolis is at the NW. angle of the wall. It stands at right angles to the adjoining wall of the fortress, and is approached by a passage 50 feet long and 30 wide, formed by that wall and by another wall exterior to it. The opening of the gateway widens from the top downwards ; but JIYCENAE. at least two-thirds of its height are now buried in ruins. The width at the top of the door is 9.^ feet. This door was formed of two massive uprights, covered with a third block, 15 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 6 feet 7 inches high in the middle, but di- minishing at the two ends. Above this block is a triangular gap in the masonry of the wall, formed by an oblique approximation of the side courses of stone, continued from each extremity of the lintel to an apex above its centre. The vacant space is occupied by a block of stone, 10 feet high, 12 broad, and 2 thick, upon the face of which are sculptured two lions in low rehef, standing on their hind-legs, upon cither side of a covered pillar, upon which they rest their fore-feet. The column becomes broader to- wards the top, and is surmounted with a capital, formed of a row of four circles, enclosed between two parallel fillets. The heads of the animals are gone, together with the apex of the cone that surmounted the column. The block of stone, from which the lions are sculptured, is said by Leake and other accurate observers to be a kind of green basalt ; but this appears to be a mistake. We learn from Mure (Tour in Greece, vol. ii. p. 324) that the block is of the same palombino, or dove-coloured limestone, of which the native rock mainly consists, and that the erroneous impression has been derived from the colour of the polished surface, which has received from time and the weather a blueish green hue. The column between the lions is the customary symbol of Apollo Agyieus, the protector of doors and gates. (Mliller, Dor. ii. 6. § 5.) This is also proved by the invocation of Apollo in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1078, 1083, 1271), and the Electra of Sophocles (1374), in both of which tragedies the scene is laid in front of this gate. GATE OF THE LIONS AT MYCENAE. It has been well observed that this pair of lions stands to the art of Greece somewhat in the same relation as the Iliad and the Odyssey to her litera- ture; the one, the only extant specimens of the plastic skill of her mythical era, the other, the only genuine memorials of its chivalry and its song. The best observers remark that the animals are in a style of art peculiar to themselves, and that they have little or nothing of that dry linear stiflness which charac- terises the earlier stages of the art of sculpture in almost every country, and present consequently as little resemblance to the Archaic style of the Hel- lenic works of a later period as to those of Egypt itself. " The special peculiarities of their execu- tion are a certain solidity and rotundity amounting to clumsiness in the limbs, as compared with the bodies. The hind-legs, indeed, are more like those of elephants than lions ; the thighs, especially, are of immense bulk and thickness. This unfavour- able feature, liowever, is compensated by much natural ease and dignity of attitude. The turning of the body and shoulders is admirable, combining