Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/368

Rh 346 ARCHEOLOGY CLASSICAL immense size, led the later Greeks to believe that they had been the work of a mythical race of giants, Cyclopes, and to designate such masonry as Cyclopean. It was further said that these Cyclopes had come from Lycia, between which and Argolis, where the most remarkable of these walls are, there existed (whatever may be the value of this belief) a very frequent intercourse in the heroic times. Pausanias (ii. 25, 8), speaking of the walls of Tirynth, which still, apparently, present the same aspect as when he saw them, remarks that the smallest of the blocks would be more than a load for a yoke of mules. Again (ix. 36, 5) he compares them with the pyramids of Egypt as regards the difficulty of the task of building and their colossal dimensions. Instead of the unsatisfactory Cyclopes, the Pelasgians, who preceded the Greeks in the occupation of the soil, are now accredited the authors of this primitive masonry, to which accordingly the much -abused term Pelasgic is applied. Pausanias (i. 28, 3) describes the oldest part of the walls of the Acropolis at Athens as the work of Pelasgic settlers there. In what relation of blood this race may have stood to the Greeks who succeeded them cannot be determined, but it is known that the Greeks adopted from them, among other religious beliefs and rites, those of Dodona; and since even this primitive style of masonry commended itself to them for a time, the Pelasgians must be regarded as having in some degree assisted in the artistic progress of their successors. The walls of Mycenae furnish an example of the fine skill with which the Greeks afterwards employed the Pelasgic construc tion, the blocks of stone being carefully jointed and hewn on the outer surface, while the interior of the wall is filled up with mortar and small stones. Mycenae claimed to be one of the very oldest towns of Greece, and its walls may fairly be regarded as the oldest known monument of Greek workmanship. A considerable advance of skill is notice able in the masonry of the treasure-houses (thesauri), or dome-shaped and partly subterraneous buildings, which occur in several districts of Greece, and of which the treasury of Atreus (so named by Pausanias) at Mycenaj is a typical example. It is built of circular courses of evenly hewn and jointed stones, the courses narrowing towards the top, and there held together by a keystone. It is not, however, an instance of vaulting in the true sense. The most remarkable features in the building are first, the pilasters and tablets of coloured marble, decorated with a peculiar style of ornament, the elements of which are spirals and zigzags ; and secondly, the sheets of bronze .vith which the interior walls were plated. Of the latter little more than the nails have been found with which they were attached. Of the former a number of fragments, some of which are now in the British Museum, have come to light. The disposition, and especially the profusion of ornament which they display, differ strikingly from the simplicity of Greek work as we know it, and have given rise to a theory which is now accepted as proved, that the Connection Greeks at this time must have been strongly influenced by of Greek tJ ie example of Oriental artists (Sclmaase, Geschichte der bildenden Kunsten, ii., fig. 28, Diisseldorf, I860). Mean time, it is a fact of the first importance that this building, which Pausanias appears to have had good grounds for naming the treasury of Atreus, and thus assigning it to the heroic age before the time of Homer, furnishes a remarkable illustration of the descriptions of princely palaces given by the poet, according to whom the walls were plated with dazzling bronze, and the cornices, pillars, and doors enriched with work in other metals. When, therefore, a building in the remains of which a complete absence of Greek simplicity and a powerful suggestion of Oriental influence have been unanimously recognised, was found to correspond accurately with the descriptions of Homer, it was both time to inquire whether the frequent notices of works of art in his pages also point in the same direction, and reasonable to assume that his testimony elsewhere in matters of art was equally reliable. From the poet s evidence on the condition of art in his time we gather that the various processes of working in gold, silver, iron, tin, and bronze.were known, with the exception of casting and soldering in the last-mentioned material, and of welding iron. &quot;Wood and ivory were carved and jointed, the art of pottery was known, and weaving and embroidery, the foundation of pictorial art, were practised. We hear of richly-ornamented articles of furniture, armour, and dresses. We read of the Te/crwv, ^aA/ccus, and CTKUTOTO/AOS. Occasionally the names of particular artists are mentioned, as of Tychius, who made the shield of Ajax (Iliad, vii. 222), and of Icmalius, who made Penelope s chair (Odyssey, xix. 60). On the other hand, the work of amateurs is often praised, as the couch made by Odysseus (Odyssey, xxiii. 189), and the figured garments worked by Andromache and Helena (Iliad, iii. 125, and xxii. 441). When the workmanship of an object is of surpassing beauty and the artist unknown, as in the case of the Sidonian crater (Odyssey, iv. 617), it is ascribed to the artist god Hephaestus, to whom also the same honour is done when the work, as in the case of the shield of Achilles, was a poetic creation. That Homer should in the same breath speak of an object as Sidonian and the work of a Greek god, is a singular mistake, which would hardly have been committed had tho articles imported from the Phoenicians differed in styla from articles of the same class produced by native work men. So far, artistic feeling seems to have been directed exclusively to the decoration of objects of daily use. It had not yet aspired to the production of one object which could rest on its merits as a mere work of art, as, for example, a statue. We have, indeed (Iliad, vi. 301), mention of a statue of Pallas at Troy; but the fact that women are described as placing drapery on its knees is sufficient proof of its having been a mere rude Xoanon, such as we find frequently represented on the painted vases. The same phenomenon occurs in the remains of Assyrian art, among which, with all the wealth of sculpture in relief and of the highest excellence, there are only three or four statues, and those of such exceeding rudeness that we are compelled to suppose that they were intended to be draped like the figure of Pallas just mentioned. We have seen that the ornaments of the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae pointed clearly to an Oriental origin. It is agreed that the relief of two rampant lions from above the gateway to the citadel of Mycena3 (Miiller s Denkmaler der alien Kimst], which is the solitary existing instance of Greek sculpture from about Homeric times, is of an Oriental character in the composition, in the flatness of the relief, and in the design of the pillar which stands between the lions. We find further, as was pointed out by Layard (Nineveh, Appendix), among the many remains of the inferior arts from Nineveh, illustra tions of the references to such matters in Homer, which are admirable in themselves, and are found nowhere else, ex cept occasionally in the oldest Etruscan tombs. Now, as Assyrian art reached its culmination by about the 9th cen tury B.C., we may assume that, contemporary with Homer, it was being practised with great activity. On the testi mony of Herodotus we know that Assyrian wares were imported into Greece by the Phoenicians and sold in the heroic times; and, on the testimony of Homer, these same Phoenicians were in the habit of selling costly articles of furniture and dress to the Greeks of his time. Of early Phoenician art, however, we have no authentic remains, nor indeed any proof of its having had an independent existence at any time. We know the Phoenicians mainly aa traders, and it is highly probable that in matters of art their