Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/287

 ARCHITECTURE. 271 FIG. 176. Aspect of facing. Choisy, Fig. II. failed for dressing beforehand those intended to line the walls, we find grooves around the unfinished units to guide the stone- cutter in the completion of his work (Fig. 176) a mode of execu- tion likewise followed in the Propylaea at Athens. But when the blocks were put in place ready cut, near the salient angles and along the edges, seams in relief have been reserved to pre- vent the effect of violent contact (Figs. 168, 169, 172). Very similar precautions were resorted to at Segesta, in Sicily, in placing the architrave. As with the Greeks, here also, the covering slabs of the chambers are horizontally placed ; and the result is a ceiling instead of a vault. When the builder feared to see the slab of his ceilings break under downward weight, he reduced the span by approaching the two supporting walls (Fig. 171). In this way the Greeks perpetually ensured solidity to their platbands ; the lintels of their doorways are laid upon piers whose intervening space is less towards the top than at the base." L A curious detail will be observed : wherever the masonry in the galleries is of small units, we find them neither cemented nor set up dry, but im- bedded in soft mud ; the mark left by the trowel for smoothing it down is still to be seen. No example has been traced of so primitive a mode in the monumental con- structions of antiquity. All the precious objects deposited in these tombs have disappeared. M. Choisy collected on the site chips of resinous wood, probably remains of ancient coffins, along with iron clamps that served to hold them together ; frag- ments of pottery, bits of a fine alabaster vase with an elongated profile, and finally stone beds upon which the Lydians laid their dead. All these couches were cast out of the vaults when the excavations took place ; but from the pieces that were then collected, it has been possible .to restore a whole bed (Fig. 178). The funereal couch was upheld by two supports of unsquared stone, the upper face of which was slightly sunk, in 1 CHOISY, Note, pp. 76, 77. FIG. 177. Tumulus. Plan and section. Ibid., Fig. 12.