Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/376

 360 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. houses as well, so as to be distinguished from the rank and file. Around the stately edifice, however, the lower classes lived in houses that were but a development of the wooden hut a conjecture which the study of the ruins combined, with the evidence of historians, to bear out in full. Of all the places within Lycia, not one perhaps has kept the vestiges of the past in better preservation than the elevated plateau of Cragos, where once rose the little town of Sidyma, whose every stone structure, no matter how small, is not only standing, but almost entire. The fact that no traces of houses are met with leads one to suppose that they were wholly built of wood ; l and, if so, their destruction must have occurred at a comparatively recent period, since the town is not heard of as of any importance until the Roman dominion. There is nothing improbable as to a tiny centre lost upon the silent plateau having disappeared. Do not we find a parallel instance in Xanthus, the chief city of Lycia, twice consumed by fire ; and if a few hours sufficed to bring this about, is it not because, as Con- stantinople and Broussa until within a few years, they were built of combustible materials ? Houses in Lycia, it is needless to say, were not lighted with petroleum ; had they been of stone, therefore, they could not have been so easily burnt down. The vestibule of far the most important tomb in the necropolis at Pinara displays curious bas-reliefs representing, it is supposed, views of the Lycian cities that were subject to the prince who was buried there. They are bare outlines of the walls, gates, and main buildings of four cities, with tombs crowning the summit of mounds or ridges of some extent (Figs. 252, 253). 2 Two out of the views would seem to be copies of timber structures. Thus the second row of edifices situated in the upper city, seemingly consists of two blocks of masonry three stories high, entered by a portal raised on several steps. Rudely outlined as it is, the building recalls none the less those vast seraglios of Asia Minor, where in more than one town I have seen the governor of the province giving audience. To return : the structures to the left exhibit a very marked salience 1 BENNDORF, Reisen, torn. i. pp. 60, 99. drawing led to conclusions wide of the mark. Thus, for instance, a sarcophagus seen from its short side (Fig. 252, lower panel) was mistaken for a building with cupola. Our woodcuts are from copies made for Benndorf at the British Museum, and consequently far more reliable.
 * Ibid., pp. 52-54. The above views were published by Fellows ; but his imperfect