Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/165

 144 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. catastrophe was forgotten ; in that the Phoenicians landed on its coasts so long after the event that they could not be expected to know aught about it, nor was there a Greek population able to inform them, or hand down the tale in history or poetry. True, with Dorian colonists the island became once more Greek ; but Peloponnesus lay too far off for rumour to have reached it of what had happened at Thera four or five hundred years before. The thread of local tradition had been too long in abeyance to permit of its being taken up again. Accordingly the ancients had no inkling of the drama which Nature had enacted in by-gone days on this scene. Its inhabit- ants throughout the classic period had no reason to suspect that beneath their houses lay others buried in cinders and scoriae. What they failed to detect was easily made out by modern observers. Inspection of the vertical beds to be descried on the ridge enabled them to determine the extent of the primitive soil, ere it was disturbed by the great eruption. This demarcation line appears throughout at about the same height above sea-level, and is plainly indicated by a thin layer of vegetable earth, resulting from the decomposition of old lava, which intervenes between it and masses of pumice stone cast up by the volcano ere it sank into the abyss. It is below this stratum of scoriae that proofs have come to light of houses having stood here, when Thera was for the most part submerged. The discovery was due to chance. Whilst the Suez Canal was being constructed at Port Said, the officials of the Company were in the habit of sending for puzzolana stone, which their servants quarried in the islands of Thera and Therasia. Now, towards the lower part of the pumice bed they invariably came upon huge stone blocks difficult of removal, and which practically impeded further progress. The quarrymen were fully aware that the stoppage was caused by old structures ; ruins however are so plentifully distributed all over the island, that nobody thought of inquiring into the age of these particular ones. P'ortunately for us, M. Christomanos, professor of chemistry at Athens, happened to be at Thera for the purpose of testing on the spot eruptive phenomena. He at once recognized the real character of these structures, and pronounced them to be older than the formation of the tufa bed. Before giving in our adhesion to his opinion, it will be well