Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/231

 2o8 Primitive Grefxe : Mycenian Art. larity of the soil, it is impossible that this should be the case everywhere ; nor can the explorers distinguish the several settle- ments from the presence of a bed of vegetable earth interposed between any two layers of buildings, as they were able to do for the first and second city. The people which, after the fall of the city, selected its seat on the mound, seems to have carried on its narrow existence without a break. Small, insig- nificant houses were built on the ruins — from about one to two metres deep — of the burnt city. When one of these dwellings succumbed to the hand of time or that of man, a very similar one rose in its stead. These houses were of course ill built, and the excavations have revealed the fact that their walls were not always on the same level, nor did they always cross each other at right angles ; the difficulty therefore of singling out distinct periods will be readily grasped. Proceeding from base to crown, we continue to find the same-shaped vases and utensils, the same rude idols, until we meet broken pottery, first with black then with red figures, amidst walls of goodly aspect made of polygonal stones. From these and other in- dications we guess the presence of Hellenic culture. A little higher up we reach the foundations of the Graeco-Roman town, recognizable from the regularity of their beds and the fine cut of their stones ; then we come upon a ground strewn with pieces of marble, with pillars, friezes, and cornices of temples and other public buildings that once adorned the acropolis of Ilium. In all these layers are found numbers of huge jars (TTifloi), quite intact or but slightly damaged, standing against the walls of the buildings, still half filled with the grain or dried cereals that were kept in them (Fig. 57). We do not pretend to set forth an orderly enumeration of the layers of ruin and broken pottery covering and mixing the one with the other up to the very summit, but will restrict our remarks to those objects from the lowest strata as are of paramount interest. The tribe which re-occupied the site after the enemy had gone away and the effects of the fire had subsided, seems to have been some time in winning back somewhat of the old prosperity. The houses resting immediately on the ruins of the burnt town have a very poor aspect ; but a little higher up we find ves- tiges of more spacious dwellings, built with greater care, and with stones of larger calibre (Fig. 58). One of these buildings,