Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/295

 270 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. southern rampart are three metres thirty centimetres and one metre ninety centimetres. The end wall is completely destroyed ; the depth of three metres thirty centimetres which has been assigned to these chambers cannot be far wrong.' These inner passages, with the rude massiveness of their architecture, the simplicity of the means employed by the builder to obtain effects which voussoirs, with their ever-varying play of light and shade, alone can give, but of whose principle he was ignorant, are those which most powerfully and abidingly affect the traveller who visits Tiryns. Some faint notion of the gill«ry Uom llie soutli-oast angle or the ci their character may be gained from the illustrations {Figs. 77 and 78), which were taken at different times. The first is the entrance to the wide corridor as it appeared sixty years ago ; the other shows the interior, which was completely cleared by recent excavations. The staircase leading to it has left no trace ; the excavations, however, permit us to assume that a flight of steps had its rise under a portico situate east of the great ' In Tiryns ate set forth Dorpfeld's arguments for reaching the above figures. ' 'Ihe view is taken from a spot midway between the doorway of the first and that of the second chamber.