Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/299

 274 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. A short flight of steps, still in position, gave easy access to the main apartments of the building. This stairway constituted the shortest and most direct means of communication between the inhabitants of the citadel and the city extending in the plain ; and in case of siege afforded them a convenient and favourable sally-port. Small indeed, meanwhile, would have been the enemy's chance of penetrating into the fortress through this way, for they would find themselves shut within a narrow passage, exposed both to the missiles of the garrison gathered on the rampart, and thrust back by soldiers posted on the upper steps. This description will have conveyed some idea as to the strength of the defences which the warlike chiefs of those days accumulated on the flanks of the hill where they had chosen their domicile, and surrounded themselves with such luxury as was consistent with existing civilization. The discovery, however, which has surprised archaeologists quite as much as the exhumation of the shaft-graves at Mycenae, has been that of a building, the foundations of which cover a very considerable area.^ From its ground-plan and elaborate arrangement, experts — Boetticher excepted — have unanimously agreed to recognize here a princely residence, a palace, whilst our notions of the taste and habits of the Mycenian ornamentist are supplemented and enlarged by what remains of its inner decoration. Let us return to the entrance t, opening in the northern wall of the upper citadel, which, as remarked above, was never closed by a real door, and which mayhap, when beleaguered, they barricaded with stones and timber. If the enemy succeeded in forcing it, his troubles would not by any means be at an end ; in fact, it was then that his position became most difficult, for he found himself cooped within a narrow alley, between the citadel enclosure and the palace wall, which is here of extraordinary strength. From the two upper platforms, the defenders, sheltered behind embattlements, or rather palisades, rained arrows and ^ M. Christian Belger reminds us that M. F. Tiersch announced the existence of this building as far back as Sept. 30, 1831, in a letter where he mentions having lighted upon the foundations of the ancient palace of the Tirynthian kings, along with the bases of three columns. He was obliged through want of means to abandon his researches (Reinach, Chroniques ct Orient),