Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/316

 TiRYNS. 291 Having now gone over the plan, internal arrangement, and polychrome decoration of the building in as succinct a manner as possible, it remains to determine the age to which it belongs. The first thought which comes up to the mind is that the palace is contemporaneous with the enormous walls surrounding it, walls which the Hellenes of the fifth century b.c. viewed in the light of a mysterious and strange legacy from a pre-historic age, reputed to be the work of superhuman builders called Cyclopes. When the building was discovered, doubts were loudly expressed as to its having any claim to be considered old ; the palace — its very title to the name was scouted — was attributed to the beginning of our era, and consequently almost modern. The objections raised against it appeared in a series of letters in the spring of 1886, written by Stillmann, the Times correspondent in Greece. He was supported by Mr. Penrose, of the English School at Athens, the author of the great work on the curves of the Parthenon, and by others. The matter was referred to a Special General Meeting of the Hellenic Society/ Drs. Schliemann and Dorpfeld being present by invitation. To the objection that walls of quarry-stones and sun-dried bricks were unworthy of the heroic age, Schliemann, and after him Dorpfeld, pointed out that such walls had been found in admittedly pre-historic buildings all over Greece, that the wall-paintings of the Tirynthian palace exhibited the very same archaic designs as the Thalamos at Orchomenos, whose antiquity was not in dispute. As to the stone-saw, pick-axe, and cylindrical bore being proofs, as con- tended by Stillmann, that these walls were the work of Celtic barbarians who overran Greece in the third century b.c.,^ they on the contrary were a sure test of age, and the very instru- ments whose employment characterized the domed-tombs and the Lions Gate at Mycenae. Finally, Stillmann's alternative theory that the building was contemporary with the Byzantine church and the tombs adjoining it,^ must likewise fall to the ground when confronted with the actual state, the position and ^ See the St James's Gazette^ July 3, 1886, the Times of the same date, and the Builder^ July 10. The latter gives a detailed account of the Special General Meeting. A more concise one appears in Hellenic Studies^ 1886, pp. liii-lxi. 2 Stillmann's theory, set forth in a series of letters addressed to the Times^ April 1886. ^ His alternative theory, which was read in a paper sent to the Special Meeting of the Hellenic Society, where he pleaded inability to appear.