Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/319

 294 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. of the building are provided with regular calcareous stones or breccia, whether at Tiryns, Mycenae, or Troy, whilst the body of all the walls is composed of rubble and crude brick ; but the coarse material is everywhere thickly plastered to receive a polychrome decoration which the painter could make as rich as he pleased. Nowhere is the harmony in question more striking than in the decorative scheme. Fuller verbal details, however, would add little or nothing to the notion that may already have been formed. In order to carry conviction the eye must be appealed to, after the fashion adopted by Schliemann in his book on Tiryns, where side by side of the most precious fresco-paintings from the latter city, he juxtaposes ornaments borrowed from Mycenae and Menidi. Orchomenos and Spata. In all are found the same style and taste, the same preference for spirals, and the endless combinations to which they give rise. There is not, so to speak, a single ornamental form at Tiryns but which is met elsewhere, be it in this or that building referred to above, or on some of the wares composing the furniture of the Mycenian tombs, and other funerary monuments of the same epoch. The same conclusions would be reached, were this the place for overhauling the small terra-cotta figures and broken pottery which in the course of the excavations were collected at Tiryns. We could easily prove that their technique is identical with that of similar wares picked up in the town, as well as in and around the domed-tombs of Mycenae. But we deem our demonstration sufficiently complete, and in no need of such dallying minutiae. We are now in a position to approach the Mycenian monuments without any misgivings as to the age which should be assigned to the ruins of Tiryns, consequently we are justified in comparing them the one with the other, in order that we may bring out the peculiarities which serve to define the art of Achaean Greece. Mycence. There was no more difficulty in identifying Mycenae: on the ground than there had been for Tiryns. The indications of ancient writers as to its site are precise and clear ; led by them