Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/376

 MvCENyE. 349 pression, is constituted by a series of horizontal rings converging towards the top, and closed by a stone placed lintel-wise. The methods employed for obtaining the required curves in plan and elevation will be explained hereafter. For the present we will confine our observations to such general features as are most constant in the buildings that will oftener be referred to by us during our journey across Mycenian land. Though in a semi-buried state, some of these cupola-shaped tombs, as they are generally called, had long been known ere the late excavations cleared them out, and led to discoveries of the most interesting nature, at Amyclse for example ; others have been reported from Attica and Thessaly ; and some day, from under the ruinous domes of the graves as yet unexplored at Mycenae, precious relics may turn up unexpectedly.^ Before proceeding to enumerate and describe these buildings, it behoves us to justify the name we apply to them. No allusion whatever is made to these monuments either by Homer, or the Lyrics, or the Tragedians. The first literary reference to them is found in Pausanias, who noticed them at Orchomenos and Mycenae, and ascribed them to princes of the heroic age, by whom they had been used as store-houses ; ^ and he calls them flijcratipo/, " treasuries." A century later, Athenaeus, in a passage which has scarcely received the attention it deserves, says : ** Great tumuli are scattered all over Peloponnesus, and especially Laconia ; they are called Phrygian tombs, and are supposed to contain the companions of Pelops.''^ Should not these mounds, to which the are we to understand his having failed to distinguish the constnictive peculiarity under notice — that, too, when his path in the Eastern and Western Province was literally strewn with Roman vaulted buildings ? Yet he thought that the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenos, as he styles it, was a vaulted instead of a domed building, since he writes : ** The Treasury of Minyas is a circular edifice, built of stone, with a ix)inted top ; the uppermost slab, it is said, forms the key of the whole erection " : TOP ^€ dvundrni twv lOwv fpaaiy &pfAoviav irayrt tlycu Tf olKoSofirifiari (PaUSANIAS, IX. xxxviii. 2). That Pausanias understood the word apfioyia in our sense, is proved, as Berger justly remarks, by his applying it elsewhere, in his description of the walls at Tiryns. Belger's dissertation, Beitrage zur Kenntniss der griechischen Kuppelgrcuber. In it are displayed much learning and a precise and well-pondered criticism. 2 Pausanias. ^ AtheN/EUS : "iSois 5* a*' koX riig IlcXoiroj'j/Vou irayra^ovy /iaXiora 5* ly AajccBai/uorf, Xct»/irira /leyaXa, a KaXovtri rdtfiovg riSv fJUTci IleXoiroc ^pvyuty.
 * For all that relates to this class of monuments, we have made liberal use of