Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/377

 350 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. inhabitants ascribed a funerary purpose, be identified with the domed-buildings of which the finest examples are to be seen at Mycenae and Orchomenos ? If Pausanias heard them so called during his visit to the peninsula, he paid no heed to it, and preferred the theory — because savouring of archaeological knowledge — which accounted for these buildings on the assump- tion of the fabulous riches of kings of by-gone days, and of their natural desire to put them in a place of security. Such a notion may have been suggested by circumstances of a nature to strike the popular fancy. It is just possible that, like Schlie- mann at Mycenae and M. Tsoundas at Vaphio, the men who rifled these tombs in antiquity found much gold and silver in them, and that the fact may gradually have oozed out. As at that time the habit of stowing away large quantities of the precious metals in well-guarded chambers was no longer current in Greece, it was natural to conclude that they had been purposely built to keep treasures. That there should have been much uncertainty on this head will be easily grasped, if we remember the radical changes which the Dorian invasion effected all over Greece. To confine ourselves to the subject under notice : cremation, by substituting itself everywhere for inhumation, had given rise to architectural innovations to suit the needs of the new mode of burial ; whilst the destruction of Mycenae and Orchomenos, the chief centres of this now obsolete type of interment, helped not a little to efface the memory of the past, and make a return to ancient habits impossible. The site was left desolate for a period of longer or shorter duration, and in consequence of it a forcible break intervened in the local traditions. Nevertheless, after the Mace- donian and especially the Roman conquest, when Greece became a vast store-house of learning, in which the scholarly periegetes (traveller) had ample opportunity to satisfy his intellectual cravings, it is impossible that when brought face to face with these buildings he should not have asked himself the question as to the end for which they had been made. Every one who has visited the site of ancient cities, has seen at one time or another great cavities, with circular base and conical top, yawning at his feet. They are entirely buried in the ground, without doors or windows, and are entered by means of a ladder or rope, through an orifice left on the apex. Like the modern