Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/429

 402 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. from the dome to the ground is reckoned eight metres seventy- four centimetres. The closing slab has not long disappeared, for the older inhabitants vaguely remember seeing it in position. When entire, the height of the building must have been cir. nine metres. Blocks lying around the mound are doubtless from a circular wall which served to support the accumulations of imported earth. No trace of applied or painted decoration is seen either in the chamber, or the stone beam, or the door-posts, and the furniture is of the poorest description. The excavators are of opinion that the grave has not been disturbed ; yet it contained no precious metals, and the objects collected in it are some few fragments of bronze weapons and ivory pieces, the largest of which are from circular boxes or knife handles. Per contra, small glazed squares of terra-cotta, glass necklaces, pieces designed for dress trimmings, and glass buttons are picked up in great profusion. The technique revealed in the broken pottery of this tomb is dependent on that of the later Mycenian vases. In the passage leading to the chamber, specimens of much later earthenware, and bits of vases with red figures of rigid style, have been collected. Out of other primitive sepultures lately reported from many a spot of Attica, two graves, the one at Eleusis and the other at Thoricos, present a constructive detail bearing on the open passage which everywhere fronts the entrance to the now well- known type of the domed-building. What appears in the same situation at Eleusis and Thoricos is a corridor which in small recalls the galleries of the Tirynthian wall. In both the hollow is covered by stones set in advance, the one above the other (Fig. 147). In length the dromos at Eleusis is four metres eighty centimetres, by one metre ninety centimetres broad, and three metres fifty centimetres in height under the drip-stone ; whilst the diameter of the circular chamber is eight metres eighty-five centimetres.^ The construction is very primitive in style ; it consists of large blocks almost in the rough, and pebbles shoved in the interstices left by the bigger units. The tomb at Thoricos lies at the back of a ruinous Greek theatre which is well known to travellers. The outline of the mound, trenchantly relieved against a lower and jagged mass, was noticed some years ago as a probable receptacle for a domed- ^ F. Lknormant, Tombeau pclasgique a Eleusis,