Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/439

 412 Primitive Greeck: Mycknian Art. to the plateau. in order to assure to the inhabitants of the citadel the enjoyment of and free access to the most available of the sources within reach, a winding staircase of about forty steps has been cut in the vertical wall. 1 1 gives access to a chamber like- wise excavated in the tufa, and at the end of it we find a circular well or basin into which falls, drop by drop, the water percolating the stony mass. This is no other than the Klepsydra, " hidden water" (Fig. 148, 8), the most important spring in the citadel, and coeval with the wall (Fig. 150). No such passages exist on the south, where the rock is vertically precipitous ; yet here the Pelasgi seem to have terraced the ground in order to enlarge the level. To them also, mayhap, should be attributed the piece of Cyclopiean wall which has been cleared between the southern side of the Parthenon and Cinion's fortification (Fig. 148, 6). The wall under notice is breached by half-a-dozen steps, so as to connect the two esplanades staged there against the rampart (Fig. ISO- From the foregoing description, the reader will have gathered that the castle of Cecrops and Erechthcus was enclosed by a twofold enclosure ; built, it may well be, ere the name of Athens, fated to be noised abroad, had come into existence. The arrange- ment which we find here of two concentric lines of wall, wreathing, one the foot, the other the brow of the hill, is paralleled in many a Turkish stronghold of Asia Minor; in Greece proper,