Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/487

 46o Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. consciousness of his power, but with a great command of the precious metals, gold and silver. These he draws out with the hammer into almost invisible threads, or flattens them into laminae of such fineness as to espouse all the hollows and sali- ences of the ornament. Bronze is sufficiently common to furnish linings which, in places, cover surfaces of considerable extent ; either beaten into thin plates on the anvil, to be cut presently in long strips, or worked up with the hammer into all the ornamental forms then known to the ornamentist. Out of it, too, came nails and cramps which served to fasten metal plates to the walls. Lead was utilized to solder and mend domestic utensils;^ and from the fact that it can be smelted at a low temperature, it may also have been used in the building generally to join the parts. Iron has not been traced at Tiryns, Mycenae, or Troy. The ivory found in the burnt city of Hissarlik and Mycenae, the coloured glass picked up at Tiryns and in the former town, were imported from too great distances to have played a considerable part in the decoration of the building/- Nevertheless, the Mycenian architect was not badly off with regard to the productions of his own soil, or those which he obtained through his dealings with the stranger ; be it to con- stitute the body of his buildings, or to adorn the visible parts of the same. Mode of Construction, What most struck the Hellenes of the classic age was the size of the blocks composing the walls of Mycenae and Tiryns, which they erroneously attributed to the Cyclopes. The mistake was not rectified until Schliemann's discoveries. He showed that the stones at Tiryns were not, as was long commonly supposed, wholly undressed ; that several of them had been roughly worked on their external face with the pick, and nearly all, ^ SCHLIEMANN, TivytlS, ^ ScHLiEMANN, lUos, Ivory needles and pins were apparently found in the ruins of the first village. [A small glass vase was picked up in one of the women's tombs at Mycenae. — Trans.]