Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/488

 Mode of Construction. 461 whether prepared or unprepared, whether great or small, were bonded with clay mortar.^ Megalithism, or the employment of blocks of colossal dimen- sions, is only found exceptionally in this architecture ; in each case its presence is explained by the special destination of the structure, or the part it had to play in this or that section of the unit. The distinctive peculiarities of the architecture we are considering are, above all, (i) the use of clay mortar as sole binding material, (2) stone bases with superimposed walls of crude brick, and (3) timber-ties to keep in place the courses of the masonry. That a country where stone, good clay, and woods of excellent building quality should have begun to construct in this fashion is but natural. If these methods led the way, it is because they were suggested by the nature of the indigenous materials, methods to which time, in that region, has hardly brought any changes. If, in remote districts, the artisan, though still faithful to the old processes which he has received from his forefathers, slowly awakes to the advantages to be derived from the improvements that are taking place around him, such opportunities were denied to antiquity and the middle ages ; nay, even to modern times. The industrial advance of the ancient Hellenes lagged far behind their glorious artistic progress. The dissolution of the Roman empire brought in its wake centuries of distress and misery to all the countries once subjected to its rule. In Greece, under the harsh government of the Turkoman, many districts relapsed into a state verging on barbarism. To have survived in such conditions as these argues well for the stupendous vitality of the Hellenic race. On the other hand, cut off from the stir and movement of the world, how was it possible to learn new ways, or improve on ancient methods ? The rustic hut, therefore, as far as the structure of its walls is concerned, is precisely what it was in the prehistoric houses of Thera. During my recent visit at Tiryns and Mycenae, I amused myself in comparing the masonry of the hovels of the adjacent villages, which I found to be identical with the so- called Cyclopsean buildings of the Mycenian acropolis : like these 1 The excavations of 1886 gave Dorpfeld the opportunity of examining great masses that had long lain hidden under mountains of rubbish, and he thus writes : " The constructor used clay mortar in all the walls without exception, whether boundary walls or inner partitions " (Tiryns).