Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/510

 Secondary Forms. 483 of the Tirynthian and Mycenian buildings, we do not meet it there in every hall of the palaces, we find it copied and imitated in stone at the main entrance to the acropolis of Tiryns. True, it has preserved but one of its uprights, but the four colossal blocks that make up the sill, jambs, and lintel of the Lions Gate are whole (Fig. 192).^ The upper face of the latter presents a marked convexity, and all are of a different stone from that of the adjoining wall. The height of the doorway is three metres twenty centimetres ; measured on the ground-sill its breadth is three metres seven centimetres, and two metres eighty-five centimetres under the lintel. It is the same with the northern postern (Fig. 97). As was explained somewhat earlier, the n I » — I.— J i fcU ''/■'/ H' m« ■* »^^^m 4 4 Fig. 191. — Elevation and plan of primitive doon^^ay. Third stage. Fig. 192. — The Lions Gate. arrangement was rigorously commanded by walls of irregular masonry, composed of blocks loosely piled up, with sides inclined in every direction. From settled habit, its employment was fitfully retained in well-jointed structures. In such cases it not unfrequently happens that the doorways have no separate posts, the last stone of the lateral courses being advanced in that position, in the domed-tombs at Mycenae for example (Pis. IV., v., VI., and Fig. 201). We see, however, more than one specimen with independent door-frames in much later build- ings, where the architect has seized the opportunity offered him of harking back to ancient habits, when they chanced to harmonize with his work ; such as fortified enclosures, city and acropolis gates, portals to sacred buildings, found respectively ^ Expedition de Moree,