Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/519

 492 Primitive Greece; Mvcenian Art. pavement, in the men's megaron for example. The presence of bits of metallic plates, with the nails which served to fix them being still found adhering to them, near one of these bases, is suggestive of a bronze covering for part at least of the column ; the better to assure the solidity of this armour, the lower edge was inserted into the beton mass.^ A round base involves a shaft of similar form ; and this can only have been timber. The head of the walls was furnished with a wood cuirass which has ¥}G. 197.— Base of coli left unmistakable marks on the stone plinth.- It is plain that both anta: and columns found at the entrance of the porch must have been timber, for at Tiryns alone Dorpfeld counted thirty- one stone bases z'n situ; whilst of the shafts and capitals that must have surmounted them, not the smallest vestige has been found. So significant a fact cannot be the result of chance. Had there been here a stone column, bits of it would have cropped up, as fragments of the Hellenic age do crop up, on the site they once occupied about temples and other edifices. 1 TSOUNDAS, UpaKTiKa ' History of Art.