Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/523

 496 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. pile or timber beam. When erections assumed greater elevation and amplitude than the simple hut, slender piles were replaced by trunks of trees. In utilizing these, they were set up head downwards, and the habit was continued long after the intro- duction of stone supports. If the practice was retained, it was not entirely due to routine and confirmed habit ; they also found it useful. By this arrangement the largest section of the jamb came in contact with the architrave, always apt to bend and break under the heavy burden of the superimposed terraced covering. There is yet another feature which points to the wooden origin of the Mycenian column ; namely, its exceedingly slender proportions. Its gracility far exceeds that of the Doric pillar at any time of its existence, which it so nearly resembles in other respects. Starting from the normal relation of the thickness of the wall to its height, it has been conjectured that the columns of the Tirynthian and Mycenian palaces, in elevation, must at the least have numbered from eight to ten modules ; the module, according to Vitruvius, being the greatest diameter of the column.^ Here, as we know, the greatest diameter occurs at the upper end of the shaft. Taking the first module under the capital, it is found that the false semi-columns at the entrance of the Treasury of Atreus number over ten diameters. Among the Hellenes, the Corinthian order, the latest and slimmest of all, is the only one which ever came up to these proportions ; the later Ionic ranked next, and the Doric last. Whenever a stone pillar plays a useful part in the construction, it invariably is short and thick-set in its infancy. With full maturity alone, when greater elegance is sought, does it taper and lengthen out. The condition of the wooden support is just the reverse of this : it is first a pole, then a tree, selected among pines or poplars for the sake of a straight and graceful stem, and it ends in a column by assemblage, composed of several superimposed drums. The distinctive peculiarity of this column is its slim proportions, a peculiarity which it will retain in a more advanced and ornate style of architecture, when the builder has long been acquainted with the employment of the hardest stone. Then, too, the Mycenian pillar is indebted to its model for its capital. This at best is but an applied piece, which reproduces with more or less ^ TirynSy Adler^s Preface,