Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/105

 76 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. To return to the dome. There is no uncertainty from the sixth course upwards ; the smallness of the holes, the fashion in which they are distributed, without any fixed rule, over the sur- face, are suggestive of separate applied pieces, like those which we have introduced into the upper bronze zone. Stars, which would have endowed the cupola with something of the aspect of a constellated firmament, might have been thought of, but for the fact that among the unending patterns beheld on the golden discs which have been collected in the shaft-graves, there is one solitary specimen only with a far-off resemblance to a star (Fig. 281), and it has never yet been found among the Fir.. 281.— r.ol.l di^c. Actual siK-. sculptured and painted fragments of either tombs or palaces. Per contra, the rosette is seen almost on every single scrap which has been brought out of these ruins ; hence it will cause no surprise at our having given it the preference. On the bronze door-case surrounding the entrance to the vault, we have put a series of spirals. The large square hole shown on the upper corner westward of the opening (Fig. 264), seems to call for a distinct ornament there ; to have set up a lion's mask in that situation had been but to repeat the form seen on the external face of the lintel over the principal portal. For reasons of enrichment we have assumed that the vault was closed by a wooden door overlaid with bronze. Thiersch does not seem to have paid any great attention to this division of the building ;■