Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/129

 CHAPTER VII. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE. Fortified Towns and their General Characteristics. Our general description of the remains of the prehistoric buildings of Hellas must have given the reader some notion relating to the characteristics of the construction and arrangement of fortified enclosures which, to the ancients, seemed to be the work of superhuman beings, the Cyclopes. Hence it only remains to draw attention to certain details, so as to justify our attempts to restore the citadels of Tiryns (PL VIII.) and Mycenae (Pis. IX., X.). In these plates the trace of the wall is taken, with rigorous exactness, from the plans of Dr. Dorpfeld for Tiryns, and from Captain Stefifen for Mycenae. We have confined our task to re-establishing the upper portion of the wall, which has everywhere been destroyed. In its present state, the greatest vertical height at those points where it is best preserved is seven metres fifty centimetres in the lower Tirynthian citadel, and at Mycenae, on the south-west front, near the point l, a litrie over thirteen metres.^ The chief characteristics of all these fortresses reside in the fact that they are not planted, like the acropoles of Amasia, Pishmish-Kalessi in Asia Minor,^ Polyrrhenia and Phalasarna in Crete,^ on the summit of perpendicular rocks, at enormous ^ ScHLiEMANN, Ttryus, 2 On the Amasia citadel, see G. Perrot and E. Guillaume, Exploration archkologique. Upon Pishmish-Kalessi, History of Art ^ Relative to Polyrrhenia and Phalasarna, G. Perrot, Ltle de Crlie, Souvenirs de voyage.