Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/132

 Fortified Towns and their General Characteristics. 103 The reminiscences which they recalled doubtless had something to do in preserving the old stones, bound up as they were with the past of their race, which the mythic cycle pictured forth in vivid and abiding colours. Had not Tiryns been the cradle- land of Heracles ? Had not Perseus, the tamer of monsters, built the walls of Mycenae ? Was not the tale full of the deeds of the Atridse who had been enthroned here, and whom Argos, when Mycenae fell, did not fail to claim for her own, as helpful in the part she aspired to play in Peloponnesus ; just as Athens, her ally, made use of the exploits and victories of Theseus over the Amazons for precisely the same ends ? The desired result could be obtained without having to undo the stupendous labours of the Cyclopes ; nor was it necessary to open large breaches and dismantle them, that is to say, tear down the heavy gates and strip the curtain of its breastworks and galleries ; left to themselves, the fortifications would soon fall into decay. The work of destruction which fire had com- menced, would ere long be completed by the weather. In early defences the stone wall was always surmounted by crude brick or breastworks of timber, without which the besieged, exposed to the darts of the enemy, would have been unable to maintain themselves on the wall. Modern war-engines, and the invention of artillery, have wrought little change in the conditions of siege warfare ; we could therefore have predicted the presence of parapets here even without the traces they have left behind. At Troy, sun-dried bricks have been found in position on more than one point ; and it is self-evident that the vast quantities of ashes and charcoal found around the bricks can only have come from the rough timbered works which served to protect the soldiers posted on the round-walk, or on the platforms of the bastions by the gates (Figs. 41, 181). At Tiryns also, where certain portions of the circuit had lain concealed under heaps of ruin and earth, until the excavations of 1885, Dorpfeld found, in the upper part of the existing wall, many crude bricks in a semi-calcined condition ; he also noticed at the inner corner of the eastern rampart, opposite to the great propylaeum (PL H., in front of rr), stone bases, on the surface of which has been cut a circle with a diameter averaging fifty-five centimetres (Fig. 197). There can be no doubt, he says, that we have here the remains of a colonnade which formed a passage