Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/149

 114 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. the right, the boundary wall, we could have put many more rustic dwellings, along with their stone fences. As regards the acropolis, however, our aim has been to convey a just notion of the way in which houses were staged on the declivity where, in the space intervening between the palace and the gate, they were serried against one another. Ere the authority of the Mycenian princes was firmly estab- lished, such families as had cast in their lot with these chiefs must have been anxious to domicile themselves in that narrow space, in order that they might have the full benefit of the pro- tection afforded by the formidable rampart. Northward of the citadel, one may still pick one's way up a narrow street, bordered on either side by the front walls of ancient houses, still one or two metres high. The lane is but one metre twenty centi- metres broad/ A subterranean conduit was laid down for drain- ing oflf the waters, and continued right through the rampart, to prevent floodings. The slope, within the citadel, is throughout pretty steep ; at certain points a flight of steps, thirty-two of which are in position, served to connect the several habitations (they are marked in Fig. 90, right of the house e). Survey of the ground does not tend to make one understand how Homer could rightly apply the epithet of supuayuia, " large streeted," to Mycenae.^ In order to grasp it, a distinction must be made between the lower and the upper city. Here the course of a path, cir. five metres broad, has apparently been recognized ; it ran above the wall bounding the sacred precinct on the west, and after a long curve reached the foot of the stairs by which the palace was approached ; ^ yet the threshold of the Lions Gate bears no trace of chariot wheels. Hence Homer's allusion to the broad streets of Mycenae must be understood to refer to the causeways which, established on Cyclopaean founda- tions, intersected the lower city, and placed it in communication with the outlying plain, as well as with Cleonae, Nemaea, Sicyonce, Corinth, and Epidaurus. One of these, according to Steffen's measurements, is three 'metres fifty-eight centimetres broad.* In order to make the details to which attention has been drawn in the foregoing pages easily understood, we have supposed that our ^ TsouNDAS. - Iliad. "^ TsoUNDAS, Mi/K'iyi'ca kuX fivKtjyaloQ iroXiTKrfiOi.
 * Steffen, Kartell.