Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/151

 ii6 Primitive Greece: Mvcenian Art. the enclosure of ruinous Lycosura, now reduced to an exceedingly small number of inhabitants. This city is the oldest known, either on the continent or in the islands. It was the first whose construction Helios witnessed, and from it men learnt to build other towns." ^ In despite of this emphatic statement, the ruins, whatever their real age may be, do not impress an observant eye as leading back to hoary antiquity. The oblong and fairly regular stones composing the wall are of medium size. They are not dressed to a very even front, but the courses exhibit a decided tendency to horizontal beds.- If the work cannot compare with the Hellenic masonry of the Messenian or Eleutherian walls, neither does it betray the rude power and massiveness of the Argolic acropoles. The defences of Lycosura, ^then, are unique in their way, a fact that would make for the myth according to which Lycian workmen helped the Perseidae to erect the walls of their fastnesses. In this way the originality which is displayed in these structures would be accounted for on the basis of Oriental influences both marked and continuous, observable on the hospitable shores of the Argolic bay ; except that we are met on the threshold by the difficulty of accounting why the Mycenian and Tirynthian defensive works exhibit none of the features by which those of the districts where the myth places their models are distinguished. Nevertheless, if there be struc- tures that almost appear beyond the reach of injury which man or the weather may wreak upon them, it is assuredly ramparts like these, whose materials it would have been inexpedient to dis- place at any time. Had the prototypes of the enclosures described and figured above ever existed in Lycia, they would be there still. Our difficulties are equally great in viewing these citadels, as some have proposed to do, as Phoenician work. Phoenicians have ^ Pausanias. 2 Dodwell was the first to point out these ruins {Tour through Greece), In Views and Descriptions of Cyclopcean or Pelasgic Remains, cr^^., will be found a general view of the acropolis, but on too reduced a scale to allow us to judge of the dimensions of the materials. Both there and in the narrative, Dodwell compares this circuit-wall to that of Tiryns, but in a vague, loose sort of fashion which passed muster in the thirties. I myself examined the ruins of Lycosura, and was particularly struck with the difference of construction in the two sets of structures. My notes, taken on the spot, coincide with Bursian's testimony de visu, who describes these ruins.