Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/156

 ; The House and the Palace. 121 with all Its minutiae.^ So too, the temple, when reduced to its essential elements, is no more than the primitive hut, furnished with a loft, a pair of gutters, and gable ends. Homer seems to have had the type in his mind's eye when he describes two wrestlers who hold fast by the top beams of the house, **put there by the skilful hand of the carpenter, and which defy the violence of the wind."^ That the luxurious habitation of Circe terminated in a flat roof is proved by the accident which befell Elpenor, who, after a dinner during which the loving-cup had freely gone round, falls asleep on the roof, and being suddenly awakened by his carousing friends, forgets where he is, falls from the roof, and is killed.* It is, then, not at all unlikely that around the citadel of Tiryns and Mycenae there may have been huts with triangular roofs inhabited by slaves or peasants. But as our pictures could only contain a very small number of houses, we have chosen the domestic abode represented by foundations which the excavators of the prehistoric cities of Argolis have cleared, and whose eleva- tions they have divined.* Flat and ridged roofs are the two systems which, according to localities, prevail in modern Greece. The former are popular in the islands ; whilst on the continent sloped roofs are the rule. Villages and towns, where some thirty- three years ago I often used the top of the house as a rough shake-down, I found provided with ridged coverings in 1890. If sloped roofs tend to become more and more popular, it is owing to the facility of procuring tiles almost everywhere in Greece at the present day. The Mycenian builder lacked this resource ; he was as yet unacquainted with bricks baked in the kiln, and, as a matter of course, with tiles which require more skilful manipu- lation. Nor have schistose slabs as house-covering — which in certain localities preceded the employment of tiles — been found among the ruins. Thatch, whether of straw or bulrushes, was unsuitable for spacious and complicated edifices such as the Tirynthian and Mycenian palaces. For this kind of roof a very deep incline is necessary, to drain off the water and prevent its ^ G. Orsi, Urnefunebri Cretesi, was in all likelihood shaped something as the above. Like it, it consisted of thickly-stacked pine-branches and rushes. 3 Odyssey, * Dorpfeld, Tiryns,
 * ^ Iliad, The booth which the Myrmidons ran up for Achylles before Troy