Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/161

 126 Primitive Grekck: Mycenian Art. the outward appearance in elevation presented by the buildings we have to restore. We have five, or, to narrow the field of our inquiry, three plans to take into consideration from which to obtain gleanings to help to define the palace of the Mycenian age. The erection of the third village at Hissarlik may have been a temple, for it has no lateral buildings. As to the edifice of the lower city at Mycenae, it is but a reduced copy of the ampler and richer abode on the acropolis ; the latter, seated on a lofty terrace, commanded all the other buildings, and was led up to by a broad staircase, which testified to the importance of the princely residence (Fig. 297). The plans under notice have many characteristics in common. For one thing, all these enclosures lacked space ; hence the palace was hemmed in by other structures at every point of the compass. It formed a separate block, enclosed by thick walls and massive gates ; never- theless, it was far removed from and lagged behind those vast edifices that will be erected by and by in a more advanced stage, when, despite the extent of the ground they cover, they will yet make up a compact and perfect whole comparable to the grand periods of a Demosthenes or a Bossuet, wherein sub- ordinate ideas are so deftly grouped around the principal one, as to hang together notwithstanding their length. The architect had not yet learned how to bind together the several parts of the unit which he strove hard to bring into existence, and treat them as members of the same body. The palace was constituted by a group of buildings unconnected with one another. Each apartment of any importance was separated from its fellow by an empty space or alley. Partition-walls are non-existent at Troy (Fig. 48) or Mycenre (Fig. 116) ; some examples do indeed crop up at Tiryns (PI. II.), but only in the smaller chambers. Rooms of great size are all, without exception, surrounded by passages ; with this difference, that at Troy and Mycenae, the space parting the single structures is too narrow to allow a man to get through, whilst at Tiryns they are covered and commodious passages designed for free circulation. At Troy, a notable portion of the buildings was destroyed by the deep trench which Schliemann recklessly cut right through the hill (PI. I.), during his first excavations, whilst at Mycenae a landslip carried off the end wall of the structure on the southern side, where the cliff, being very precipitous, was made