Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/182

 The House and t?ie Palace. 141 also comes a continuous pattern, extending along the whole ex- panse of the upper portion of the wall. If some great picture existed in this hall, like the wild bull's chase of the Tirynthian megaron, that picture must have stood on the end wall, facing the entrance. Finally, along the upper surface of the wall runs a frieze which reproduces the design of the alabaster specimen ; triglyphs and metopes could of course be painted on a stucco facing ; but more probably they were carved in a stone band, red, green, or white, which was inserted in the masonry. The middle of the room is occupied by a massive circular hearth. Although the only existing portion of the palace at Tiryns, whose main facade and biggest room we have restored, are the foundations, we flatter ourselves that, thanks to the method we have pursued, an edifice has been bodied forth whose proportions, style of building, and decorative scheme are really coeval with those of the sepulchral faqades. Like these, our restored building bears witness to the same methods, is dependent on the same'art. Are we to figure under this same garb the abodes where — on the authority of Homer — lived Priam, Menelaus and Nestor, Alcinous and Odysseus ? How far does the plan of the royal houses at Tiryns and Mycenae, such as we read it on the ground, agree with the one we have essayed to re-establish, from allusions, scattered with no sparing hand in the Odyssey, to this or that arrangement relating to habitations wherein is laid the scene of many an episode of the poem } The question of late has been warmly discussed among archaeologists. We cannot, without infringing on the boundaries within which our researches must be keptfor the present, deal at any length with the subject. A cursory glance at our plates and the accompanying explanations must have brought home to the reader many resemblances between the type revealed to the world by the result of recent excavations, and the one we had previously pictured to ourselves from Homeric gleanings. There are first the courts (aixa/), peopled with the inmates of and visitors to the palace, where, under porticoes, part of the day is spent in dalliance. These we have found again, with covered galleries, in the buildings we have passed in review. What are the propylaea that form so monumental an entrance to the castle at Tiryns but the ^rpoflupov, or TrpoQupoL rrig auTJfjg, of Homer ? ^
 * Odyssey,