Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/298

 The Lions Gate!. ^45 to create a work of art ; yet in carrying out the behests of an imperious will, he gained greater facility in imparting to form the degree of precision and truth which it must have to translate thought. He who runs may read the meaning of the bas-relief which adorns the main gate leading to the citadel. It is carved in a greyish limestone quarried in the neighbouring hills (PI. XIV.). It is unnecessary to describe its shape, cut in a triangular slab surmounting the door lintel.^ The sculpture represents two lions rampant, heraldically opposed, and separated by a column. The hind-legs rest on the ground, and the fore-paws on a species of plinth. Their body is shown in profile, but their heads, now obliterated, faced the spectator, and may have been destroyed when the Argives stormed the fortress. The heads looked side- ways ; one conceives them in a threatening attitude, showing their double row of teeth through their wide-open mouth. The lion is recognized by all nations as the emblem of superior strength, before whom opposition would be vain. Here the two stand at the acropolis entrance, as faithful and invincible guardians, jealously watching its approaches. They play the same part as the winged-bulls and lions of the Assyrian bas-reliefs, or the golden and silver dogs before the palace of the Pheacian king.^ The symbolism is obvious ; the presence in this situation of the powerful and redoubtable force was calculated to bring to mind the valour of the soldiers posted on the castle walls, the fame and gallantry of the captains who head them in the affray. The masters of the impregnable fortress flung there the group as a challenge to the foes of Mycenae, past, present, and future. Thus far all is plain sailing ; but our difficulties begin the moment we venture upon the interpretation of certain details. The column has been held to mean, now a fire- altar, now Agyieus Apollo,* who, in his capacity of road guardian, was sometimes 1 See ante, Vol. I. p. 308, Figs. 99, 184, 192. The slab is three metres twenty centimetres broad at the base, two metres ninety centimetres high, and seventy Centimetres thick. The best description which has appeared of this monument is by Adler, Das Relief am Lowenthor zu Mykence, 2 Odyssey, ' In many places, but above all at Athens, he was worshipped as Agyieus, the god of streets and highways, whose rude symbol, a conical post with a pointed ending, stood by street-doors and in courtyards, to watch men's exit and entrance, to let in good and keep out evil, and was loaded by the inmates with gifts and honour, such as ribbons, wreaths of myrtle or bay, and the like. — Trans.