Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/302

 The Lions Gate. 249 towers in the cities of the West. The heraldic physiognomy of the lions, their pose and exact symmetry of movement, certainly recall those seen on the armorial bearings of patrician families. These analogies were pointed out by Curtius, who demonstrated that the usage of emblazonry, e.g. of a visible sign representing an individual or a nation, mounted back to hoary antiquity.^ Furthermore, that when these personal and distinctive signs were adopted by the Christian world, towards the time of the Crusades, the artists had turned to the East for many of their devices and artificial types. These had come into existence on the banks of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris, whence they had passed to Anterior Asia, Greece, and Italy. Then, thanks to the weaver and embroiderer, the ceramist and jeweller, they had again become the fashion with the Byzantines and Persians. It would be doubtless interesting to follow up to regions lying at vast distances from one another, the manifold connections and transmissions relating to these several forms ; but setting aside such delicate questions, we may be allowed to advance the following remark. Different sources have now supplied us with many replicas of a type which, for thousands of years, was known solely by the Mycenae bas-relief; yet, though very like in many respects, not one of them is an exact copy of the original. Accordingly, it is no longer possible to view the Mycenae lions in the light of individual property, the special emblem, the ** totem" as it were, of the tribe settled around the fortress. The design, no matter where it originally was adopted as the embodiment of the idea referred to above, was doubtless already diffused from Crete to Peloponnesus, when the prince who enlarged the circuit-wall desired that the group should be carved in the calcareous rock to adorn the newly-built castle gate. About the ramparts of many an ancient township are beheld very similar emblems. The hideous Gorgon's head was sup- posed to strike terror in the beholders. We learn from Pau- sanias that in his day a Medusa's mask was shown at Mycenae — it probably stood over one of the gates — which, said tradition, had been carved, like the lions, by Lycian Cyclopes in the pay of Praetus.^ Over the old gateways of the Pelasgic towns of 2 Pausanias.
 * E. Curtius, Ueber Wappengebrauch und WappensHl in griechischen Alterthum.