Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/469

 412 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. that we have no ground for assuming a unique centre of fabrica- tion. The resemblance between these vases, it is urged, is so close as to look as if they had all come from the same workshop. Such resemblances, although undeniable, are not without differ- ences both in the designs and execution. These, according to MM. Furtwangler and Loeschke, are to be explained by difference of dates ; * but whilst allowing for change of taste and fashion, why should not the varieties in question be due to the particular sites where they were manufactured ? The affinities observable in these products, even on the hypothesis of multitudinous work- shops, are not at all surprising. If these vases travelled as far as the mouth of the Nile, it follows that the yEgean was at that time ploughed in every direction by crafts that served to connect its lines of coast with one another. If they plied steadily to and fro, from Crete or Rhodes to the European and Asiatic continents, if between the single groups there was a constant flow of exchange, why should not skilful artisans, who had been trained in the best workshops, have tried to improve their lot by wandering abroad to some other island or continent, wherever a munificent prince was likely to employ them ? The one thing which is indubitable, is that Mycenae, with its many commercial tracks and outlets on the Gulfs of Argos and Corinth, cannot have failed, during its palmy days, to be one of the principal centres, perhaps the principal one, of this manufacture ; and, for technical reasons, its products were most sought after. Tradition had preserved the memory of princes whose lordship was exer- cised over a portion of Peloponnesus and the islands ; and the ruins of Mycenae are certainly the most extensive and imposing of any ancient city, representing the ambitious efforts of the ancestors of the Greek race. A species of halo attached to the products that issued from the workshops of the wealthy and celebrated capital of the Atridae. The Mycenae artist was, no doubt, for a century or two, the arbiter and ruler of taste, the man who set the fashion in matters pertaining to elegance, throughout the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.
 * Mykenische Vasen,