Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/543

 486 Primitive GkEbXE: Mycknian Art. What we descry is this. The Carians were one of the restless swarms which, for centuries, whirled round the -^gean, now at enmity with one another, now combining together to break upon Syria, the Troad, or Egypt, as might serve their turn. Contact between these tribes, through war and traffic, was sufficiently intimate to have induced an almost uniform style of ornament and industrial processes. We have no serious reason to think that the Carians took a prominent part in the invention of the processes and forms in question. But among the objects that have reached us, a certain proportion, likely enough, comes from Carian settlements. Fortified walls and domed-tombs have been sighted in Caria, and published by us in a former volume.^ Such erections do not appear to lead back to high antiquity ; but in their construction, as well as in the inner and outer details of the tombs, and the ornament beheld on clay squares and pottery, we divine the abiding influence and survival of the Mycenian style. If the Carians and Phrygians remained, in cultured ways, exactly as they were when they separated from clans with which they had been intimately bound up, ere the Hellenes constituted themselves into a nation, it is no reason why -we should attribute an initiatory part to them out of proportion with their spiritual mediocrity, such as it manifested itself in that stage of their existence which comes within the range of history. Relating to the tribes, iEolians, Achaeans, and lonians, in the midst of which the Hellenes sought those heroes whose adventures charmed and fascinated their fancy, the proof .they gave, in their ulterior development — along with the latest comers, the Dorians — of a splendid and soaring genius, is our authority for attributing to them the lion's share in the intellectual labours accomplished in the primitive period. The budding forth of their genius was, in all probability, helped by the models which came to them from Egypt and Phoenicia. Who doubts but that their advance was hastened by these suggestions ? Their art, however, was assuredly derived from inner consciousness ; for in despite of strange forms and a somewhat barbarous display of magnificence, it may be considered as the first chapter, or rather preface, of classic Grecian art. At the end of this study, we ask ourselves whether we have 1 History of Art: "Phrygia, Caria, Lycia," etc.