Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/61

 40 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. leads down to the subterranean house. This hut, according to the same authorities, was one of the varieties of the primitive dwelling of the prehistoric Greeks, perhaps even during the palmiest days of Mycenian civilization, when it was to be seen on many a point without the precincts of lofty acropoles and stately palaces. By the side of these were quadrangular houses, such as the excavations at Thera have revealed to us. We have shown by many specimens, that wherever sepulchral architecture has assumed a certain degree of importance, the habitation of the dead is invariably found to be a more or less free copy of the domestic one. The stone-cutter of Lycia strove to reproduce the aspect and details of a wooden house on the fronts of his rocky sepulchres.^ Imitation here is not quite so literal ; a wide gap parts the well-built circular chamber from the rude hut ; nevertheless, this it was which, enframed in its circular pit, suggested the first notion of the monumental type under consideration.^ According to others, if the shape originated in the rudimentary house, the work of adaptation was not effected in Greece, but in Phrygia, where, says Vitruvius, subterranean buildings, approached by a long passage cut in the flank of a hill, had been in vogue from time immemorial.^ The passage from chambers hewn in the rock to built tombs was first accomplished in the Hermus valley, owing to the excellent quality and abundance of its bricks, and from Sipylus- Phrygia the domed or cupola-shape passed to Greece.* Was it in reality, as is assumed, the quasi-subterranean house of Lycaonia, in which I halted many a time during the noonday heat, which furnished the architect the point of departure ? Vitruvius is reticent as to the chamber having been circular and the roof dome-shaped in antiquity ; to-day, the former is rectangular and the latter is flat. Finally, brick-made tombs, which are assumed to have formed the point of transition between the Phrygian house and the sepulchral edifices we are discussing, have never been found in ^ History of Art 2 TsouNDAs, 0« TTpoicTTopiKol Tatjtoi. TTiQ T^WclIoq ] p. Orsi, Ur/ie funebri Cretesi, Belger seems to think that the domed-tombs are but a later development of the hypogseum found at Palamidi and Mycenae. We fail to grasp, however, how vaults of no particular shape can have grown into so sharply defined a form as the domed- tomb, conspicuous for skilful construction. 3 Vitruvius. * Adler, Tiryns.