Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/62

 General CuAkACTEiusTics of the Domed-Tombs. 41 the Hermus basin. That the type was imported into Western Greece is not unlikely, and many indications seem to favour the hypothesis. Among the numerous specimens of buildings of this class, whether in Hellas, Laconia, or Thessaly, there is not one which betrays the effort of a first essayal, or the hand of a novice. Now, if the type had originated there, we ought to find tombs wherein some of the distinctive peculiarities we have enumerated had been left out, graves where the effort of an art which feels its way in a blundering sort of fashion towards new shapes would be apparent. But this is not the case. Of course, the graves are not all planned alike, but in all essentials they are practically identical ; we everywhere recognize replicas of a type whose general lines had been fixed some time before. This uniformity becomes as clear as day if we admit that the shape in question was invented, not at Mycense, but some- where else, and was therefore already constituted when it began to spread in the Mycenian world, where it retained its distinctive characteristics. But now the burden is laid upon us to'^name a country and people whence the borrowing was made. Among the confused traditions relating to prehistoric times, that which is connected with the Pelopidae stands out from among other cycles for its modicum of historical truth. The events which led warlike and wealthy chiefs to quit Sipylus-Phrygia, where their ancestors had obtained supremacy, are lost in obscurity. They are said to have traversed Northern Greece, and settled in Peloponnesus, where they obtained the lordship of Argolis and Laconia. The great part which the myth assigns to this royal race seems to point to a decisive advance in all matters pertaining to art and industry, which would correspond with their domiciliation in the peninsula. In a former volume we pointed out a necropolis which commands the Bournabat plain, near Smyrna — the reputed cradle-land of this race — where are beheld curious specimens of a sepulchral type of architecture, presenting singular analogies with the Mycenian domed-graves,^ with this difference: the sepulchres of Sipylus-Phrygia are not hidden in the flank of a hill ; they are tumuli constructed with large and small stones ; the chamber is always rectangular and small in proportion to the total mass of the building. On the other hand, the Smyrnian and the Mycenian vault alike consist ^ History of Art