Palestine, in the history of art, may be regarded as a domain of Phnicia, and the same thing may be said of Cyprus and of Carthage.
All the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, lying as it did between the great powers of civilization in the valley of the Nile and the plain of the Euphrates and Tigris, seemed destined by nature, as we have seen, to combine the artistic peculiarities of Egypt and a.s.syria. Cyprus, in a somewhat similar position, shared the Phnician civilization and was also exposed to the influence of the Greeks, especially to that of the Dorians, who had founded colonies upon the southern islands of the aegean, and who early possessed a stronghold in Crete. It is therefore not surprising that upon the rock-cut tombs of Cyprus the Doric style of architecture was not restricted to the late and debased forms found upon the tombs near Jerusalem, but may occasionally be met with in a very primitive state of development. An instance of this is offered by a tomb near Paphos. (_Fig._ 106.) In general, the position of the island exposed it more to the influence of Egypt than of Mesopotamia; it is not evident in how marked a degree this was felt. Of the chief Phnician sanctuary upon Cyprus--the Temple of Astarte at Paphos--there exist only insufficient representations upon coins and upon an engraved gem of the Museo Pio-Clementino. These prove no more than that, within a circular enclosure of lattice-work, there stood a tall structure towering above low side-buildings, which were supported, like porticos, upon columns.
Two Egyptian shafts appear to have been placed before the entrance, without function as supports, and, like Jachin and Boaz, without strictly architectural purpose. Still less is known of the temples of Amathus and Golgoi. It is hardly probable that the remains of a building discovered by General Cesnola in the village of Atienu, near the present port of Larnaka (the Biblical Chitim and Greek Kition) are those of the world-famed Temple of Aphrodite at Golgoi. The structure seems rather to have been a treasure-house, in some way connected with the great temple, which once contained, with the votive statues there discovered, other objects belonging to the temenos. The oblong plan with irregular entrances, the bareness of its walls, and especially the carelessly arranged pedestals which filled the s.p.a.ce within, seem to point to its original destination as that of a magazine. The only objects of architectural interest discovered in these remains are the columns which flank the doors, in a position corresponding to that of the columns of the Mosaic tabernacle. The bases, found in position, are channelled like those of Persia. The shafts and capitals are not preserved. The form of the latter may perhaps be surmised from a comparison of fragments in the Cesnola collection (_Fig._ 107), a.n.a.logous to the capitals of Mashnaka, to the double spirals of a.s.syrian architecture, and to the descriptions given of the lily-capitals of Solomon"s Temple.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107.--Cyprian Pilaster Capitals.]
Cesnola"s discoveries upon Cyprus are more important in sculptural than in architectural respects, and are worthy to rank with those of Botta, Layard, and Schliemann. The chief works are limestone statues of various sizes. To these are added, from the investigations of other ruins, doubtless of tombs, a great number of minor articles: terra-cotta figures, vases and lamps, and various objects of gla.s.s, metal, etc.
These works are easily divided into two great groups, each of peculiar style, with which the inscriptions that have been discovered agree in general character and in relative number. Among the eighty-five inscriptions found up to 1870, thirty-three are Greek, twenty Phnician, and thirty-two Cyprian. The styles of Phnician and Cyprian sculpture resemble each other far more closely than did the languages of those countries, so that in the comparative rarity of examples it is difficult to distinguish the origin of these works. They show a kind of compromise between Egyptian, Syrian (a.s.syrian), and early Greek methods--a combination agreeing with the geographical position of the island, and with the descent and history of its inhabitants. All Cyprian sculpture shows, in so far as it is not influenced by a reflection of the later Greek and Roman forms, the Phnician style which has been described as developed from beaten metal-work; this is evident even in the stone carvings. (_Figs._ 108 and 109.)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108.--Votive Figure from Cyprus]
The destruction of Carthage is as famous for its completeness as that of Jerusalem, which, indeed, it resembled in other respects, and it is natural that but few traces of this magnificent Queen of the Sea should have been preserved. Recent French and English investigations under Bente and Davis describe the considerable remains of the fortification walls of the Byrsa, built of colossal blocks of tufa. Their great thickness, 10 m., permitted the formation of semicircular chambers in three superposed stories, which, being accessible from within, served as casemates and magazines. The numerous rock-cut tombs are, as in Phnicia, provided with steps from above, and form an oblong crypt, about which the deep niches for the reception of bodies are grouped.
The remains of barbaric temples upon Malta and the neighboring islands are of subordinate importance, if indeed they are to be mentioned at all, in the consideration of Phnician art. The double temple upon Gozo is the most important of them. It consists of two adjoining s.p.a.ces, each concluded by a semicircular apse, having upon both sides similar niches, so that the entire enclosure appears as a combination of apses around an oblong. The pavement is partly of rectangular blocks, so stepped as to show an interior division; but the Cyclopean masonry of the walls is so rough that, in its entire lack of ornamental treatment, the structure has but little interest for the history of art, and permits no conclusions concerning Phnician architecture, which elsewhere produced such incomparable masonry of hewn stones.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 109.--Cyprian Head.]
The funeral monuments of the remaining Punic lands, of the Balearic Isles, and notably of Sardinia, though of greater artistic value, are fully as uncertain in their origin. Their form is at times like that of the monuments of Amrith; yet they may very possibly be of Etruscan derivation, for, apart from their resemblance to the tombs of Etruria, they are almost exclusively upon the eastern coast of Sardinia, the side turned towards Italy, while the Phnicians would more naturally have come in contact with the western part of the island.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 110.--Rock-cut Tomb at Antiph.e.l.los.]
The most advanced outpost of the extended civilization of Phnicia was Asia Minor. Under the dominion of the Seleucidae and of the Romans, the influence of Greek art was so felt upon the Syrian coast, and even as far as the banks of the Tigris, that purely national works of architecture and sculpture are comparatively rare. But this influence was doubly great in the land of which, from the earliest times, the Ionians had possessed the seaboard, and where they had founded a number of flourishing cities which had attained to a degree of prosperity and culture not less than that of their relatives upon the peninsula of the Peloponnesos. Yet, although Ionian art bore some of its finest fruit upon Asiatic soil, and from roots which may partly be traced back to Mesopotamia, this can be historically treated only in connection with the civilization of Greece and its common origin and development.
h.e.l.lenic Asia Minor and the countries under its influence--that is to say, the coasts and islands of the aegean, Propontis and Pontus--cannot be separately considered. All the sculpture of these regions must therefore be reserved for a later page; but there are a few architectural monuments of the southern coast and of the interior which require our present attention as being peculiarly national. Yet even in these territories, divided according to their ancient population into Lycia, Phrygia, and Lydia, all the monumental architecture was greatly affected by the long Asiatic sway of the Diadochi, and by the military power of Rome. The temples and public edifices gave up their national peculiarities for manners of building characteristic of Greece and Rome.
It was only in the tombs that original conceptions retained a stubborn hold. These, when cut in the rock, became imitations of the dwellings of the country. Types of house construction were represented which had been determined by the climatic necessities and by different building materials of each province. By their ma.s.sive simplicity and by the popular consideration that a changeless dwelling best suited the quiet repose of the dead, the rock-cut tombs retained their primitive peculiarities without sensible alteration, being exposed only to unimportant modifications. Little reference was made in them to the advance of artistic or constructional methods from age to age. Though we have to deal exclusively with the tombs of the country, they allow us to draw conclusions concerning the appearance of other buildings, whether temples or dwellings, which they had taken as their models.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 111.--Rock-cut Tomb at Antiph.e.l.los.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 112.--Rock-cut Tomb at Myra.]
Next to the Phnician coast, and opposite Phnician Cyprus, lies Lycia, embracing the greater part of the southern sea-line of Asia Minor. It calls for chief consideration because of its almost numberless tombs, some of which are admirably preserved, and because of their instructive variety. Entire cliffs, like the Necropolis of Myra, shown in _Fig._ 93 at the head of this section, are literally covered with such monumental facades, picturesquely grouped according to the natural configuration of the rock. The greater number are excavated grottoes, the fronts of which are careful imitations of timbered houses. They might be called log-house tombs if other than the roof beams were of unsquared trunks. The interstices between the framing, when not remaining open as an entrance, are closed by panels. The individuality of these monuments is as marked as could have been possible among the dwellings of Lycian mountaineers, whose wealth was not great, and whose architectural demands did not much vary. An exact imitation of the ingenious carpentry is cut in the rock down to the smallest detail: the stiles of the panelling, the round unhewn timbers of the roof, the clamping and dovetailing of the beams, and the primitive tree-nails with which these are secured are shown with the greatest distinctness. The appearance of the whole, when intact, must have resembled a petrified village. These groups of tombs are among the most curious and striking remains of antiquity. The attempt was made by several races of early civilization to prepare a funeral-chamber which should resemble as closely as possible the dwellings inhabited during life; but this intention was not elsewhere so thoroughly carried out, and never resulted in so piquant a contradiction to the material in which it was executed. The native rock was made completely to deny its nature, and to present the image of a distinctively wooden construction. Upon abrupt cliffs this was usually restricted to a facade, which at times was very simple, but quite characteristic, as in a tomb at Antiph.e.l.los (_Fig._ 110), where the wooden framing underneath the flat projecting roof forms two windows, left open as entrances to the cavern. A somewhat more complicated example is shown by another tomb of this site (_Fig._ 111), which is especially remarkable on account of the carefully imitated coping of the cross-beams. In this case only one of the door and window panels is open, and a gabled roof appears, which seems to have been customary in Asia Minor, and to some degree in Phnicia. The framing of an interior or of side walls is also shown by the stone imitation, as in the case of a fine example at Myra (_Fig._ 112), which seems to ill.u.s.trate the utmost limit of the style. But here the contradiction between the form and the material is so glaring that the curious elegance of the result does not redeem it. The repeating of wooden constructions in stone without any modification--which is at first sight, and in less extent, pleasing and piquant--has here become disagreeably obtrusive. This is still more striking upon the rarer monumental sarcophagi at Ph.e.l.los and Myra, where the block-house is carved in the full round from the native rock. These works represent the wooden model upon all four sides, so completely and conscientiously that it would be possible, by their aid, to reconstruct the dwelling-house of a Lycian mountaineer in wood--to repeat from such a petrified copy the original, though its frail materials perished more than twenty centuries ago. It is curious how greatly the present huts of the country resemble their antique predecessors.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 113.--So-called Monument of the Harpies at Xanthos.]
Near these tombs, in some instances even connected with them, though usually independent, stand upright monuments of the nature of obelisks, but with an upper member characteristic of Lycia. In place of the pyramidal point of Egypt, or of the hemispherical or stepped termination of Phnicia and a.s.syria, there is here a cornice of projecting slabs, upon which rests a small but comparatively high block. The most important example is that known as the Monument of the Harpies (_Fig._ 113), now in considerable part transported to the Lycian Hall of the British Museum. It consisted of a gigantic monolith bearing a small burial-chamber, the enclosing slabs of which were ornamented by the famous reliefs, so important in the history of Greek sculpture.
The third group of Lycian sepulchral monuments, the smaller sarcophagi, is the most numerous, forming at times an extended necropolis. Though the majority are not free from h.e.l.lenic influences, they yet generally maintain the peculiar national characteristics, being imitations of wooden constructions somewhat similar to the rock-cut tombs. The lid in some instances appears to be of slat-work, and, instead of the semicircular gable common in Phnicia, presents a pointed arch. The cornice dentils distinctly betray their derivation from the projecting ceiling beams, which, upon the block-house tombs, had still preserved the round form of unhewn timbers. A tomb at Antiph.e.l.los (_Fig._ 114) has a channel cut upon the summit of the lid, probably to serve as a socket for the ridge-crestings. The heads of lions and other projecting ornaments upon the sides enrich the architectural treatment. The monument cannot be spoken of as a sarcophagus, in the true sense of the word, for its lid was not movable, the body being introduced from the front, where window-like openings were provided for the purpose.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 114.--Sarcophagus at Antiph.e.l.los.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 115.--Rock-cut Tomb at Telmissos.]
A fourth cla.s.s of Lycian rock-cut tombs, those with a facade resembling a small temple-front, is of particular interest to the history of architecture. Many among these display the influence of a late h.e.l.lenic period, yet some preserve such primitive forms as to make it certain that Lycia took a prominent part in the development of the Ionic style--that the southern coast of Asia Minor was an important station, marking the advance of artistic culture from Mesopotamia to the aegean Sea. These tombs generally represent the front of a temple in antis--that is to say, of a portico with two columns between the advanced side walls. The predominant Ionic forms are singularly primitive in the capital and entablature, the greater number of the examples showing no trace of the decline of the style, or of the Roman type, so easily recognizable by the formal character of the details.
These differ greatly, and seem to show the experiments of an early period of development, which may still have been contemporaneous with a far higher advance of the style upon the more northern coasts of the aegean Sea and Sporades, being influenced in a different degree by the same Western Asiatic motives. The important combination which characterizes the perfection of Ionic architecture--the conjunction of the volute with the Doric echinos beneath it--does not appear upon these capitals; the spiral has not a graceful curve, and the contraction of the side rolls of the volute is lacking; the abacus is badly profiled, and the shafts are often joined without a curve to the clumsy bases.
(Compare _Fig._ 116.) As was always the case among the Orientals, who knew of no independent gable and roof formation above the ceiling, the entablature consisted of only two members,--the epistyle, uniting the columns, and the terminating cornice. The triple division of the entablature, of so marked importance in the perfected style, was not known; even the two members here occurring were not sharply defined, and the dentils of the cornice were fully developed at a time when their original constructive significance had not yet been forgotten in their decorative application. The gable acroteria are clumsy knops, similar to the circular ridge ornaments and the horn-like corner pieces of Phnician monuments. In short, we may trace in the rock-cut tombs of Lycia, if not a Proto-Ionic style, yet a distinct parallel development of the most primitive Ionic forms. These did not exclude the influence of Greece, after the full perfection of the style had been attained, but rather prepared its way. An example of such later semi-h.e.l.lenic work may be observed in the magnificent monument of Xanthos, built in the middle of the fourth century B.C. as a trophy after the capture of Telmissos by the Xanthians. This also has been in part transported to the British Museum. This structure was not cut from the solid rock, but was built of quarried stones. It shows the full development of Ionic forms. Upon a comparatively high substructure there stood a cella surrounded by columns--of a peripteral arrangement rare in Lycia, where all the tombs which represent temples seem to show that the national places of worship, like those of a.s.syria and Phnicia, were restricted to a portico in antis, the evolution of the peripteros being an improvement of the Greeks. The nave originality observable in the Ionic does not exist in the more isolated Doric forms, although a few very archaic monuments of the latter style are known. Their existence is explained by the vicinity of Crete, that southern outpost of early Doric culture, as well as by the neighboring Doric colonies which flourished upon the southwestern extremity of Asia Minor.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 116.--Details of Columns from Telmissos, Myra, and Antiph.e.l.los.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 117.--So-called Tomb of Midas.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 118.--Phrygian Rock-cut Tomb near Doganlu.]
Lycia appears to have had but little influence upon the other countries of the seaboard, which were almost entirely h.e.l.lenized; nor did its influence penetrate as far into the interior country as Phrygia, where the civilization of the Greeks was introduced only by way of the aegean and Pontic coasts. There were neither frequented ports nor navigable streams to open the way. The tracklessness of wooded mountains restricted the commercial and intellectual horizon of the Phrygians, who, as a nomadic people, were contented with the slightest artistic exertion. In the same way as the Lycian carved his wooden hut upon the face of the cliff, that he might retain after his death the beloved dwelling of his life, the Phrygian ornamented the front of his grotto graves by a representation of his movable house, the nomadic tent. Only the cloth of the tent, with its woven pattern, was shown; its constructive ribs, not visible upon the exterior of the original, were omitted from the imitation. The most important of these tomb frontispieces, between Kiutahija and Sivrihissar upon the Saquaria, which are attributed to Phrygian kings, is called by the Turks Yasili-Kaia (the inscribed stone). (_Fig._ 117.) It is known as the Tomb of Midas from the one legible word, Midai, occurring in an unintelligible inscription. Upon the face of the cliff there is cut a square surface, 11 m. broad and about 9 m. high, terminated above by a low gable, which, with the acroterium, adds 3 m. to the height of the whole. The triangle is framed by a light lattice-work in low relief, and crowned with two volutes, similar to the circular ridge decorations of Phnician tombs. The tympanon is not carved, but probably, with the entire front, was painted. The extensive rectangular surface beneath is covered with a complicated meander ornament in relief--a play of lines evidently taken from a woven pattern and resembling the decorations of Moorish walls, where the fundamental motive was also the tent-cloth. The border of this surface represents, without conventionalization, an edging set with precious stones, such as may have been customary upon costly Syrian stuffs. The small interior chamber was only large enough for the reception of a sarcophagus. The entrance to it was not marked by any architectural features--even as the tent itself was not provided with a door--but the pa.s.sage was originally closed by a slab, upon the face of which the woven pattern was without doubt continued. A second tomb of the vicinity, also marked by an undecipherable inscription, is of similar character. (_Fig._ 118.) The gable represents a wooden construction, somewhat like the framing of Lycian sarcophagi; its double acroterium is decorated with three rosettes. The princ.i.p.al surface, the square below, is without carving, and had probably a painted pattern. A third frontispiece of this type shows a floral frieze of alternate palmettoes and buds, resembling an a.s.syrian motive, but inverted, perhaps because its direct model was the border of a carpet. It recalls the hanging rows of pomegranates upon the columns Jachin and Boaz of Solomon"s Temple. The cliffs of Phrygia are honey-combed by such rock-cut tombs. Especially in the district north of Seid-el-Ar are there numberless small grottoes, the entrances to which are either perfectly plain or provided only with a simple triangular gable--all giving proof of the rarity of artistic effort among these idyllic mountains.
The influence of a.s.syrian and Persian methods is evident even to the west of the river Halys, the border of the Mesopotamian dominion before Cyrus; but upon its farther banks, in Eastern Phrygia, Oriental art is universally prevalent. At Eyuk there are remains, supposed to be those of a temple, with a portal flanked by monsters like the cherubim of Nineveh and Persepolis. At Boghaz-Kieui, besides rock-cut reliefs entirely similar to those of Persia, there are the foundations of a terrace with the ruins of a palace, built upon the plan of the royal dwellings of Persepolis.
Lydia, the last of the three independent countries of Asia Minor, was so near to the Ionic cities of the coast, and so exposed to the influence of their civilization, that but few national peculiarities were preserved in the historical period. The tumulus was there, as in early Greece, the customary form of the monumental tomb. In Lydia, as in Etruria, numbers of these mounds stood in an extended necropolis. The conical tumulus is as characteristic a form for the extreme west of Asia Minor, for the Troad, as the strictly geometrical pyramid is for Egypt, or its terraced variation for Mesopotamia. The mound of earth was at times reveted with a masonry of large polygonal blocks, or placed upon a low cylindrical drum of such Cyclopean walls; the only architectural ornaments were simple base and cornice mouldings. The best-preserved, though not the most important, monument of this kind is the so-called Grave of Tantalos upon Mount Sipylos, near Smyrna, one of a group of twelve. (_Fig._ 119.) The rectangular chamber in its centre, 3.5 m. long and almost 3 m. high, is roofed by a false vault, the horizontal, gradually projecting stones being cut within to the outline of a pointed arch. The entrance to this tumulus, like the shafts of the Egyptian pyramids, was hidden by the casing of exterior masonry. The fragments of a stone pier near by, somewhat like the Meghazil monument of Amrith, probably belonged to the ornament upon the summit of the cone, which, with a diameter of plan equal to 33.6 m., attained a height of 27.6 m.
Of greater grandeur, though in an entire state of destruction, are the royal graves of the Lydian capital. The world-renowned name of Sardis has been preserved in the appellation of the squalid village Sarabat now standing upon its site. In its vicinity are the remains of more than one hundred tumuli. The most important of these, with a cylindrical drum 257 m. in diameter and 18.5 m. high, still rises to an elevation of 61.5 m.
It is with some probability identified with that monument of Alyattes described by Herodotos, who exaggerates its dimensions to a diameter of 400 m. The cone of rammed earth was apparently not reveted with stone.
Upon its apex there was a pier of five blocks, which bore a hemispherical termination; of this various fragments have been found.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 119.--The So-called Grave of Tantalos.]
These tumuli approach in dimensions closely to the pyramids of Egypt.
The elevation of the cone upon a cylindrical base was a certain advance, but its execution was such as to allow of no comparison between the monuments of the two countries. The pyramids of Egypt were built; the tumuli of Lydia were merely heaped up of earth. The former demanded great technical ability and the a.s.sistance of a commanding and calculating mind; the latter were the works of an enslaved people alone.
But, on the other hand, the Lydian cones more closely resembled the natural form of a funeral mound than did the pyramids of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and on this account were capable of greater development.
Such tumuli are to be met with from Asia to Etruria, and were adopted even by the great architects of Greece: the highest artistic civilization always gives preference to the simplest solution of a problem.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 120.--View of the Athenian Propylaea. Restoration.]
h.e.l.lAS.
The Mediterranean Sea was the heart of the Old World; the important lands of the early history of civilization were grouped about its richly indented sh.o.r.es, generally decreasing in respect of culture as they receded from it. The northeastern part of the Mediterranean, because of its many islands, having an even greater proportionate coast-line, was the centre of the countries enn.o.bled by h.e.l.lenic civilization.
Separating and uniting at once, like all the waters of the earth, the aegean Sea formed the boundary between the two chief races of Greek intellectual life--the Dorians and the Ionians; while it was, at the same time, the favoring medium of exchange for the productions of their genius. European Greece, with its predominating Doric population, and the almost exclusively Ionic coasts of Asia Minor, equally looked upon this sea as their own, traversing it with thousands of ships, and gaining more from the trackless waters before them than from the interior lands of the immense continents whose seaboard alone they were content to occupy. In Asia the Greeks were restricted to the countries upon its uttermost western border; in European Greece the development was chiefly directed towards the eastern coast, paying even less attention to their own sh.o.r.es on the Adriatic than to the early colonized ports of Magna-Graecia and Sicily. The Archipelago itself provided convenient strongholds and outposts in every direction. The numerous harbors and anchoring-places of its many islands offered protection against the notorious treachery of the aegean main--a protection imperatively necessary for the primitive seafarers of antiquity. But, as in the history of all civilization, the currents of Greek intellectual and artistic progress moved distinctly from east to west. The European (Doric) culture was in itself less calculated to influence Asia than the Asiatic (Ionic) to affect the younger continent.
It was, as decided by nature, upon European soil, upon Attica--the most advanced promontory of European Greece--that the two branches of the Greek race united, and bore in Athens that double fruit at which we marvel. The Dorians, displaced, in some measure, by the rapid growth of Ionic Asia and Europe, turned still farther westward, and settled upon the sh.o.r.es of Sicily and the Gulf of Tarention, where imposing monuments still attest the extent of their power.
The legends of the wanderings of h.e.l.lenic tribes, and especially of the so-called Doric migration, were based upon the busy currents of intercourse between Asia and Europe, over seas and straits, and between the European continent and the Morea, the Island of Pelops. The relations and the quarrels of h.e.l.lenic and semi-barbaric peoples upon each side of the aegean are ill.u.s.trated by the tales of the Argonauts and their voyage, and of the Trojan War, both of which bear the stamp of a certain piratical rivalry. The fatal lack of unity, resulting from the separate development of neighboring districts, could not be more distinctly characterized than by the fact that the Greek races, although they felt themselves divided from other nations--from _barbarians_--by an impa.s.sable gulf, and were aware of their own absolute intellectual superiority, yet lacked any comprehensive designation for themselves: the name _Greeks_, or _h.e.l.lenes_, is of comparatively recent origin.
The Homeric epics prove that the intellectual development of the people to whom the immortal poet belonged stood, at least as early as the ninth century B.C., at a height to which nations of such primitive civilization as the Egyptians and Chaldaeans had never attained.
Phenomenal as the appearance of those poems may have been, they still could not have stood so high above their time--which they evidently represent with a certain transfiguration--that contemporaries were not able to comprehend and enjoy them. The creative arts stood, at this epoch, in strange contrast to so great an intellectual height; they were far surpa.s.sed by the advance of poetry. Though certain textile and ceramic manufactures (the making of wooden and bronze utensils, woven stuffs, and pottery) must have been practised to some extent in Greece proper, the better artistic productions are continually referred to as imported from the civilized countries of Asia. Larger objects, and notably buildings, were either exceedingly primitive, or, in the lack of trained native ability, were erected and ornamented in foreign styles.
The Homeric epics know nothing of a columnar temple, nothing of artistic images of the G.o.ds, nothing even of dwellings corresponding to the importance of their princely heroes. Even at a much later time a Spartan, accustomed to erect his own house with saw and axe alone, might be astonished at the squarely hewn beams of a ceiling, which he previously had seen formed only of round trunks, like those imitated upon the Lycian block-house tombs.
It is of this exceeding simplicity that we must picture to ourselves the palaces of the kings, one of which is so attractively described by the singer of the Odyssey, in the account of the royal dwelling at Ithaca.
The entire establishment must have been similar to a grange--a wall enclosing a number of buildings with the court before them. The rustic parallel is clearly brought to mind by the description of this farm-yard, where the compost-heap, surrounded by swine and geese, was the bed of the old watch-dog, who, in Homer"s truly idyllic account, alone recognizes his master, and, dying, wags his tail in greeting. From this yard a gate led to an inner court, comparable to the peristyle of later buildings, but without the ornament of columns, and in all respects extremely primitive. Goats and beeves were driven in here without further ado to be slaughtered. This adjoined upon one side the chambers of the men, upon the other those of the women, so separated that the tumultuous ma.s.sacre of the suitors in the princ.i.p.al hall did not disturb the slumber of Penelope, and only reached the ears of the maids like distant moaning. Upon the third side, probably opposite the entrance, was the hall of the men, a ceiled s.p.a.ce, which must have been of considerable extent, as the hundred and eight unwelcome guests could here unite in the banquet and other amus.e.m.e.nts. Its ceiling, like that of the armory and that of the royal sleeping-chamber, was supported by upright beams of wood. We may imagine these similar to the shafts in the Palace of Oinomaos at Elis, one of which, bound together with iron hoops, was preserved as a relic in the time of Pausanias. The ceiling beams of the hall were smoked and blackened by open fires and torch-lights as in rustic dwellings. Of the walls there is no mention, though the supposition is not improbable that the bright metal sheathing of the palaces of Menelaos and Alkinoos existed here also. It would be explained by the Phnician overlaying of wood-work with beaten bronze, or, to speak more correctly, with copper. The s.p.a.ce could not have been without openings for light and air. These are not directly mentioned by the poet, but may be a.s.sumed, from the a.n.a.logies offered by other civilized nations of early antiquity, to have existed in the wall, immediately under the ceiling. Here the interstices between the immense horizontal beams, which rested upon the walls, were left open, and the motive of the subsequent Doric metope resulted of itself. That the timbers overhead were not sheathed with boards is evident from a Homeric simile: Athene rose to the ceiling, and there sat, "like unto the resting swallow;" that is to say, upon the cross-beams of the open triangle formed by the roof-framing. Further evidence is offered by the account of the hanging of Epicaste upon a ceiling beam, which must have been exposed from all sides.
The tholos of the palace at Ithaca was an isolated circular structure, before the court, and may perhaps be identified with the high thalamos to which Telemachos descended. In this also lay gold and metal in heaps; while shrines containing garments, and amphoras filled with oil and wine, etc., stood around. Its double door, of careful workmanship, agrees with the character of a treasury. If this identification of the tholos and thalamos be accepted, no doubt can remain that we have here to deal with a s.p.a.ce similar to many yet remaining in Greece, generally known under the name of treasure-houses. Examples exist at Orchomenos, near Pharsalos, Amyclae, Menidi, and in Mykenae.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 121.--Plan and Section of the Tholos of Atreus.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 122.--Restoration of the Tholos of Atreus. Portal.
(Clarke.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 123.--Fragments of an Engaged Column from the Tholos of Atreus.]
One of the five in Mykenae, known as the Treasury, or the Tholos, of Atreus, remains in an admirable state of preservation, especially as regards the interior. This consists of a s.p.a.ce of circular plan, 15 m.
in diameter, and of the same height, formed like a pointed vault.