DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0299
THE PELOPONNESUS 275
old traveller might envy us the opportunity we have
had at Mycenae. The few paragraphs which he de-
voted to these hoary monuments, containing about all
the world knew, contrast strongly with the volumes
which describe the results of modern excavation.
Pausanias stood above ground, but Schliemann went
beneath. He showed us the advantage of deep dig-
ging ; he unbuilt better than he knew.
Curious are the conjunctions and the oppositions
of history which present themselves at Mycenae.
Here is a form of architecture entirely different from
that which we are accustomed to call Greek. There
is no presage of the age of Pericles, but a curious
suggestion of the Byzantine age which much later was
to follow it. Those great beehive tombs seem in their
ascending domes to be a prediction of St. Sophia and
St. Peter. Yet structurally they affirm unrelenting
opposition to the architecture they seem to predict.
When we examine them we find that they are not
arches, and are not built on vertical lines, but consist
of horizontal circular courses of stone, each course
projecting over that below it until they come together
and are covered by a stone at the top. The tomb
builders did not have the arch, but they were feeling
after it, and it is remarkable by what simple means
they reached the effect they sought.
But what were these walled avenues leading to the
tomb ? Were they filled up with earth when they were
built or in some later age? Some of them are lined
with immense stones from twenty to twenty-five feet
in length, as if the builders exulted in feats of Cyclo-
pean force. These blocks arc at least three thousand
years old, and nobody knows how much older, but the
old traveller might envy us the opportunity we have
had at Mycenae. The few paragraphs which he de-
voted to these hoary monuments, containing about all
the world knew, contrast strongly with the volumes
which describe the results of modern excavation.
Pausanias stood above ground, but Schliemann went
beneath. He showed us the advantage of deep dig-
ging ; he unbuilt better than he knew.
Curious are the conjunctions and the oppositions
of history which present themselves at Mycenae.
Here is a form of architecture entirely different from
that which we are accustomed to call Greek. There
is no presage of the age of Pericles, but a curious
suggestion of the Byzantine age which much later was
to follow it. Those great beehive tombs seem in their
ascending domes to be a prediction of St. Sophia and
St. Peter. Yet structurally they affirm unrelenting
opposition to the architecture they seem to predict.
When we examine them we find that they are not
arches, and are not built on vertical lines, but consist
of horizontal circular courses of stone, each course
projecting over that below it until they come together
and are covered by a stone at the top. The tomb
builders did not have the arch, but they were feeling
after it, and it is remarkable by what simple means
they reached the effect they sought.
But what were these walled avenues leading to the
tomb ? Were they filled up with earth when they were
built or in some later age? Some of them are lined
with immense stones from twenty to twenty-five feet
in length, as if the builders exulted in feats of Cyclo-
pean force. These blocks arc at least three thousand
years old, and nobody knows how much older, but the