Fergusson, James: The illustrated handbook of architecture: being a concise and popular account of the different styles of architecture preveiling in all ages and all countries (London, 1859)

Chap. I.

PELASG-IC AET.

261

stable form of opening, it is one to which it is extremely difficult to
fit doors, or to close hy any known means. It is this that led to the
next expedient of inserting a lintel at a certain heiglit, and making
the jamhs more perpendicnlar
helow, and more sloping above.

This method is already exem-
plified in the tomh of Atrens
(woodcut No. 195), and in the
gate of the Lions at Mycenae
(woodcut No. 202). It is hy no
means clear whether the pedi-
ments were always filled up
with sculpture, as in this in-
stance, or left open. In the
walls of a town it prohahly was
always closed, in that of a

chamher left open. In the gate at Myceme the two lions stand against
an altar,1 shaped like a pillar of a fonn found in Lycia, in which the
round ends of the timhers of the roof are shown as if projecting into
the frieze.

Wall in Peloponnesus. From Blouet’s Voyage
en Grece.

1 It is to be regretted that no cast has ever sible to reason on them, whilst as types of a

been taken of these, the oldest sculptures of style they are the most interesting known to

their class in existence. The drawings hitherto exist anywhere.
made of them are so inexact that it is impos-