DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0162
132
STUDIES ID GREEK ART.
man waited for the beacon light; here Clytemnestra
spread the purple raiment with her murderous hands,
and cried :
“ There is a sea, and who shall drain it dry; ”
and here Cassandra cried aloud to Apollo, her way-god,
her destroyer ; here she saw crouching on the walls the
horrid vision of the murdered children.
We are back in the old heroic age, and we must look
at this lion gateway that the heroes have left us for a
monument. They stand above the doorway, sculptured
in low relief, filling a triangular space ; their heads are
gone ; some think that they were originally of metal;
probably these heads were turned outwards, gazing
fiercely to scare the approaching stranger. Between
the two lions is a pillar of a style that we cannot iden-
tify as Greek. The attitude of these Mycenae lions is
familiar ; it is of the old Assyrian, heraldic fashion, and
the creatures themselves are conventionalized. They are
not the work of a prentice hand any more than are the
massive walls which surround them. Even in later days
the Greeks themselves reverenced this lion gate and the
surrounding fortifications as marvels wrought by some
almost superhuman power. Pausanias saw the gate
in his wanderings, and said of it : “ Other parts of the
enclosure remain, and especially the gate ; there are lions
standing on it. They say that these works, too, were
STUDIES ID GREEK ART.
man waited for the beacon light; here Clytemnestra
spread the purple raiment with her murderous hands,
and cried :
“ There is a sea, and who shall drain it dry; ”
and here Cassandra cried aloud to Apollo, her way-god,
her destroyer ; here she saw crouching on the walls the
horrid vision of the murdered children.
We are back in the old heroic age, and we must look
at this lion gateway that the heroes have left us for a
monument. They stand above the doorway, sculptured
in low relief, filling a triangular space ; their heads are
gone ; some think that they were originally of metal;
probably these heads were turned outwards, gazing
fiercely to scare the approaching stranger. Between
the two lions is a pillar of a style that we cannot iden-
tify as Greek. The attitude of these Mycenae lions is
familiar ; it is of the old Assyrian, heraldic fashion, and
the creatures themselves are conventionalized. They are
not the work of a prentice hand any more than are the
massive walls which surround them. Even in later days
the Greeks themselves reverenced this lion gate and the
surrounding fortifications as marvels wrought by some
almost superhuman power. Pausanias saw the gate
in his wanderings, and said of it : “ Other parts of the
enclosure remain, and especially the gate ; there are lions
standing on it. They say that these works, too, were