DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0088
THE PALACE
47
vestibule at the time of some thorough restoration of the
old building, and it need not be assumed that it had been
placed elsewhere first." These slabs of alabaster are carved
with a rich pattern — the motives being palmettes, rosettes,
and spirals—and inlaid with blue glass paste. This paste,
it is now agreed on all hands, is the Homeric kyanos —
■which enters into the splendid decoration of the palace of
Alcinous.1 The poet must have fancied it employed as we
actually find it in the palace of Tiryns. As we cannot
take Alcinous* brazen walls to be of solid bronze but only
enriched with bronze plates, so the frieze of his megaron
cannot be of solid kyanos but simply inlaid with it. In
its composition, which is repeated with slight variations in
other -works of the same period from Mycenae and Menidi,
the frieze recalls the triglyphs and metopes of the Doric
temple, "with which possibly it may stand in some distant
relation.
Three large folding-doors, occupying almost the whole
partition wall, opened from the vestibule into the antecham-
. 80 : " Brazen were the walls, which ran tbis way and that from
the threshold to the inmost chamber, and round them was a frieze of blue "
(kyanos). On the kyanos frieze, see Dorpfeld, Tiryns, 284-292.
47
vestibule at the time of some thorough restoration of the
old building, and it need not be assumed that it had been
placed elsewhere first." These slabs of alabaster are carved
with a rich pattern — the motives being palmettes, rosettes,
and spirals—and inlaid with blue glass paste. This paste,
it is now agreed on all hands, is the Homeric kyanos —
■which enters into the splendid decoration of the palace of
Alcinous.1 The poet must have fancied it employed as we
actually find it in the palace of Tiryns. As we cannot
take Alcinous* brazen walls to be of solid bronze but only
enriched with bronze plates, so the frieze of his megaron
cannot be of solid kyanos but simply inlaid with it. In
its composition, which is repeated with slight variations in
other -works of the same period from Mycenae and Menidi,
the frieze recalls the triglyphs and metopes of the Doric
temple, "with which possibly it may stand in some distant
relation.
Three large folding-doors, occupying almost the whole
partition wall, opened from the vestibule into the antecham-
. 80 : " Brazen were the walls, which ran tbis way and that from
the threshold to the inmost chamber, and round them was a frieze of blue "
(kyanos). On the kyanos frieze, see Dorpfeld, Tiryns, 284-292.