This medley of motives has a certain decorative value, but lacks the supreme beauty of architectural relationship between the parts and the whole. That is to say, the use of the various parts has not been regulated by _constructive_ logic, necessity, or fitness; but represents a purely whimsical and arbitrary multiplication of motive. The student may assure himself of this by comparing the Persian column with the Doric Order. In the latter he may observe a superior quality of fitness in the relationship of the parts and of the sense of an inevitable logical growth in the composition as a whole. The fantastic elaboration of the columns at Persepolis, as well as the general conglomeration of motives in Persian architecture, points to the fact that the latter was the work of foreign artists, imported from various parts of the great Persian Empire. It represents the character of the empire--a variety in unity; a unity, however, not of natural growth, but one that, having no artistic traditions of its own, puts the world under tribute to supply motives for the exploitation of its magnificence. CHAPTER VII MINOAN OR ÆGEAN CIVILISATION So far our study of ancient civilisation and architecture has been fairly consecutive. We have now to break the continuity of the story and take a leap back into a remote past and explore the origins of a civilisation which was a forerunner of that of Greece. This civilisation had been called “Mycenæan” because its existence was first brought to modern knowledge by Schliemann’s discoveries in Mycenæ. But subsequent exploration has proved that the civilisation was far spread and that Mycenæ was not even the centre of it. One of the most astonishing results of recent exploration is the knowledge of a civilisation that developed without break from the polished stone age and reached its highest point contemporaneously with the New Empire in Egypt; ending, that is to say, about 1000 <small>B.C.</small> Not the least interesting feature of the discovery is that it throws a new light on the civilisation of prehistoric Greece.