Of monuments mentioned in these pages, only two can fairly be used for
comparison with the Mausoleum. These are the Lycian Nereid Monument
(Fig. 74) and the Lion Tomb of Cnidus (Fig. 77). The Nereid Monument
consists, like the Mausoleum, of a pteron raised upon a base or podium;
but no part of it is of pyramidal form. It is merely, if the restoration
be correct, a building in the form of an ordinary Greek temple, on an
unusually high podium. It may be used as proof that the Mausoleum also
had a high podium, for the existence of which the existing remains
furnish no direct evidence. The Lion Tomb may be suggestive from a
constructional point of view, as the architectural problem involved in
supporting a massive lion on the top was not unlike the problem which
the architect of the Mausoleum had to solve. But its elevation was of a
far simpler type than was that of the Mausoleum.
Other buildings are cited and engraved in the treatise of Mr. Oldfield,
but unless we could examine them in detail it would be useless to
mention them here. They are valuable rather as offering suggestions on
points of construction than as affording us real parallels to the plan
of the Mausoleum.
* * * * *
The evidence of existing remains must be studied partly in Sir C.
Newton’s _History of Discoveries_, partly in the Mausoleum Room of the
British Museum. Lately Mr. Murray has in that museum set up one of the
pillars of the pteron, with base and cornice, a reconstruction which
will greatly help those who wish to revive in imagination the glories of
the most splendid of ancient sepulchres.
For the manner in which out of the data Mr. Oldfield makes a conjectural
restoration of the great tomb we must refer the reader to his admirable
paper in _Archaeologia_. We can only conclude, as we began, by referring
to his engraving set side by side with Mr. Pullan’s (Figs. 78, 79). Of
the two it is by far the better, closer to the ancient evidence, less
clumsy, more Greek. But of course it may be in turn superseded by other
restorations hereafter. In one point both reconstructions are certainly
wrong, in placing on the top of the whole, in the chariot of Pythis, the
magnificent statues of Mausolus and Artemisia, found on the site, which
were doubtless carefully preserved in the interior of the building, and
not put almost beyond sight and exposed to the weather on the top of it.
I have elsewhere[314] maintained this view by the following arguments:--
1. Pliny mentions the chariot of Pythis, but says nothing of any figures
in it.
2. The statues at such a height, in a chariot, and behind gigantic
horses, would have been almost invisible from below.
3. Neither Mausolus nor his wife is holding reins or clad in the dress
of a charioteer.
4. The head of Mausolus in particular is too well preserved to have been
long exposed to the weather.
5. Both the horses and the wheel of the chariot are on a far larger
scale than the two statues.
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