Studies of Travel: GreeceFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
Studies of Travel: Greece
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Greece -- Description and travel
Over the square-headed gate there was to be, for
whatever reason, a triangular hole, doubtless meant to be filled with a
stone of its own shape. In the treasuries either this stone was never
put in or it is gone. In the lion-gate it was put in, as it seems to
us, when art had passed the stage represented by the lion-gate itself,
and had reached the stage which is represented by the gateways of the
treasuries.
Another thought suggests itself. At Mykênê, as less clearly at Tiryns,
the lion-gate, with its skilfully guarded approach, does not lead at
once into the higher enclosure of the akropolis, but into the outer
and lower one. Does this go at all to show that this outer enclosure,
at Mykênê at least, was an addition to the primitive fortress of all,
fencing in the upper part of the hill? The fact that the tombs were
found in the lower enclosure also looks this way. There must have been
a time when this ground was looked upon as being outside the city, or
it would hardly have been used for purposes of burial. The argument
does not quite reach demonstration; burial within the walls was not
absolutely unknown even in historical Greece, and it may not be safe
to argue from historical to primæval Greece. Still the two arguments
so far fall together as at least to suggest the idea that we have in
the inner enclosure something yet more ancient and venerable than
all--something which may have been ancient and venerable, not only in
the days of Homer, but in the days of those whose tale Homer has told.
For the present we keep within the akropolis, within the old hill fort
which forms the inner circle of the Ekbatana of the imperial lords
of præ-historic Hellas. We stand here within the walls which struck
the minds of so many of the poets of Greece in the days when their
desolation was a thing of yesterday--walls which seemed too mighty to
be the work of mortal men, and which, like their fellows elsewhere,
were deemed to have been wrought by the same hands which forged the
thunderbolts of Zeus. Here we may in truth
Φάσκειν Μυκήνας τὰς πολυχρύσους ὁρᾷν, πολύφθορόν τε δῶμα Πελοπιδῶν
τόδε--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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