GREEK ARCHITECTURE.
Books Recommended: As before, Reber. Also, Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and Rome. Baumeister, Denkmäler
der Klassischen Alterthums. Bötticher, Tektonik der Hellenen. Chipiez, Histoire critique des ordres grecs. Curtius, Adler and Treu, Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia. Durm, Antike Baukunst (in Handbuch d. Arch.
). Frazer, Pausanias’ Description of Greece. Hitorff, L’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs. Michaelis, Der Parthenon. Penrose, An Investigation, etc., of Athenian Architecture. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Primitive Greece; La Grèce de l’Epopée; La Grèce archaïque. Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens. Tarbell, History of Greek Art. Texier, L’Asie Mineure. Wilkins, Antiquities of Magna Græcia.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. Greek art marks the beginning of European civilization. The Hellenic race gathered up influences and suggestions from both Asia and Africa and fused them with others, whose sources are unknown, into an art intensely national and original, which was to influence the arts of many races and nations long centuries after the decay of the Hellenic states. The Greek mind, compared with the Egyptian or Assyrian, was more highly intellectual, more logical, more symmetrical, and above all more inquiring and analytic. Living nowhere remote from the sea, the Greeks became sailors, merchants, and colonizers. The Ionian kinsmen of the European Greeks, speaking a dialect of the same language, populated the coasts of Asia Minor and many of the islands, so that through them the Greeks were open to the influences of the Assyrian, Phœnician, Persian, and Lycian civilizations. In Cyprus they encountered Egyptian influences, and finally, under Psammetichus, they established in Egypt itself the Greek city of Naukratis. They were thus by geographical situation, by character, and by circumstances, peculiarly fitted to receive, develop, and transmit the mingled influences of the East and the South.
FIG. 22.—LION GATE AT MYCENÆ.
PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS.[7] Authentic Greek history begins with the first Olympiad, 776 B.C. The earliest monuments of that historic architecture which developed into the masterpieces of the Periclean and Alexandrian ages, date from the middle of the following century. But there are a number of older buildings, belonging presumably to the so-called Heroic Age, which, though seemingly unconnected with the later historic development of Greek architecture, are still worthy of note. They are the work of a people somewhat advanced in civilization, probably the Pelasgi, who preceded the Dorians on Greek soil, and consist mainly of fortifications, walls, gates, and tombs, the most important of which are at Mycenæ and Tiryns. At the latter place is a well-defined acropolis, with massive walls in which are passages covered by stones successively overhanging or corbelled until they meet. The masonry is of huge stones piled without cement. At Mycenæ the city wall is pierced by the remarkable Lion Gate (Fig. 22), consisting of two jambs and a huge lintel, over which the weight is relieved by a triangular opening. This is filled with a sculptured group, now much defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a singular column which tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with Hittite and Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic arches of various forms, are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos, at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and many other points.
