How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

The shaft of these columns is without a base and tapers slightly to the bottom. Ornamented with bands of repeated chevrons, which alternately are plain and embellished with flutings, it supports a cushion or echinus, decorated with plain and spiral bands, on which rests a square plinth or abacus. It comprises, in fact, the features which in later times were simplified into the Doric column.

The tomb itself is a subterranean chamber, of the style known as beehive or in Greek, tholos. Its circular plan has a diameter of nearly 50 feet, and the domed ceiling, commencing at the floor and formed of inwardly projecting courses of stone, rises to about the same height. It leads into a small square chamber and is itself approached by a horizontal avenue, 20 feet wide and 115 feet long, the sides of which are of squared stone, sloping upward to a height of 45 feet.

A trace of this subterranean beehive method seems to survive in some of the rock-hewn tombs at Myra, in Lycia. Here the façade represents the front of a house, which is clearly of primitive wood construction. In later instances it is composed of Ionic columns and cornices. In the older examples the entrance is surmounted by a gable, which frequently takes the curves of the beehive.

Intermediate between these Lycian Tombs and the Minoan structures are certain rock-cut tombs in Phrygia which recall the Lion Gate. The façade comprises a cornice supported by columns, above which is a gable, occupied by colossal lions. At Arslan, one of these pediments shows two lions, in this instance not rampant, which support a central pillar. Inside, however, two rampant lions flank a nude human figure.

At Mycenæ are earlier tombs than that of Atreus, which consist simply of a deep shaft lowered into the rock. These are situated just inside the Lion Gate, the area which they occupy being enclosed by two concentric circles of thin slabs, set up on end with others laid across the top of them. It is a feature that in its attenuated form seems to recall Stonehenge. Dr. Schliemann reached the conclusion that these were the graves which were shown to Pausanias, as being those of Agamemnon, Cassandra, and her companions.

On the summit of the Acropolis at Mycenæ are the remains of a palace, similar to, but less extensive than, that of Tiryns, which we may therefore examine in preference.

Tiryns.—The palace of Tiryns, which probably dates to a period between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries B.C., seems to have combined the luxuriousness of the residence of an Oriental king with the feudal state of a mediæval baron and his crowd of retainers. The acropolis is of oval shape, with its long axis north and south, surrounded by immense ramparts of Cyclopean masonry, from 30 to 40 feet in thickness, while the outside height was about 50 feet and that of the inside 10 feet from the level of the ground. In certain parts chambers were embedded in the thickness of the wall, and round its inner side ran a colonnade, supported by wooden posts.

The area thus enclosed was divided into three successive levels, of which the highest was excavated by Schliemann and Dörpfeld, 1884-1885. The plan shows the entrance situated on the west side, away from the sea, which probably was once fitted with a gateway similar to that at Mycenæ. The approach passes between massive walls to another gate, whence it proceeds to a propylæa, with rooms for the guard. This opens into a forecourt, from which another propylæa gives approach to the actual palace.

The first feature of the Palace is a court bounded on three sides by a post-supported colonnade. An altar or sacrificial pit is in the same position as that occupied by the altar of Zeus in a later Greek house. It may be possible in this connection to see evidence that the principal deity on the mainland of Greece was already, unlike that of Crete, a male; perhaps a terrible prototype of the later benignant Zeus, to whom human sacrifices were made, as to the hideous Mexican divinity, Huitzilopochtli.

On the north side of the court a portico, succeeded by a vestibule, gives access to the Megaron. In the centre of this is the hearth, a feature not needed in the warmer climate of Crete and therefore not found in the palaces of that island. Four columns supported the roof, the centre of which may have been raised to allow openings for light and smoke escape. Adjoining the sleeping chambers on the west side of this hall is a bathroom, about 12 feet by 10 feet, the floor of which is composed of a single slab of stone, sloped so that the water drained out through a pipe in the wall.