Nos. 205-209. Beads of Glass and Fluor-spar. (4 M.) Actual size.
No. 210. Threshold of the Gate of Lions.
THRESHOLD OF THE LIONS' GATE.
The Archaeological Society in Athens has not yet sent an engineer to consolidate the sculpture above the Lions' Gate, and to repair the Cyclopean wall close to it; but they intend still to do so. Meanwhile they have allowed me to continue the excavations at the Lions' Gate on the condition that I leave to the right and left of it a considerable portion of the débris in situ in order to facilitate the raising of the blocks which are necessary for the repairs. Therefore I have been able to resume the excavations at the Lions' Gate, and I have brought to light its enormous threshold. Two exact drawings of this are appended. It consists of a very hard block of breccia 15 ft. long and 8ft. broad. The ruts caused by the chariot-wheels, of which all guide books speak, exist only in the imagination of enthusiastic travellers, but not in reality. The immense double parallel row of closely joined slabs, which I have brought to light in close proximity to the Lions' Gate, would now altogether bar the access of chariots to the Acropolis. But as I cannot ascribe a very remote antiquity to the wall which sustains the double row of slabs in the lower part of the Acropolis, so neither can I claim a high antiquity for the circle of slabs itself, and before its erection chariots could certainly have had access to the Acropolis. But on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliff, it is impossible that chariots should ever have penetrated further than the first or lowest of the six natural or artificial terraces. Thus it is obvious that chariots were but little in use here, and that beasts of burden, horses, mules, or asses, were employed in their stead. No doubt the fifteen small straight parallel furrows, which are cut all along the surface of the threshold to prevent the beasts of burden from slipping, might have been mistaken for ruts of chariot-wheels. But again, the threshold having been deeply buried in the débris for ages, and at all events since the capture of the Acropolis by the Argives (468 B.C.), no mortal eye can have seen it for more than 2300 years.
There is a quadrangular hole, 1 ft. 3 in. long and 1 ft. broad, in the middle of the threshold, where the two doors of the gate met. The threshold further shows on its east side a straight furrow, artistically cut, 1 ft. broad, and on its west side another which forms a curve. Both these seem to have served as channels for rain water, the rush of which must have been great, the threshold being lower than the natural rock forming the floor of the passage, which rises gradually. In the side of the threshold which faces the north is a long artificial hole of a peculiar form, which must have been connected with the gate in some way or other, for a cutting of exactly the same form exists in the large flat stone in the middle of the gate at Troy. At a distance of 11½ ft. from the threshold on either side of the passage there is, as at Troy,[231] a quadrangular mass of Cyclopean masonry, 2 ft. broad and high, and 3 ft. long, which marks the site of a second gate of wood.
A CYCLOPEAN HOUSE.
Further on to the right I have brought to light, below the foundations of an Hellenic house, quite a labyrinth of Cyclopean house-walls, forming a number of parallel corridors from 4 ft. to 6½ ft. broad, filled with stones and débris, which I am now clearing out. One of the corridors leads straight into the Cyclopean house already described.[232] In several places the walls retain traces of their clay-coating. I found here many Hera-idols, also three arrow-heads, all of bronze; two have barbs (γλωχῖνες); the third has the form of a pyramid, like the Carthaginian arrows which I found last year in my excavations in Motyë in Sicily.