The existence of these two antagonistic elements satisfactorily explains how it was that while art was unknown in the purely Dorian city of Sparta, it flourished so exuberantly in the quasi-Pelasgic city of Athens; why the Dorians borrowed their architectural order from Egypt, and hardly changed its form during the long period they employed it; and how it came to pass that the eastern art of the Persians was brought into Greece, and how it was there modified so essentially that we hardly recognise the original in its altered and more perfect form. It explains, too, how the different States of Greece were artistic or matter-of-fact in the exact proportion in which either of the two elements predominated in the people.
Thus the poetry of Arcadia was unknown in the neighbouring State of Sparta; but the Doric race there remained true to their institutions and spread their colonies and their power farther than any other of the little principalities of Greece. The institutions of Lycurgus could never have been maintained in Athens; but, on the other hand, the Parthenon was as impossible in the Lacedemonian State. Even in Athens art would not have been the wonder that it became without that happy admixture of the two races which then prevailed, mingling the common sense of the one with the artistic feeling of the other, which tended to produce the most brilliant intellectual development which has yet dazzled the world with its splendour.
The contemporary presence of these two races perhaps also explains how Greek civilisation, though so wonderfully brilliant, passed so quickly away. Had either race been pure, the Dorian institutions might have lasted as long as the village-systems of India or the arts of Egypt or China; but where two dissimilar races mix, the tendency is inevitably to revert to the type of one, and, though the intermixture may produce a stock more brilliant than either parent, the type is less permanent and soon passes away. So soon was it the case, in this instance, that the whole of the great history of Greece may be said to be comprehended in the period ranging between the battle of Marathon (B.C. 490) and the peace concluded with Philip of Macedon by the Athenians (B.C. 346): so that the son of a man who was born before the first event may have been a party to the second. All those wonders of patriotism, of poetry, and art, for which Greece was famous, crowded into the short space of a century and a half, is a phenomenon the like of which the world has not seen before, and is not likely to witness again.
Pelasgic Art.
As might be expected, from the length of time that has elapsed since the Pelasgic races ruled in Greece, and owing to the numerous changes that have taken place in that country since their day, their architectural remains are few, and comparatively insignificant. It has thus come to pass that, were it not for their tombs, their city walls, and their works of civil engineering, such as bridges and tunnels—in which they were pre-eminent—we should hardly now possess any material remains to prove their existence or mark the degree of civilisation to which they had reached.
124. Section and Plan of Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ. Scale of plan 100 ft. to 1 in.
The most remarkable of these remains are the tombs of the kings of Mycenæ, a city which in Homeric times had a fair title to be considered the capital of Greece, or at all events to be considered one of the most important of her cities. The Dorians described these as treasuries, from the number of precious objects found in them, as in the tombs of the Etruscans, and because they looked upon such halls as far more than sufficient for the narrow dwellings of the dead. The most perfect and the largest of them now existing is known as the Treasury or Tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, shown in plan and section in the annexed woodcut. The principal chamber is 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and is, or was when perfect, of the shape of a regular equilateral pointed arch, a form well adapted to the mode of construction, which is that of horizontal layers of stones, projecting the one beyond the other, till one small stone closed the whole, and made the vault complete.
As will be explained further on, this was the form of dome adopted by the Jaina architects in India. It prevailed also in Italy and Asia Minor wherever a Pelasgic race is traced, down to the time when the pointed form again came into use in the Middle Ages, though it was not then used as a horizontal, but as a radiating arch.
On one side of this hall is a chamber cut in the rock, the true sepulchre apparently, and externally is a long passage leading to a doorway, which, judging from the fragments that remain (Woodcut No. [125]), must have been of a purely Asiatic form of art, and very unlike anything found subsequent to this period in Greece.