FIG. 20. TOMBSTONE, MYCENAE.
All three of these scenes come from slabs erected over one grave at Mycenae, the fifth. The other slabs with reliefs are in too fragmentary a condition to be studied to much purpose; and in fact it is to be feared that the reader may accuse us of somewhat straining evidence in interpreting these more complete scenes, though in reality none of our statements is open to much doubt.
We need but carry our thoughts for a minute to the sculptures which adorned the walls of the palaces of the kings of Assyria, which are full of the triumphs of those powerful monarchs alike over human foes and the beasts of the field, in order fully to recognize the meaning of the Mycenaean reliefs. Here also we doubtless have a court chronicle, though material and style will not bear for a moment any comparison with the magnificent records of Nimroud. Here also we may discern the king, in whose honour the slab was set up, slaying and pursuing his enemies. And although at Mycenae we are in a time of comparative barbarism, yet at least for the choice of subject we may find parallels in the later age of Greece. Dexileos riding down his foe on horseback on the splendid monument of the Cerameicus ([Pl. XII]) may be considered a parallel to the nameless chief of Mycenae who pursues his enemy in the chariot of an earlier age. But a still closer resemblance of subject is to be found in monuments of Asia Minor, in the paintings of the sarcophagi of Clazomenae, which date from the sixth century[58]. On these we have frequent battle scenes, and chiefs riding in two-horse chariots occur. The graves of Lycia and the sarcophagi of Sidon also preserve in their reliefs extracts from the lives of the chiefs buried in them, of their military expeditions, hunting exploits and domestic enjoyments.
The extraordinary inferiority of the sculpture of Mycenae in comparison either with the architecture of walls and gates, or with the working of the gold and silver cups and ornaments found in the tombs, may at first surprise us. But in spite of this inferiority, there are touches of similarity between the representations on the stone and those in the metal plates which show them to belong to one age. We may account best for the curious discrepancy by reflecting how very closely art is dependent on material. The artists of Mycenae were evidently used to gold and metal work. They had learned to adapt their devices perfectly to a material which could be engraved and hammered. But to making reliefs in stone they were clearly quite unaccustomed. No mason who thought as a mason would attempt so absurd a task as the working out on stone of these spiral and interlaced patterns. They are taken straight from metal to limestone. And complete ignorance of the art of working in relief is shown also in the way in which the scenes are executed, each figure being quite flat, and the outlines only made clear against the ground of the relief. A distant report of reliefs in stone to be found in the lands of the far east and the south seems to have reached the workmen of Mycenae, and set them to work, when they naturally carried with them into the new branch of art the style of the repoussé metalwork which was familiar to them. Even the Lion Gate of Mycenae, though a work of a character very superior to that of the tombstones, is very weak on the side of technique.
CHAPTER V
ASIA MINOR: EARLY
After the heroic or Achaean age we find in all branches of Greek history a marked break. Some great cataclysm in Greece, in all likelihood the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus in the eleventh and tenth centuries, separates the age which is called Mycenaean from historic times. The young tree of Hellenic civilization had produced a few flowers, but a long period of comparative barbarism had to pass before it obeyed a second time the call of the season and brought forth mature fruit. This course of events is clearly mirrored in the graves of Greece Proper. The tombs of the later Mycenaean age, which have been discovered in great abundance, especially at Mycenae itself, are far less rich than those of the earlier period. And not only are their contents less plentiful and less interesting, but they present us with no external adornment which should justify us in here dwelling upon them. As our subject is the outsides rather than the insides of sepulchral monuments in Greece, we must pass almost in silence over a long period of time, and begin again, amid quite different surroundings, on the threshold of the Olympiads, and of Greek history as opened to us by Herodotus.
There can be little doubt that if excavations were carried out on a large scale on the coast of Asia Minor, amid the early Aeolic and Ionic settlements, we should be able to bridge the gap now existing between pre-historic and historic Greece. Doubtless by degrees the lacuna in our knowledge will be filled up. But at present it remains a lacuna.
Before however we proceed to an account of the cemeteries of the great cities of Greece Proper, of Sparta and Athens and Thebes, we must glance at the tombs erected in semi-Greek districts of Asia, such as Phrygia and Lycia, in honour of the wealthy kings who there bore sway. Greek history may, in a sense, be said to begin with the Mermnadae of Lydia, and all our histories of Greek art contain a chapter on the archaic monuments of Lycia.
A great part of the interior of Asia Minor is full of rock-sculptures, carved partly in the service of religion, partly as a record of the dead. Much of this sculpture is of great but unknown antiquity, and less closely related to any Hellenic work than to that of the races of Syria and Mesopotamia. The best general account of these remains will be found in the fifth volume of Perrot and Chipiez’ Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquité. It is only necessary in the present work to mention a few groups of monuments of a later time, which may be advantageously compared with early Greek monuments.
Pausanias, who was well acquainted with the Ionian coast, tells us that he had seen[59] on Mount Sipylus a notable tomb ascribed by tradition to Tantalus, son of Zeus and Pluto (Πλο�τω), and father of Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnesus. This monument has been identified[60] in a tumulus of which the remains still stand on a spur of Sipylus. It was excavated, and partly destroyed, by M. Texier, whose drawings, which are here repeated, give us a notion of its original form and disposition ([Fig. 21]).