Such appears to be the testimony of Pliny. And in some points it is curiously supplemented by the very notable account, professing to come from an eye-witness, which is given us by Guichard[313] of the proceedings of the Knights of St. John on the site of the Mausoleum. ‘In the year 1522, when Sultan Solyman was preparing an expedition against the Rhodians, the Grand Master, knowing the importance of the Castle of St. Peter [at Budrum or Halicarnassus], and being aware that the Turk would seize it if he could at the first assault, sent some knights thither to repair the fortress and make all due preparations to resist the enemy. Among the number of those sent was the Commander de la Tourette, a Lyonnese knight, who was afterwards present at the taking of Rhodes, and came to France, where he related what I am now about to narrate to M. d’Alechamps, a person sufficiently known by his learned writings, and whose name I mention here only for the purpose of publishing my authority for so singular a story.
‘When these knights had arrived at Mesy (Budrum), they at once set about fortifying the castle; and looking about for stones wherewith to make lime, found none more suitable or more easily got at than certain steps of white marble, raised in the form of a staircase (perron) in the middle of a level field near the port, which had formerly been the great square of Halicarnassus. They therefore pulled down and took away these marble steps for their use, and finding the stone good, proceeded, after having destroyed the little masonry remaining above ground, to dig lower down, in the hope of finding more.
‘In this attempt they had great success, for in a short time they perceived that the deeper they went the more the structure was enlarged at the base, supplying them not only with stone for making lime but also for building.
‘After four or five days, having laid bare a great space one afternoon, they saw an opening as into a cellar. Taking a candle, they descended through this opening, and found that it led into a fine large square apartment, ornamented all round with columns of marble, with their bases, capitals, architrave, frieze, and cornices, carved and sculptured in mezzo rilievo. The space between the columns was lined with slabs and bands of marbles of different colours, ornamented with mouldings and sculptures, in harmony with the rest of the work, and inserted in the white ground of the wall, where deeds and battle-scenes were represented sculptured in relief.
‘Having at first admired these works, and entertained their fancy with the singularity of the sculpture, they pulled it to pieces, and broke up the whole of it, applying it to the same purpose as the rest.
‘Besides this apartment, they found afterwards a very low door, which led into another apartment, like an ante-chamber, where was a tomb, with its urn and its cover (tymbre) of white marble, very beautiful and of marvellous lustre. This sepulchre, for want of time, they did not open, the retreat having already sounded.
‘The day after, when they returned, they found the tomb opened, and the earth all round strewn with fragments of cloth of gold, and ornaments of the same metal, which made them suppose that the pirates who hovered on their coast, having some inkling of what had been discovered, had visited the place during the night, and had removed the lid of the tomb.’
Those who are acquainted with the Levant, with its wondrous tales of underground chambers and hidden treasures, will scarcely be disposed to accept, without a grain of salt, the details of this curious story. It may be true, or it may be in the main a work of the imagination. Many such stories, grounded or groundless, are flitting from mouth to mouth in Asia Minor, and rapidly growing in the process. Nevertheless it is probable that Mr. Oldfield is justified in saying that the earlier part of the tale affords a clear confirmation of the existence (which has been denied) of a lower pyramid at the Mausoleum as well as that which surmounted the building. The knights found in the ground steps of white marble like a staircase, and as they dug downwards these steps spread outwards, just as would the steps of a pyramid. The solid mass of marble had escaped while most of the upper part of the building had been carried away as material for the castles of the knights. But it survived no longer; it was carried away by the companions of De la Tourette and built into the walls of the castle. As to what Guichard tells us in regard to the contents of the inner chamber, scepticism is more justifiable.
3. The Analogy of other Buildings.
Of monuments mentioned in these pages, only two can fairly be used for comparison with the Mausoleum. These are the Lycian Nereid Monument ([Fig. 74]) and the Lion Tomb of Cnidus ([Fig. 77]). The Nereid Monument consists, like the Mausoleum, of a pteron raised upon a base or podium; but no part of it is of pyramidal form. It is merely, if the restoration be correct, a building in the form of an ordinary Greek temple, on an unusually high podium. It may be used as proof that the Mausoleum also had a high podium, for the existence of which the existing remains furnish no direct evidence. The Lion Tomb may be suggestive from a constructional point of view, as the architectural problem involved in supporting a massive lion on the top was not unlike the problem which the architect of the Mausoleum had to solve. But its elevation was of a far simpler type than was that of the Mausoleum.