We proceed now to notice some of the more important towns of Caria, and take first Halicarnassus (now Budrum) which had achieved the most enduring fame, as the site of the Mausoleum or Tomb of Mausolus, once of the Seven Wonders of the World. Originally, a colony from Trœzene, in Argolis, Halicarnassus had early adopted Asiatic tastes and habits; hence, firmly adhering to the Persians, its Queen Artemisia I., the widow of Lygdamis, fought for Xerxes at Salamis. A remarkable vase in Egyptian alabaster, with the name and titles of Xerxes on it in the three forms of the cuneiform writing, discovered by Mr. Newton in the Mausoleum, was, perhaps, the reward-gift of the Persian monarch for this service. To her namesake, the second Artemisia, we owe the building of the Mausoleum, 130 years subsequently.
With regard to the history of this remarkable monument, it is well known that, on the death of Mausolus, B.C. 353, Artemisia, his widow and sister, resolved to celebrate his memory by all the honours the art and literature of the period could bestow, and to employ, for this purpose, four of the most celebrated sculptors of antiquity,—Bryaxis, Timotheus, Leochares or Scopas, and Praxiteles.[[37]] It is said that this queen’s short reign, of two years only, did not enable her to witness the completion of her grand design, but that these great sculptors finished the work after her death for their own honour and the glory of art. Much of what they accomplished was, certainly, extant till comparatively modern times. Thus, the building is noticed, first by Strabo and Pliny, then by Gregory of Nazianzus in the fourth, by Constantinus Porphyrogenitus in the tenth, and by Eudocia in the eleventh centuries respectively; all these accounts implying that it was still visible. Again, Frontanus, the historian of the siege of Rhodes, states that a German knight, Henry von Schlegelholt, constructed the citadel at Budrum out of the Mausoleum. Yet, even then, it was only partially destroyed, for when Cepio visited Budrum in 1472 he mentions seeing its remains among the ruins of the ancient town. In the later repairs, however, of the citadel, the masonry of the substructure of the Mausoleum must have been wholly removed; the result being that visitors to Budrum, before Mr. Newton commenced his excavations, could not determine its site.
[37]. Its architects were Satyrus and Phiteus, and the building itself a parallelogram surrounded by thirty-six columns, supporting a pyramid of twenty-four steps, which tapered to the top like a meta, or goal. Its height was 140 feet. Martial describes it as “Aere vacuo pendentia Mausolea.” Pausanias states that the Romans admired it so much that they called all similar buildings “Mausolea”; while Eustathius, in the twelfth century, observes of it, Θαῦμα καὶ ἦν καὶ ἔστι (“it was and is a wonder”) clearly implying its existence, in some form or other, even then. In M. Guichard’s “Funérailles de Romains,” &c., Lyons, 1581, the sculptured reliefs and “certain white marble steps” (possibly those of the pyramid) are noticed. This information, he says, he had from M. Dalechamps—the editor of Pliny—and he, again, from M. de la Tourette, who was present, in 1522, when its last stones were finally removed to build the castle.
About the middle of the last century, the Greek sculptures built into the walls of the fortress were published in Dalton’s “Views in Greece and Egypt, 1751-81,” and were subsequently described by Choiseul-Gouffier, Moritt, Prokesch von Osten, W. J. Hamilton, as, also, in the second volume of “Ionian Antiquities.” Nothing, however, was done towards a more complete examination of them, till, in 1845, Sir Stratford Canning (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), then H.M. Ambassador at Constantinople, was able to extract them from these walls, and to present them to the British Museum in February, 1846. The chief subject of these sculptures is the contest between the Greeks and the Amazons, and their artistic style may be compared with that of the slabs on the Choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens, of the date of B.C. 334. The pieces thus recovered were evidently but subordinate portions of a much larger design.
From this time nothing further was done till Mr. Newton was sent by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, in the early part of 1856, on a cruise to the south of the Archipelago; on which occasion he landed at Budrum, and partially examined the site, but without detecting any visible evidence of the Mausoleum.[[38]] In October of the same year, however, Mr. Newton took up his abode at Budrum with a few sappers under the command of Lieut. Smith, R.E. Mr. Newton commenced his excavations on the same spot he had previously slightly examined, and, for some time, met with little except abundant mosaics, the remains of a splendid villa, some of them inscribed with the names of the persons represented,—such as Meleager and Atalanta, Dido and Æneas. A little further on, Mr. Newton found in the rubble several drums of columns, with late and shallow Doric flutings, and, at one corner of the building, a well, in which was a small head in white marble, a bronze lamp, and some other objects: many, too, of the rooms still retained their skirting of white marble. But still no Mausoleum appeared.
[38]. Admiral Spratt, R.N., a veteran surveyor, proposed his site for the Mausoleum, because, 1. he thought it coincided with the description of Vitruvius; 2. on the eastern side there are still portions of an Hellenic wall; 3. on the N. side were several fragments of columns of large diameter; and, 4. it might be inferred that the Mausoleum stood on a mound. He did not, however, follow the example of Prof. Ross, in writing a paper against Mr. Newton’s early account of the Mausoleum in the “Classical Museum,” with a sneer at the possibility of any student, who had not himself surveyed the place, forming a conception of the real position of the great building. It is satisfactory to know that Prof. Ross’s personal survey proved to be even less satisfactory than that of Capt. Spratt.
At length, however, Mr. Newton commenced digging on a spot where, nearly sixty years ago, Professor Donaldson had noticed the remains of “a superb Ionic edifice,” and soon came on many small fragments of a frieze in high relief, and on a portion of a colossal lion resembling in execution the lions’ heads built into the walls of the castle. Mr. Newton next fell in with a mass of ruins lying just below the surface, one column, indeed, standing nearly upright but inverted, and 10 feet below, a little further on, with the edge of a pavement or step, about 6 inches below which the native rock had been levelled for a floor. In the earth on this floor was found the body of a colossal statue from the waist to the ankle, and another mass of sculpture—a warrior on horseback in a Persian or Oriental costume, in itself a most remarkable specimen of ancient sculpture. There could be no doubt now that these were relics of the Mausoleum, the smoothed rock being the bed on which the building had once stood. The work, in all cases, was of the best, the fragments of the small figures being generally better preserved than those on the frieze already in the British Museum. The discovery of the column just alluded to had this especial value, that, by its measurement and order, a judgment could be formed of the size of the building to which it had belonged: ultimately these measurements showed that the building itself must have had much resemblance in style to the temple at Priene.
By the spring of the next year (1857) Mr. Newton had determined the base-lines of the original building, and proved it must have been a parallelogram 116 feet long on the west by 126 feet on the south side, its entire circumference having been about 472 feet. The inner part of this quadrangle was paved with large slabs of a greenish-grey stone 1 foot thick. The cause of the ruin of the building was, also, clear enough; first, earthquakes shook down a considerable portion, and then the Knights of Rhodes, and, after them, the Turks, used up every available stone above ground for building purposes. Fortunately, however, the plunderers only took what was ready to their hand; hence the massive courses of the foundation-stones were left, because unseen. On the western side, a grand staircase of twelve steps, 30 feet wide, led from the base of the hill to the western side of the precincts of the Mausoleum. Near these were found the vase of Xerxes, and a gigantic stone weighing more than ten tons, which probably once closed the entrance to the actual tomb. No remains of the tomb itself were found; yet, there is reason for believing that some portion of it, if not the actual body of the king, was visible during the demolition by the Knights. On the east side of the Mausoleum, a colossal seated male figure was next discovered, of a grand style, but sadly shattered; and then, on the north, a similarly colossal female figure, which must have been originally scarcely less than 12 feet high. Here, also, was found a very beautiful fragment of one of the friezes, representing a female figure stepping into a chariot, the face of which, happily but slightly injured, retains even now the finish of a cameo.
Mr. Newton’s next plan of ascertaining, if possible, the boundary-wall of the temenos was a happy one, as he thus, at once, discovered a mass of marble blocks, piled one above another, and intermixed with fragments of statues; and thus unearthed, (1) a colossal horse, in two pieces, and part of the head of another horse, with the bronze bridle still adhering to it; (2) a lion in fine condition, and another in two pieces; (3) a draped female figure broken in half; (4) a head of Apollo. All these sculptures were found heaped together, and had evidently not been disturbed since they had fallen.
The conclusion was inevitable, that parts of the colossal horses of the quadriga from the top of the monument had now been met with; and that this quadriga and much of the pyramid, its support, had been simply hurled upon and over the wall of the temenos, and that Mr. Newton had, in fact, found them just as they had fallen, it may be 1,700 years ago.[[39]] Near to the horse’s head, too, was found a face of a colossal male head, presumably that of some personage connected with the quadriga, and, from its general style, which is analogous to the idealized portrait of Alexander the Great on the coins of Lysimachus, most likely from a statue of Mausolus himself. The face has a noble expression, and by a happy accident, the outlines of the features have remained uninjured. Though we have no actual evidence on this subject, it is probable that the statue we have called Mausolus was standing in the chariot at the top of the monument. On the south side of the building Mr. Newton found several portions of what, when put together, were clearly parts of one of its wheels. The fragments consisted of part of the outer circle, half the nave, and a piece of one of the spokes. The wheel, originally, had six spokes, the alternate intervals between each spoke having been closed to ensure by its solidity the strength of the whole wheel. As what has been found shows that the wheel was 7.7 inches in diameter; and as the horses could scarcely have been less than 10 feet in length, we may fairly suppose the top of the pyramid on which the quadriga stood was at least 24 feet long. From other calculations it may be shown that the pyramid was 23½ feet high: but for these and other similar details we must refer our readers to Mr. Newton’s work on the Mausoleum.