The Historians' History of the World 03

Above the strata, however, which contain these remains of local divergent development, there lies in all districts of the Ægean area a rich layer of deposit, whose contents show a rapid and marked advance in civilisation, are essentially uniform, and have only subsidiary characteristics due to local influence or tradition. The civilisation there represented is not of an origin foreign to the area. The germs of all its characteristic fabrics, forms, and motives of decoration exist in the underlying strata, though not equally in all districts, and the change which Mycenæan art occasions is not always equally abrupt. It is most reasonable to see in these remains the result of the action of some accidental influence which greatly increased the wealth and capacity of one locality in the area, and caused it to impose its rapidly developing culture on all the rest. The measure of the reaction that took place in divers localities thereafter depended naturally on the point to which local civilisations had respectively advanced in the pre-Mycenæan period.

As to the decorative motives in vogue, there is less uniformity. The earlier Mycenæan vessels have curvilinear and generally spiraliform geometric schemes. These pass into naturalistic vegetable forms, and finally become in the finest typical vases almost exclusively marine—algæ, octopods, molluscs, shells, in many combinations. Everywhere animal, bird, and human forms are but seldom found. Man certainly appears very late, and in company with the oriental motives which characterise the Spata objects. Insects, especially butterflies, become common, and when their antennæ terminate in exquisite spirals, decorative art is at the end of its progress.

Silver Ox-head from Mycenæ

Not only in the continuous and universal commentary of painted earthenware, but in many other media, we have evidence of “Mycenæan” art, but varying in character according to the local abundance or variety of particular materials. We have reached an age when the artist had at his disposal not only terra-cotta, hard and soft stone, and wood, but much metal, gold, silver, lead, copper, bronze containing about twelve per cent. of tin alloy, as well as bone and ivory, and various compositions from soft lime plaster up to opaque glass. If it were not for the magnificent stone utensils, in the guise of lioness heads, triton shells, palm and lotus capitals, with spirals in relief, miniature shields for handles, which have come to light at Knossos, we should have supposed stone to be a material used (except architecturally) only for such rude metallic-seeming reliefs as stood over the Mycenæ gate and circle graves, or for heavy commonplace vases and lamps.

We have discovered no large free statuary in the round in any material as yet, though part of a hand at Knossos speaks to its existence; but figurines in metal, painted terra-cotta, and ivory, replacing the earlier stone idols, are fairly abundant. For these bronze is by far the commonest medium, and two types prevail; a female with bell-like or flounced divided skirt, and hair coiled or hanging in tails, and a male, nude but for a loin-cloth. The position of the hands and legs varies with the skill of the artist, as in all archaic statuary. Knossos has revealed for the first time the Mycenæan artist’s skill in painted plaster-relief (gesso duro). The life-size bull’s head from the northern entrance of the palace and fragments of human busts challenge comparison triumphantly with the finest Egyptian work. And from the same site comes the fullest assurance of a high development of fresco-painting.

Tiryns had already shown us a galloping bull on its palace wall, Mycenæ smaller figures and patterns, and Phylakopi its panel of flying-fish; but Knossos is in advance of all with its processions of richly dressed vase-carriers, stiff in general pose and incorrect in outline, but admirably painted in detail and noble in type; and its yet more novel scenes of small figures, in animated act of dance or ritual or war, irresistibly suggestive of early Attic vase-painting. Precious fragments of painted transparencies in rock-crystal have also survived, and both Mycenæ and Knossos have yielded stone with traces of painted design. Moulded glass of a cloudy blue-green texture seems to belong to the later period, at which carved ivory, previously rare, though found even in pre-Mycenæan strata, becomes common. The Spata tomb in Attica alone yielded 730 pieces of the latter material, helmeted heads in profile, mirror handles and sides of coffers of orientalising design, plaques with outlines of heraldic animals, and so forth. Articles in paste and porcelain of native manufacture, though often of exotic design, have been found most commonly where Eastern influence is to be expected; for instance, at Enkomi in Cyprus. But the glassy blue composition, known to Homer as κύανος, an imitation of lapis-lazuli, was used in architectural ornament at Tiryns.