The Historians' History of the World 03

From the seventeenth or sixteenth to the twelfth century B.C., then, we may regard as the bloom-time of Mycenæan culture, and of the race or races who wrought it out. But we need not assume that their arts perished with their political decline. Even when that gifted people succumbed to or blended with another conquering race, their art, especially in its minor phases, lived on, though under less favouring conditions. There were no more patrons like the rich and munificent princes of Tiryns and Mycenæ; and domed tombs with their wealth of decoration were no longer built. Still, certain types of architecture, definitively wrought out by the Mycenæans, became an enduring possession of Hellenic art, and so of the art of the civilised world; while from other Mycenæan types were derived new forms of equally far-reaching significance.

The correspondence of the gateways at Tiryns with the later Greek propylæa, and that of the Homeric with the prehistoric palaces, is noteworthy; so, too, is the obvious derivation of the typical form of the Greek temple, consisting of vestibule and cella, from the Mycenæan magaron. That the Doric column is of the same lineage is a fact long ago recognised by the ablest authorities. In fact, the Mycenæan pillars known to us, whether in actual examples as embedded in the façades of the two beehive tombs or in art representations, as in the lion relief and certain ivory models, while varying in important details, exhibit now one, now another of the features of the Doric column. Thus, all have in common abacus, echinus, and cymatium—the last member adorned with ascending leaves just as in the earliest capitals of the Doric order. Again, the Doric fluting is anticipated in the actual pilasters of “Clytemnestra’s tomb,” and in an ivory model. And as the Doric column has no base, but rests directly on the stylobate, so the wooden pillars in the Mycenæan halls appear to rise directly from the ground in which their stone bases are almost entirely embedded.

That Mycenæan art outlasted the social régime under which it had attained its splendid bloom is sufficiently attested by the Homeric poems. Doubtless, the Achæan system, when it fell before the aggressive Dorian, must have left many an heirloom above ground, as well as those which its tombs and ruins had hidden down to our own day. And, again, the poems in their primitive strata undoubtedly reflect the older order, and offer us many a picture at first hand of a contemporary age. Thus the dove-cup of Mycenæ, or another from the same hand, may have been actually known to the poet who described old Nestor’s goblet in our eleventh Iliad; and the cyanos frieze of Tiryns may well have inspired the singer of the Phæacian tale, or at least helped out his fancy in decorating Alcinous’ palace. Still, it is in the more recent strata of the poems that we find the great transcripts of art-creations and the clearest indications of the very processes met with in the monuments. To take but one instance, there is the shield of Achilles forged at Thetis’ intercession by Hephæstus and emblazoned with a series of scenes from actual mundane life. (Iliad, XVIII. 468-613.) The subjects are at once Mycenæan and Homeric. On the central boss, for example, the Olympian smith “wrought the earth and the heavens and the sea and the unwearying sun,” very much as the Mycenæan artist sets sun, moon, and sky in the upper field of his great signet. Again, the city under siege, while “on the walls to guard it, stand their dear wives and infant children, and with these the old men,” appears to be almost a transcript of the scene which still stirs our blood as we gaze upon the beleaguered town on the silver cup. But it is less the subject than the technique that reveals artistic heredity, and when we find Homer’s Olympian craftsman employing the selfsame process in the forging of the shield which we can now see for ourselves in the inlaid swords of Mycenæ, we can hardly doubt that that process was still employed in the poet’s time.

In this sense of an aftermath of art, Mycenæan influence outlasted by centuries the overthrow of Mycenæan power; and the fact is one to be considered in establishing a chronology. We have taken as our lower limit the catastrophe in which the old order at Mycenæ and elsewhere obviously came to an end. But the old stock survived,—“scattered and peeled” though it must have been,—and carried on, if it did not teach the conqueror, their old arts. If we are to comprehend within the Mycenæan Age all the centuries through which we can trace this Mycenæan influence, then we shall bring that age down to the very dawn of historical Greece. In this view it is no misnomer to speak of the Æginetan gold find recently acquired by the British Museum as a Mycenæan treasure.

Acropolis of Mycenæ

THE PROBLEM OF THE MYCENÆAN RACE