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From, R. Blomfield, Architecture,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 4
The Treasury of Atreus is still more remarkable, not only because it shows more skill in building, but because its design is based on a structural motive which seems to have been wholly abandoned by the successors of the Mycenaean builders. The Treasury of Atreus (or Tomb of Agamemnon) was excavated in a hill, and consists of a long passage about 120 ft. by 21 ft. wide, with retaining walls of megalithic masonry on either side, terminating in a great entrance doorway. This doorway is flanked on either side by columns tapering downwards, and decorated with chevrons in a manner very similar to Norman work of the eleventh century, and apparently intended solely for ornament.[130] The entrance opened into a circular domed chamber about 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, 45 ft. 4 in. high, out of which opened another smaller chamber. The dome, in section, is built on the curve of a parabola, formed with courses projecting over one another, and not set out radial to the curve of the dome—in other words it is not a true dome or arch, but a succession of corbels. The internal face of the dome is dressed down, and was covered with ornament of some sort, whether metal rosettes, or enamelled terra-cotta, or wholly in metal, possibly the famous gold of Mycenae, is not known. The whole of this chamber was covered in with a mound of earth, in accordance with the primitive custom of concealing the chieftain's grave. It is impossible to find, in this extremely interesting monument or in the domed chamber of Orchomenos in Boeotia, any trace of future developments in Greek architecture. Both in intention and in its psychological background it seems almost as remote from the Doric Temple as the Great Pyramid itself. In point of fact architecture was still in a rudimentary stage. It has been proved abundantly that Architecture comes late in the sequence of the Arts. People could draw well, long before they could design. Among the cavemen, for example, there were admirable draughtsmen, but they had to make their drawings on the sides of caves. That there existed in the Minoan and Mycenaean ages skilful potters and metal-workers, is shown by the vases of Knossos and the gold cups found at Vaphio near Sparta; that they built habitable buildings and decorated them to the best of their ability is also proved, as, for example, the palace of Tiryns, but it has not yet been shown that their builders reached the degree of skilled design, at which building becomes architecture. Architecture had not yet found itself in Greece.
[130] Portions of these columns are now in the British Museum.
Cf. A History of Ancient Greek Art * Greek Literature * Greek History Resources
A History of Ancient Greece * Plato Home Page
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/blomfield-greek-architecture.asp?pg=4
