TiRYNS. 263 their predecessors. These enable us to judge of the resources which the military architecture of that remote age had at its disposal. Until lately no one had thought to inquire if aught remained of ancient structures once encircled by the rampart. In the days of Pausanias and Strabo, the ruins were already hidden under soil or overgrowth ; people came to admire and look at the walls alone,^ because they were reputed to have been erected by wonderful craftsmen called Cyclopes, who had come from over the sea. The surprise they felt in presence of these masses translated itself into exaggerations of language from which sober-minded Pausanias himself is not free. " The wall," says this writer, " is all that remains of Tiryns ; it was built by the Cyclopes, and consists of rude blocks, so large that a yoke of mules could not move the smallest of them ; small stones serve to fill up the intervals and complete the work" (I. ii. 25). Smaller stones are certainly fitted in between the larger and some- what irregular polygons, but it is not correct to call, as he does, the great blocks *' rude, unhewn,*' which, with no better authority, many modern travellers have repeated after him (Fig. 71). This was observed by Dorpfeld on uncovering pieces of the wall which, not having been exposed to the weather, were found in better preservation. ** Nearly all the stones, previous to being set up, had been prepared on one or more faces ; in this way they had now received a lower bed, now a smooth surface roughly worked with the pick-hammer. It is then a misnomer to call the stones at Tiryns unprepared — roughly hewn would describe them better." ^ Again, Pausanias has overstepped the mark respecting the size of the blocks ; though to be sure the largest reach in length two metres ninety centimetres by one metre ten centimetres to one metre fifty centimetres in height, and from one metre twenty centimetres to one metre fifty centimetres in thickness.
- This is plainly stated by Pausanias : t6 hi Tuog, 6 Si) fiovoy ruiy iptnriutv
Xdrtrai. From Clavier's translation of the passage given below, it might be inferred that Pausanias contradicts himself: "There still remains at Tiryns, he makes him say, **some vestiges of the house of Prgeteus." But the Greek sentence has : ^rifuia te Trjg kv TipvvOi ohriffeutg Upohov kul cc ro& Xilwerai, Clavier would seem to have confused viKtiffiQ with oiKrina, It is plain that what Pausanias wishes us to understand is that there still remains at Tiryns something which bears witness to the residence and authority exercised there by Praeteus. That something is the enclosure which he describes. ^ Tiryns,
