Cyclopean architecture

“ These rocks in their formation resemble the palisades on the Hudson river—but are more regular in their strata,—which appear to have been arranged in huge masses of perfect workmanship—with projections like cornices of Gothic architecture, in a state of dilapidation. Those who are acquainted with the structure of the Cyclopean walls of the ancients, would be struck with the resemblance,—which suggested the name at the head of this article.
We pause to inquire why these primeval fragments of the world have remained so long unnoticed? ”

“ The whole of them measure about fifteen inches in height by twenty-two inches in breadth, so that entrance could only be obtained by crawling on the ground. The arrangement affords a very striking confirmation of the barbarous state of the people, who were yet capable of displaying so much skill and ingenuity in the erection of these cyclopean structures. It is curious indeed that as civilisation progressed, primitive architecture became not only simpler but meaner, the ingenious builder learning to supply his wants by easier methods ”

“ The sons of Lycaon were great builders of cities, and in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to have been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture is often confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry is polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that called the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterly different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small pebbles inserted in the interstices. ”

“ There are also representations of buildings, but if they are not given more faithfully than the animals, there is not much to be learned from them in architecture. After a hasty look over the different fragments in this temple, I went to some other Cyclopean walls, running obliquely up the hill. The antiquaries say that these were prior to the erection of the 78ancient Præneste, which was built at the foot of the hill below the present town. Præneste, according to Virgil, was just founded when Æneas landed in Italy. ”

“ I repeat, these hybrid structures are not the least interesting ones to the artist, the antiquary, and the historian. They show how far architecture is a primitive art, inasmuch as they demonstrate (what is also demonstrated by the Cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt, and the gigantic Hindu pagodas) , that the grandest productions of architecture are social more than individual works; the offspring, rather, of nations in travail than the inspiration of men of genius ”

“ On approaching a building of this type, we must abandon our conceptions of organic architecture: only the Greek and northern Gothic styles deserve that epithet. We must not seek for severe discipline and architectonic design. Instead of one presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared to welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought out by men of independent genius, whereby each part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse elements become a whole of picturesque rather than architectural impressiveness. ”

“ But in Tiryns as well as here in Mycenæ, where I am surrounded by the grandest Cyclopean walls in the world, I am, for brevity's sake and in order to avoid misunderstandings, bound to use the name "Cyclopean" even for the smallest walls of houses or water conduits which show the same kind of masonry. But it must be distinctly understood that I should of course not think of calling them so if I found them in places where there are no huge walls of that kind, for the name "Cyclopean" can only be applied to the gigantic. ”

“ These six pillars, which have hitherto bid defiance to time, devastation, and earthquakes, are supposed to be the loftiest and most magnificent in the world. Nearly seventy feet in height, each pillar a rocky colossus, resting on a basement twenty-seven feet high, covered with excellent workmanship, a masterpiece of ancient architecture, they tower above the Cyclops wall, and look far away into the distance—giant monuments of the hoary past. ”

“ The architectural setting provided for the figures and the pictures of the Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square inch of the ideal building becomes so naturally, and without confusion, a pedestal for the human form, that we are lost in wonder at the synthetic imagination which here for the first time combined the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single organism. Each part of the immense composition, down to the smallest detail, is necessary to the total effect. ”

“ To the south of the circular double row of slabs my excavations have brought to light a vast Cyclopean house, which, so far as it has been uncovered, contains seven chambers intersected by four corridors of four feet in breadth (see Plans B and C) . Here and there the walls still retain their clay coating, which, however, nowhere shows a trace of painting. The walls are from 2 to 41⁄2 ft. thick, and the same wall is in some places 6 to 8 in. thicker than in others. The largest room is 181⁄2 ft. long by 131⁄2 ft. broad, and its east side is cut out in the rock to a depth of 16 in. ”

“ There are many remains of Cyclopean walls both at Tivoli and Palestrina, and as according to Virgil, Tibur and Præneste were founded about the time that Æneas landed in Italy; this epoch has been assigned to their construction, but it must be confessed, that the argument is not altogether conclusive. It is held essential to Cyclopean walls, that there should be 64no cement, and à fortiori, no rubble-work employed in their composition; but in this neighbourhood, at what is called the villa of Brutus, which I shall shortly mention to you ”

“ Some day, perhaps, we may attempt to pursue the same path in the opposite direction; we may endeavour to show that the survival of these examples and traditions may very well have helped to direct architecture into a new path in the last years of the Roman Empire. We shall then have to speak of a school in Asia Minor whose works have not yet been studied with the attention they deserve. The buildings in question are distinguished chiefly by the important part played in their construction by the vault and the dome resting upon pendentives ”

“ The ambition of those who built the temple of Amen, at Karnak, or that of Athené, on the Acropolis, was to produce a work which should give faithful expression to the highest thoughts which the human mind can conceive. In one sense, architecture may be called the first of the arts. In those great compositions whose remains we study with such reverence, whose arrangements we endeavour with such care to re-establish, it was the architect who determined what part the painter and the366 sculptor should take in the work, who laid out for them the spaces they were called upon to fill. ”

“ The eye is instantly caught by the plated candlestick-like columns, and runs with some complacency up the groining and fret-work, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney-top. He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf. We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an ornament for a chimney has not the slightest feeling, and never will have any, of its beauty or its use; he was never born to be an architect, and never will be one. ”

“ Stability, in a word, in its highest and most simple form is the distinguishing characteristic, the true originality, of Egyptian architecture.
This character is most strongly marked in stone buildings, but it is by no means absent from those built of materials created by human industry. Works in brick form the transition between the construction that we have described and that which we call compact. A stone roof is not often found, and the termination is generally a terrace in which wood is the chief element. ”

“ I frequently find here flat pieces of terra-cotta with painted or impressed ornaments, which must have served for coating the interior walls of the houses (Nos. 137 and 139) . At a depth of from 10 to 11 feet, and sometimes of only 61⁄2 feet, below the surface, I am bringing to light Cyclopean house-walls, built of unwrought [80] stones, joined without clay or cement, and founded on the natural rock, from 20 to 24 feet below the surface. The corner-stones of these mansions are remarkable for their massiveness. ”

“ The earliest form of Grecian masonry of which we have any remains is the Cyclopean, in which the walls are formed of huge stones, the interstices of these being filled up with smaller ones. The walls of Mycenæ and Tiryns furnish the best specimens; and in some places the outer walls are supposed to have been sixty feet thick. The labor of constructing such works must have been immense. ”

“ A terra-cotta model of a small temple is peculiar in design (Fig. 218) ; it was found in Cyprus, and may have been the model of the shrine sacred to Astarte. As before mentioned, Phœnician architecture, from the few remains of it that have been found, consists of borrowed forms from other nations, and if any development even in the ornamental forms is noticeable, it can generally be traced to the rising influence of the Greeks, especially in Cyprus and Carthage. ”

“ The artist, too, who wishes to ornament a column, is sure to borrow motives from any particular form of art or industry in which the race to which he belongs may have earned distinction. In some cases, therefore, his work may resemble carved wood, in others chased or beaten metal. He will also be influenced, to some extent, by the features and characteristic forms of the plants and animals peculiar to his country. But wherever a race is endowed with a true instinct for art, its architects will succeed in creating for stone architecture an appropriate style of its own. ”

“ Or let us take the Glyptothek, a composition as completely Greek as the feeling and the perception of the day enabled the architect to make it; are we to take the shafts without flutings, which seem to be called for, as so many violations of Greek verity? In all Grecian art, moreover, there are no round-headed niches, that is to say, niches covered by semi-domes, because there are no arches therein. There are no frontispieces made up of an entablature, a pediment and two pilasters, used for mere ornament and surrounding a round-topped opening. ”

“ It is, however, justifiable only on the principle, universally accepted by the architects of the Renaissance, that structural members may be used for ornamental purposes without any structural meaning or expression in harmony with the character of the building to which they are applied. But this is a principle which finds no support in any thoroughly noble system of architecture—Greek, Byzantine, or Gothic. Structural members may be used properly enough with a primarily ornamental purpose when they have a character in keeping with the real structural system in which they are used. ”

“ Similar ornaments surround the paintings in the tombs, and are to be found upon the articles of furniture, such as chairs, which form part of most Egyptian museums. Neither these so-called triglyphs and metopes, which do slightly resemble the details so named of the Doric order, nor the egg moulding, which is a pure delusion, ever received that established form and elemental character which alone gives such things importance. Architecture—stone architecture—made no use of them, and the analogies which some have endeavoured to establish are misleading. ”

“ At Tusayan and Cibola, on the other hand, the tendency has been rather to elaborate the plastic element of the masonry. The nearly universal use of adobe is undoubtedly largely responsible for the more slovenly methods of building now in vogue, as it effectually conceals careless construction. It is not to be expected that walls would be carefully constructed of banded stonework when they were to be subsequently covered with mud. ”

“ The faces of these blocks have been dressed with a care which is not to be surpassed even by the most perfect examples of Hellenic architecture on the Acropolis at Athens. The internal faces must have been worked with equal care. No cement has been employed in the fixing, and the adherence is so perfect that, in the words of Abd-ul-Latif "not a needle, not even a hair, can be introduced into the joints." ”

“ The architect, whether Mr. Payne or some unsung genius, achieved a masterpiece which has both dignity and grace. The use of the Greek Revival style of architecture could not have been more correct. The handsome portico with its double gallery is adorned with great columns, Ionic below and Corinthian above, in the great classic tradition. Massive gables of the house with their twin chimneys are typical of the high quality of materials and workmanship employed. ”

“ They simply pierced their wall with arches and overlaid it with an envelope of the artistic expression of another construction, which they coarsened in the process. According to some accounts, they hired Greek decorators to overlay it with this architecture which had nothing to do with it, and there was the first illustration in all history of this difference between the art of architecture and the art of building. In every other country in the world the architect had been the builder. I think that is true down to the Italian Renaissance; and then building was really a lost art. ”