Dictionary of Greek and Roman geography . ounted with a capital,formed of a row of four circles, enclosed between twoparallel fillets. The heads of the animals are gone,together with the apex of the cone that surmountedthe column. The block of stone, from which thelions are sculptured, is said by Leake and otheraccurate observers to be a kind of green basalt; butthis appears to be a mistake. We learn from Mure(Tour in Greece, vol. ii. p. 324) that the block isof the same palombino, or dove-coloured limestone, ofwhich the native rock mainly consists, and that theerroneous impression has been de
Dictionary of Greek and Roman geography . ounted with a capital,formed of a row of four circles, enclosed between twoparallel fillets. The heads of the animals are gone,together with the apex of the cone that surmountedthe column. The block of stone, from which thelions are sculptured, is said by Leake and otheraccurate observers to be a kind of green basalt; butthis appears to be a mistake. We learn from Mure(Tour in Greece, vol. ii. p. 324) that the block isof the same palombino, or dove-coloured limestone, ofwhich the native rock mainly consists, and that theerroneous impression has been derived from thecolour of the polished surface, which has receivedfrom time and the weather a blueish green column between the lions is the customarysymbol of Apollo Agyieus, the protector of doors andgates. (Mliller, Dor. ii. 6. § 5.) This is also provedby the invocation of Apollo in the Agamemnon ofAeschylus (1078, 1083, 1271), and the Electra ofSophocles (1374), in both of which tragedies thescene is laid in front of this GATE OF THE LIONS AT MYCENAE. It has been well observed that this pair of lionsstands to the art of Greece somewhat in the samerelation as the Iliad and the Odyssey to her litera-ture; the one, the only extant specimens of theplastic skill of her mythical era, the other, the onlygenuine memorials of its chivalry and its song. Thebest observers remark that the animals are in a styleof art peculiar to themselves, and that they have littleor nothing of that dry linear stiflness which charac-terises the earlier stages of the art of sculpture inalmost every country, and present consequently as little resemblance to the Archaic style of the Hel-lenic works of a later period as to those of Egyptitself. The special peculiarities of their execu-tion are a certain solidity and rotundity amountingto clumsiness in the limbs, as compared with thebodies. The hind-legs, indeed, are more like thoseof elephants than lions; the thighs, especially, areof immense
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