GREEK MEASURES 20
CYMATIUM 22
PTERON 24
PYRAMID 27
VERTICAL HEIGHTS 30
ARCHITECTURAL ORDINANCE 33
LACUNARIA 36
SCULPTURE AND PEDESTALS 38
CONCLUSION 43
LIST OF WOODCUTS.
1. LION TOMB, CNIDUS 14
2. TOMB AT DUGGA 15
3. TOMB AT MYLASSA 16
4. CYMATIUM 22
5. SECTION OF CYMATIUM AND OF BASE OF PYRAMID 29
6. PEDESTAL OF MONTE CAVALLO GROUP 41
DIRECTION TO BINDER.
Place _Plates_ I., II., and III. at the end of the work.
MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.
INTRODUCTION.
Of all the examples of the wonderful arts of the Greeks, the remains
or the memories of which have come down to us, no one has excited such
curiosity as the far-famed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, or such regret
that no fragments of it should have existed in our own days. All we
knew of it, till very recently, was that the ancients themselves were
inclined to look upon it as the very best specimen of architectural art
which they possessed. For not only did they rank it as among the seven
wonders of the world, but assigned it that pre-eminence—not because
of its size or durability, but because of the intrinsic beauty of its
design, and the mode in which it was ornamented.
The Pyramids of Egypt and Walls of Babylon were wonders only because
of their mass or their durability. The Palace of Cyrus or the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon may have been rich in colour and barbaric splendour,
but we know enough of Assyrian and of Persian art to feel convinced
that the taste in which they were designed must at least have been
very questionable. The Colossus at Rhodes, and the Statue of Jupiter
at Elis, whatever their merits,—and of one, at least, of them we can
believe anything,—did not belong to architectural art. The Temple of
Ephesus may have been beautiful in itself, but it became a wonder only
from its size, as the largest of Greek temples. But the Mausoleum,
which covered not more than one-sixth or one-seventh of its area, could
have been remarkable only because it was beautiful, or in consequence
of the elaboration and taste displayed in its ornamentation.
All that was known of this once celebrated building, till the recent
explorations, was to be gathered from a few laudatory paragraphs in
Pausanias, Strabo, Vitruvius, and other authors of that age; and a
description in Pliny’s Natural History, which we are now justified in
assuming to have been abstracted from a work written by the architects
who originally designed the Mausoleum itself. Probably there were no
diagrams or illustrations with their book, and we may suspect that
Pliny himself did not understand the building he undertook to describe.
At all events, it is certain that he stated its peculiarities in such a
manner as to be utterly unintelligible to future generations.
Still there were so many facts in his statements, and the building
was so celebrated, that few architects have escaped the temptation of
trying to restore it. What the squaring of the circle is to the young
mathematician, or the perpetual motion to the young mechanician, the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was to the young architect; and with the
data at his disposal this problem seemed as insoluble as the other two.
Some forty or fifty of these restorations have been published, and
a strange and amusing collection they are. Some are round, some
octagonal, some cruciform, some oblong or square in plan, some are
squat, some tall.[1] Every dimension found in Pliny was applied to
every part in succession, but in vain. All these designs had only one
thing in common;—that they were all wrong,—some more, some less so, but
none seizing what now turn out to be the main features of the design.
In 1846, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who was then all-powerful as our
ambassador at Constantinople, obtained from the Porte a firman for the
removal of certain bassi-rilievi which had been built into the walls
of the Castle of Budrum, the ancient Halicarnassus. These arrived in
England in due course, and were at once admitted to be fragments of
the sculpture of the Mausoleum, as it had been previously assumed that
they were. But their beauty only served further to increase the regret
that all traces of the building to which they once belonged should have
been, as it then appeared, for ever lost.
While things were in this very unsatisfactory position, the public
heard with no small degree of interest that Mr. Charles Newton,
formerly one of the officers of the British Museum, and then
Vice-Consul at Mitylene, had not only discovered the true site of the
Mausoleum on a spot formerly indicated by Professor Donaldson, but had
found considerable remains of the long-lost building.
Public attention was still further attracted to the subject when it
was announced that the British Government had fitted out an extensive
expedition, to continue the explorations commenced by Mr. Newton at
Budrum and its neighbourhood. From the time that the expeditionary
force commenced its labours in October, 1856, till it was broken up
nearly three years afterwards, in June, 1859, occasional paragraphs
kept up the interest in its proceedings, and latterly the arrival
of the marbles themselves excited expectation to the highest pitch.
Everything seemed to shadow forth a most brilliant success; and, from
the high character which Mr. Newton bore as a Greek scholar, and a
thoroughly educated archæologist, all the Hellenist public rejoiced
that an expedition fitted out on so liberal a scale, and for so
desirable an object, had fallen into what all then believed to be such
competent hands.
The first published results were not encouraging. They took the form
of Papers presented to Parliament, and published as a Blue Book in
1858, and a second series entitled “Further Papers relating to the
Excavations at Budrum and Cnidus, presented in August, 1859.”
The diagrams of the Mausoleum which accompanied these Papers
seemed only sufficient to prove one of two things;—either that the
explorations had not resulted in the discovery of a sufficient quantity
of architectural forms to enable a satisfactory restoration to be made,
or that those who conducted the expedition were not sufficiently versed
in the art of putting together architectural fragments to be able to
avail themselves of the information that had been obtained.
The whole results of the expedition were at last laid before the
public in February last, in a folio volume of plates accompanied by
a volume of text in 8vo. by Mr. Newton. This work contains, among
other things, an elaborate restoration of the Mausoleum by Mr. Pullan,
an architect who was sent out by the Trustees of the British Museum
to join the expedition during the continuance of its labours. This
restoration, however, turns out on examination to be less satisfactory
than those previously published by Lieut. Smith in the parliamentary
papers above alluded to, either as a specimen of Greek art or as a
solution of the difficulties inherent in the problem of reconciling the
recent discoveries with the ancient descriptions of the building. It
is also unfortunate that—owing probably to their author being absent
from the country—the purely architectural plates are so incorrectly
drawn or engraved as to add considerably to the previously existing
difficulties of the question. It is likewise to be regretted that, for
some reason which is not explained, all the best things are omitted
from the collection. The statue of Mausolus is not there, nor that of
the Goddess which accompanied the chariot. The Horses of the Chariot
are also omitted; so is the Torso of the prancing Amazon, the finest
thing found; so are the Castle bassi-rilievi, and the really fine
Lions. There are, in fact, materials left out sufficient to fill, if
not so large a volume as the present, at least one of a far higher
class. Notwithstanding these difficulties and defects, there appear to
be sufficient materials now before the public to effect a restoration
of the building, and as almost all that was discovered on the spot is
now in the British Museum, a reference to them enables us to correct or
verify what has been published. Under these circumstances I have not
hesitated to make the attempt. With what success I must leave it to
others to judge after a perusal of the contents of the following pages.