the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad we find Homer's description of the burial of Hector. A huge funeral-pile was raised, ou which the body was burned. The people quenched' the embers with wine. Brothers and friends collected the bones and ashes, "And placed them in a golden urn. O'er this They drew a covering of soft purple robes, And laid it in a hollow grave, and piled Fragments of rock above it, many and huge." I The funeral of Patroklos is similarly described, and express mention is made of the circular form of the mound of earth (Book xxiii.). At Elpenor's burial (Odyssey, xii. 14) a stele or upright slab erected upon a hill is mentioned.
Lydian Lydia are a number of grave-mounds, some of which are of great size and rise in the form of a cone from a stone sub structure of cylindrical shape. In the interior is a small square burial chamber roofed above with courses of stone projecting horizontally, exactly like the so-called Temple on Mount Ocha. Around this sev eral concentric rings of walling bound together by cross-walls and filled in with loose rocks form a secure foundation for the cone-shaped mound above. The so-called " Grave of Tantalos," as yet in tolerably good preservation, stands among several others on the north side of the Gulf of Smyrna; its diameter is nearly 6o metres (i97 feet). Near Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia, there is a group of mounds, three of them of surpassing size, the largest of which, So metres (262 feet) in diameter, is presumed to be the Tomb of Alyattes, mentioned by Herodotos, according to whose description it was crowned with five memorial columns. (See Vol. II. p. 196.) of another kind are the tombs which we find in Phrvgia, and which, hewn out of the solid rock, have sculptured facades. The most important of these is the so-called " Tomb of Midas." This has a nearly square surface entirely filled with a geometric ornament and surrounded by a frame-like border; above this a triangular frame, similarly decorated, forms a low gable. This is evidently a reminiscence of a tent-like wooden building covered with a gable roof and closed in front with drapery, and furnishes another element the direct connection of which with the rest of the Pelasgian works cannot be traced. Such a work would have to be regarded as an offshoot of Chaldceo-Assyrian art were it not that certain ornamental details of the same age which occur upon fragments found in the so-called "Treasury of Atreus" („6/. 4, fig. 4) also exhibit a geometric ornamentation conceived in a similar spirit.
Treasury of does not seem to be proved that the so-called " treasuries "—several of which occur in Greece—are entitled to be so named. The most remarkable of these is that of Minyas, in Orchomenos, which Pausanias (ix. 38, 2) praises as a wonder. The best known is that of Atreus, at Mykenm (jigs. 4, 6), a circular structure 15 metres (about 49
feet) in diameter; its walls begin to curve front the floor and rise in par abolic outline, each course so projecting over the one beneath it that by this diminution of the concentric circles they finally unite at the summit so as to form a pointed vault. It was evidently built against the rock, in which a chamber is excavated, and the whole was then covered with earth. We are inclined to believe that this structure was connected with ancestral worship. The entrance (fig. 4) is built in a manner similar to the "Gate of the Lions" (fig. II), only there are no special door-jambs placed slanting, so as to form an opening narrower above than below, but the horizontally-laid ashlar work of the structure reaches to the door, which is surrounded by an architrave of flat channelled profile. The slab which in the other doorway filled the triangular space over the lintel is here absent. At this place were found several ornamental fragments which give us an insight into the ideas of decoration possessed by the Pelasgi; the base and the shaft of a column (fig. 7) have been restored from these. As the shape of the building recalls the Asiatic domes, so certain orna ments in relief (Jigs. S, to) seem related to Assyrian decoration, and the spiral patterns (figs. 7, 9) recall the bronze utensils of the Northern people —utensils which reached them through the Etruscans, or probably even through the Phoenicians, until they learned to manufacture them for themselves.
Royal gives us descriptions of royal palaces, par ticularly those of Odysseus, Meuelaos, and Alkinoos. A wide fore-court surrounded by walls and battlements, with outbuildings in connection with it, gave access to an inner court, surrounded by porticoes, with the altar of Zeus Herkeios iu its centre. A passage led from this to the great hall of the men, the roof of which was borne by rows of columns, and from which a staircase led to the upper storey. A door led to the women's quarters, which formed the rear of the dwelling, and contained, besides the working-apartment and the conjugal chamber, a series of rooms and chambers both on the ground-floor and iu the upper storey. Other rooms for the men lay on each side of the inner court. (See Vol. II. p. iSi, 23.) The decorations of bronze, gold, silver, amber, and ivory of which Homer speaks so admiringly point to the employment of a con struction partly of metal and partly of wood plated with metal, similar to that of Asiatic structures. It is supposed that the interiors of the treas ure-houses were also lined with metal, since in that of Orchomenos and iu a circular chamber near the Treasury of Atreus fragments of bronze plates have been found; so that it may be that the other buildings were also built monumentally of stone.