Identifier: palacesofcreteth00moss (find matches)
Title: The palaces of Crete and their builders
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Mosso, A. (Angelo), 1846-1910
Subjects: Palaces
Publisher: London, Unwin
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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e, and the floor of the house he overlaid with gold within andwithout. I The Mycenasans knew how to gild bronze, andprobably fastened thin plates of gold upon marble with albumen,as Pliny tells us,- but as we find no trace of such gilding onthe pavements we may suppose these statements to be poeticexaggerations. In any case it is strange that beside these pave-ments of gold, floors of beaten earth, such as would not befound in any palace of the Minoan age, should exist in theroyal residence of Odysseus. This discrepancy between thepavements discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Tiryns and Mycens and those described in the Homeric poems had already beennoticed by Helbig.3 When Penelope, at the suggestion of Athene, proposes tomarry the suitor who can bend the bov/ of Odysseus and shoot anarrow through the iron rings, Telemachus makes the preparations:he put off the purple mantle from his shoulders and laid aside ^ I King vi. 30. = Hist. Nat., 33, 3, 20. 3 Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, p ii-f.
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FIG. 114.—VICTORY OF THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHEXS UXLACIXG HER SAXDALS. 16 FOOTGEAR IN THE TIME OF MINOS 243 the sharp sword, and dug first a long trench, then planted therethe stakes with rings at the top, fixed in a straight line, andstamped down the earth, We have other indications that the earth floor in the palace ofOdysseus was not very solidly laid. I found this year in Sicilythat even in the Neolithic period there were huts with betterfloors than those of the reception halls of the kings of Ithaca.In fact I discovered at Caldare a double laid floor like that in thepalace of Tiryns : the lower floor was roughly laid, and the upperone, also of clay and scarcely a centimetre thick, had been beatenhard and then slightly baked by being covered with fire. Thispavement was so hard that I was pble to carry a large piece to theMuseum at Syracuse. This example of the pavements of theNeolithic age in Sicily is sufiicient proof that civilisation couldnot have receded so far in Homeric times

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