Here was the one and only trace of fortification
discovered in all the excavations. The entrance passage was a stone
gangway, on the north-west side of which stood a great bastion,
with a guard room and sally-port--a slender apology for defence in
the case of a prize so vast and tempting as the Palace of Knossos.
Obviously the bastion, with its trifling accommodation for an
insignificant guard, was never meant to defend the palace against
numerous assailants, or a set siege; it could only have been sufficient
to protect it against the sudden raid of a handful of pirates sweeping
up from the port (Plate XII. 2). How was it that so great and rich a
structure came to be left thus practically defenceless? The mainland
palaces of the Mycenaean Age at Tiryns and Mycenae are, so to speak,
buried in fortifications. Their vast walls, 57 feet thick in some
parts at Tiryns, 46 feet at Mycenae, towering still after so many
centuries of ruin to a height of 24-1/2 feet in the case of the
smaller citadel, and of 56 feet at the great stronghold of Agamemnon;
their massive gateways, and the ingenious devices by which the
assailant was obliged to subject himself in his approach to a
destructive fire on his unshielded side--everything about them points
to a land and a time in which life and property were continually
exposed to the dangers of war, and the only security was to be
found within the gates of an impregnable stronghold.
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