millennium there is no site except Crete where a continuous and
successful development can be studied.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--Primitive red pottery from the Troad.]

About the time which is represented in Greek tradition by the Dorian
invasion (1100 B.C.) the then decadent Mycenaean civilization was
replaced by a new one much more backward in development, making pottery
of a far simpler and more conventional type, the decoration being
largely confined to geometrical patterns to the exclusion of motives
derived from plant forms. This is usually known as the geometrical
style, and the pottery covers the period from about 1000 to 700 B.C. It
is found all over the mainland and islands of Greece, and exhibits a
certain development towards a more advanced stage. The patterns include
the chevron, the triangle, the key or maeander, and the circle, in
various combinations, painted in dull black on a brown ground. In most
places the art advanced no further, but in Boeotia, and still more at
Athens, we can trace the gradual growth of decorative skill, first in
the introduction of animals, and then in the appearance of the human
figure. In the Athenian cemetery outside the Dipylon gate a series of
colossal vases has come to light, on which are painted such subjects as
sea-fights and funeral processions. The human figures are exceedingly
rude and conventional, painted almost entirely in silhouette, but there
is a distinct striving after artistic effect in the composition and
arrangement. In Boeotia the vases do not advance beyond the animal
stage, and many exhibit a tendency to decadence in their carelessness,
as contrasted with the painstaking helplessness of the Athenian artists.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--Vase with bands of animals, Oriental in style,
(British Museum.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Ionic amphora, with contest between Heracles
and Hera, and bands of birds and animals; black, with incised lines.]

In Ionia and the islands of the Aegean such as Rhodes, the art of
vase-painting from the first carried on the Mycenaean tradition, and was
distinguished by its naturalism and originality, and by the bold and
diverse effects produced by variety of colour or novelty of subject. The
ornamentation is at first elementary, consisting of friezes of animals,
especially lions, deer and goats (figs. 23 and 24). These figures stand
out sharply in black against the creamy buff ground which is
characteristic of nearly all Ionic po