Schuchhardt and Sellers, _op. cit._ p. 147.
_Critias_, 116; Jowett’s _Plato_, vol. iii. p. 697.
The watch-dogs of Alcinous find analogues in the pairs of sphinxes, winged bulls, or other nondescript monsters, guarding Egyptian and Assyrian portals. There is nothing to show that they possessed automatic powers. In those unsophisticated times, works of consummate imitative skill would readily take rank as samples of magic metallurgy; and what was life-like so inevitably suggested animation, that the distinction could scarcely be drawn very clearly. Similarly, the torch-bearers in the banqueting-hall may be regarded as poetical anticipations of the Greek art of statuary, then still unborn, or at most in swaddling-clothes.
One of the rarities brought by Helen with her from Egypt to Sparta was a silver basket, mounted on wheels, for holding the wool which she industriously span into thread.[386] Now wheeled utensils were presumably a Phœnician invention, since they are mentioned among the furniture of Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings vii.). Their occurrence in prehistoric Greece is hence one of many proofs of Oriental influence. The Iliad knows them as the handiwork of Hephæstus, who facilitated by means of subjacent wheels, the movements of his intelligent tripods; and Homeric indications have been substantiated by the unearthing, in the Altis at Olympia, of remnants of objects belonging, apparently, to the same category.[387] Others, probably incense-pans, were found, a quarter of a century ago, in tombs of great antiquity at Præneste, Veii, and Cære.[388]
Furtwängler, _Die Bronzefünde aus Olympia_, p. 440.
Garrucci, _Archæologia_, vol. xi. p. 206.
Helen’s silver workbasket was gilt round the edges, like the ‘crater,’ or mixing-bowl, presented by Menelaus as a ‘guest-gift’ to Telemachus.[389] The latter was a work of Hephæstus, and had been presented to Menelaus by the king of Sidon, when he was driven thither on his way back from Troy. The process of gilding, however, is well known in the Odyssey, and was practised by native craftsmen. In the scene of Nestor’s sacrifice at Pylos,[390] the goldsmith Laerkes is summoned to gild the horns of the victim, which he evidently did by the simple expedient of overlaying them with gold-leaf. Fusion had indeed not yet been resorted to for the purpose; nevertheless the art of plating silver with gold, to which is compared the beautifying action of Athene upon Odysseus, in order to his advantageous appearance before Nausicaa,[391] excites the extreme personal admiration of the poet, and is regarded as a direct fruit of divine tuition. And it is noticeable that the artists of Mycenæ, although in most respects far above the Homeric standard, found the operation of plating silver directly with gold so difficult that they commonly interposed a layer of copper to receive the more precious metal.[392]