Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/149

Rh GE quadriga on its face (Zeitsclzrzﬂ fiir die Oesterreich. Gym- nasien, 1873, pp. 401-411), whence it is not unreason- able to conclude that this scarab in fact represented the famous seal of Polycrates. Shortly after (300 13.0. there was a law of Solon’s forbidding engravers to retain impressions of the seals they made, and this date would fall in roundly with that of Theodorus and Mnesarchus, as if there had in fact been just about then a special activity and unusual skill. That the art had been practised perhaps for several centuries before in Greece is probable from the general usage of sealing implied in Solon’s law, fron1 the extraordinary degree to which it obtained soon after his time, and from the inﬂuence which was exercised on the Greeks in such matters by the Pheenicians, Egyptians, and _ssyrl-ans. Yet it is singular to ﬁnd, as Pliny points out (xxxiii. 4), no direct mention of seals in Homer, not even in the passage (lliad, vi. 168) where Bellerophon himself carries the tablets on which were written the orders against his life. Then as regards the rings or seals of Prometheus, of Midas, of Mines (which like that of Polycrates was thrown into the sea in vain), of Phocus, and of Orestes, the legends may not all have come down from a very early perio.l, but thit of Phocus can at least be traced back to the time of Polygnotus, while that of Prometheus may be taken to have inspired the seal (engraved It’ev. Arcla, 1878, pl. xx.) on which the Titan is seen bound and submitting to the vulture. Or, conversely, such a gem may have s11g- gested the legend of the ring which he bore as proof of his former punishment. There is no need to put it much later than 600 11c., and it is a specimen of a class of lentoid gems which of late years have been found i11 small numbers chieﬂy in the Greek islands. Two more of them from the Eritish Itluseurn collection are engraved in P1. 1., ﬁgs. 2 and 3. As a rule the materials are comparatively soft, most fre- quently steatite and lizematite, while the designs consist mainly of animals so turned and twisted as to cover almost the entire surface of the gem. Certain exceptional cases, where the design is taken from legend or mythology, may be seen in the Ifcvue A-7'cIréolo_r]ir1'zze, 1878, pl. xx., Nos. 1-3 ; for the ordinary subjects see Ifwzze Arc_7z., 1874, pl. xii. ; Schliemann, .1[_2/ceme, pp. 112, 202, 362; Cesnola, ('_z/prus, pl. xxxvii. ‘J, and pl. xxxviii. 21, 23; and for gold signets with designs in this stage of art see Schliemann, .l[_z/cenre, p. 223 ; Cesnola, C'3/prus, pl. xxxiv. 2; and [fevue .-In-/1., 1874, pl. iv., No. 44, in which volume is an interesting article on early engraved gems by Count Gobineau. In most cases the designs though heraldic rather than natural, with a prevalence of animal forms perhaps due to notions of heraldry, are yet so singularly free from Egyptian or Assyrian inﬂuence that they must be assigned as essentially Greek productions, possibly from a period when Oriental examples had lost sway. “Not to carry the image of a god on your seal” was a saying of Pythagoras ; and, whatever his reason for it may have been, it is interesting to observe him founding a maxim on his father’s profession of gem engraving (Diogenes Laert., viii. 1, 17). From the time of Theodorus to that of Pyrgeteles in the 4th cent11ry B.C. is a long blank as to names, b11t not alto- gether as to gems, the production of which may be judged to have been carried on assiduously from the constant necessity of seals for every variety of purpose. The refer- ences to them in Aristophanes, for example, the lists of them in the ancient inventories of treasures in Athens, and the number of then1 found by General Cesnola in the treasure chambers of Curium in Cyprus conﬁrm this fre- quent usage during the period in question. To it belong in particular the inscribed gems mentioned in ARCH.I~:oLoGY (vol. ii. p. 3:33), ipcluding the 1Voodhouse intaglio there M S 13. very ﬁnest example of Greek gem engraving that has come down to us. It would stand early in the 5th century B.C., a date which would also suit the head of Eos from Ithome in Messenia (Pl. 1., ﬁg. 14), the head (ﬁg. _5), the citharist (ﬁg. 9), while the scarabs (ﬁgs. 6, 7), though apparently of Etruscan origin, obvicusly reﬂect the character of archaic Greek art, as far as concerns the shallow cutting and the delicate execution of minute details. The touch which isolates a design and literally arrests the eye they do not possess, but by comparison they render it more distinct as it exists in the 'oodhouse gem already mentioned, and in ﬁgs. 8, 10-13, and 15 in Plate I., all of which may be assigned to the end of the 5th century 13.0. Singularly beautiful in this class are the two Cesnola gems (Cg/prus, pl. xxxix. ﬁgs. 1, 2), the latter, simple and even awkward in parts, yet on the whole conceived by a Greek mind imbued with the poetry of art, while the former is rather a triumph of faultlessness, delicate as the colour of the stone on which it is engraved. By the beginning of the 4th century B.C. every element of archaism had vanished ; but gems of this period are scarce, except in the collection of St Petersburg, which has obtained them exclusively from tombs in the Crimea. Foremost among them are the two by Dexamenus of Chios, the one, a calcedony with the ﬁgure of a stork ﬂying, and inscribed in two lines, the letters carefully disposed above each other, AEEAMENOE EHOIE X102 (C’ompte—7'emI-u (le la Conmtiss. A rck. St I’etersbm'_r/, 1861, pl. vi. ﬁg. 10), and the other, an agate with a stork standing on one leg, inscribed AEEAMENOE simply (Coinpte-7'e2zrlu, 1865, pl. iii. ﬁg. 40). A third gem, apparently by the same Dexamenus, is a carnelian belonging to Admiral Soteriades in Athens, and has a portrait head, bearded and inscribed AEEAMENOS. EIIOIE (Compte-render, 1868, pl. i. fig. 12). Apart from the splendour of their workmanship, those three gems are interesting for the variety of their inscriptions. Thus a name standing alone in the nominative case, when it does not describe the subject of the design, will indicate the artist. Again, when the nationality of the artist is added it should follow the verb as a rule, which, however, is not without exceptions. EIIOIE for EIIOIEI is an archaism. The design of a stork ﬂying occurs on an agate scarab in the British Museum fro1n the old Cracherode collection, and therefore beyond all suspicion of having been copied from the more recently discovered Kertch gem. The condition of the surface and the skill of execution are both interesting. 1-‘reckoned among the best of the Crimea gems, and that is equivalent to saying among the best of all gems, are the following:—(1) a burnt scaraboid with an eagle carrying off a hare ; a. gem with scarab border‘ and the ﬁgure of a youth seated playing on the trigonon, very mucl1 resembling the Woodhouse intaglio (both engraved, Comple- renclu 1871, pl. vi. ﬁgs. 16, 17) ; (3) a scaraboid with border and the design of a horse running at speed, with which may be compared a carnelian scaraboid in the British Museum from the old Hamilton collection, and again on this account above suspicion, if the great beauty of the work were not alone convincing; the horse is here stung by a gadﬂy ; an ovoid calcedony, mounted on a chain to be worn as a collar, with an intaglio of a Gorgon (3 and 4 en- graved, C’0mpte—7'mdu, 1860, pl. iv. ﬁgs. 6 and 10). In these, and in almost all Greek gems belonging to this period of excellence, the material is of indifferent quality, consisting of agate, calcedony, or carnelian, just as in the older specimens. Brilliant colour and translucency are as yet not a necessary element, and accordingly the design 15 worked out solely with a view to its own artistic merit. _ At this stage appears the name of Pyrgoteles, of Whom It is said that he alone was permitted to engrave thelportrait