Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/648

 338 Miisetwis and Raree Shoivs in Antiquity.

took their meals in common. From the accounts of the studies carried on there, one gathers that the various adjacent halls contained rooms of anatomy, astronomical instruments, etc. Other texts lead one to believe that the Museion was completed by a botanical garden for exotic plants, and parks where animals of the rarest species were collected from all parts of the then-known world.

In the classical period the museums par excellence were the temples and their precincts. Here many objects were collected, which by degrees accumulated a hoary crust of tradition, never allowed to lack picturesqueness by the custodians who discoursed to an admiring crowd of sight- seers about the treasures which enriched the sanctuary.

The official catalogue of one such sanctuary has been preserved, and from it we gain a good idea of the marvels exhibited. This catalogue is what is known as the Chronicle of the Lindian Temple of Athena at Rhodes,^ a temple said to have been founded by Daneos or his daughters, and certainly of great antiquity. The early temple and almost all its contents were destroyed by fire about B.C. 350, for with the year b.c. 330 begins the list of offerings which were still extant in the later temple in b.c. 99, when the catalogue was compiled and inscribed on a marble stele erected in the precinct. Each of the forty-two items is in a separate section or chapter, and at the close of each the compiler cites the sources from which he drew the information.

The first offerings are all of the mythic period ; Lindos, the eponymous hero, dedicated a bowl, and so did the Telchines, a Rhodian tribe, " and no one could tell of what they were made," an observation intended to indicate the extreme age of the objects. Kadmos dedicated a bronze lehes and Minos a silver drinking vessel, whilst Herakles offered two shields and Rhesos a golden cup. The cup was probably stated to be of gold, because that was considered

1 Chr. Blinkenberg, " Die Lindische Tempelchronik," in Kleine Texte jiir V orlesungen imd Uebungen, No. 131 (Bonn, 1915).