Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/652

 342 Mtisetims and Rarec Shotvs in A^itiquity.

How romantic is the tale of the bronze necklace with the inscription : " Diomed to Artemis " ; he hung it round the neck of a stag, to which it adhered, so that later the creature was found by Agathokles, King of the Sicilians, who dedicated the necklace in the Temple of Artemis in Apulia.^ The necklace of Helen at Delphi, ^ her sandals at Athena's temple, Japygia,^ or the shoe of Perseus in Egypt,* all awaken a thrill. But perhaps the most intriguing of all is the celebrated necklace made by Hephaistos and given as a bridal gift to Harmonia when she wedded Kadmos, but later bestowed as a bribe upon Eriphyle as the price of her treacherous persuasion of her husband Amphiaraos to go to Thebes, although he, with his miraculous gift of fore- knowledge, knew that he would never return thence alive. Amathus in Cyprus claimed possession of this necklace, but another story told how it was dedicated in Delphi and carried off thence by the Phocian tyrants.^ Pausanias himself becomes quite stirred up about the matter, and gives his reasons for believing that the necklace at Amathus was not the genuine one. He says : " There is a city Amathus in Cyprus, in which there is an ancient sanctuary of Adonis and Aphrodite. They say that in it is preserved the neck- lace which was originally given to Harmonia, but was called the necklace of Eriphyle, because she accepted it as a bribe to betray her husband. The necklace was dedicated at Delphi by the sons of Phegeus : how they acquired it I have already shown in my account of Arcadia. But it was carried off by the Phocian tyrants. Nevertheless I do not think that it is in the sanctuary at Amathus. For the necklace at Amathus is of green stones fastened together with gold ; but Homer in the Odyssey [xi. 327] says that the necklace which was given to Eriphyle was made of

1 Aristotle, De mir. anscult., no.

- Diodorus, xvi. 64 ; Ephorus in Athen., vi. 232 d.

^ Lycophron, 850 ff. ; Tzetz., idem. * Herodotos, ii. 91.

5 Apollodorus, iii. 7. 7 ; Pausanias, vii. 24. 10 ; ix. 41. 2 f.