Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/653

 Mtiseums and Rarce Shoivs in Antiquity. 345

gold. The passage runs thus : " Who took precious gold as the price of her dear lord." Not that Homer was ignorant of necklaces composed of various materials. Thus in the speech of Eumaeus to Odysseus before Telemachus has returned to the court from Pylus, he says \Odyssey^ XV. 459^^^.]: "There came a cunning man to the house of my father /With a golden necklace, and it was strung at intervals with amber beads." Again, among the gifts which Penelope received from the wooers, he has represented Eurymachus giving her one \Odyssey, xviii. 295 seq?\ : " And straightway Eurymachus brought a necklace, cunningly wrought / Golden, strung with amber beads like the sun." But he does not say that " Eriphyle received a necklace curiously wrought of gold and stones." This is a good, but not entirely convincing argument. Still, green stones certainly do sound suspicious, although Mr. Randall M'lver has pointed out to me that necklaces of green glass beads and also of a rare green stone were known in Egypt at an early period, and examples may be seen in Professor Flinders Petrie's collection at University College, London. Possibly the trophy at Amathus was one of these chaplets, brought from Egypt by travellers or traders.

Another dedication which calls up many memories is the weapons of Herakles, bequeathed by him to Philoktetes.^ You all know the story of how these weapons were left as his sole means of support to the unhappy man when his companions, sickened by the nauseating odour of his poisonous wound, abandoned him on the island of Lemnos. Later, when they realised that only with his assistance could they ever hope to capture Troy, they sent Odysseus and Neoptolemos on an embassy to persuade him to come. At first, in the bitterness of his spirit, he refused until Odysseus, with his usual guile, induced Neoptolemos to gain possession of the bow. Deprived of this last standby,

1 Aristotle, Be mir. auscult., 107, tr. Dowdall (Oxford, 1909) ; Justin, XX. I ; Euphorion in Tzetz., Lycophron, 911.