Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/655

 Museums and Raree Shoivs in Antiquity. 345

Agamemnon, of Odysseus and of the Argonauts are all mentioned. The last named heroes appear to have scattered votive offerings broadcast, for they dedicated a bowl in Samothrace,^ tripods at Berenice in the Cyrenaeica,- an anchor stone at Cyzicus,^ and a disc and two anchors at Colchis ; one, of iron, did not seem to Arrian to be old : but he recognises the truth of the tradition concerning the other, which was of stone.*

An interesting relic was the sceptre of Agamemnon in Chaeroneia. The sceptre of heroic days was not a stumpy thing like the kingly sceptre of modern times, but a long staff upon which the ruler could lean. Pausanias is quite definite about this sceptre ; he says : "Of all the works which poets have declared and obsequious public opinion has believed to be the work of Hephaistos, none is genuine save the sceptre of Agamemnon. Homer says that Hephaistos made it for Zeus, and Zeus gave it to Hermes, and Hermes to Pelops, and Pelops bequeathed it to Atreus, and Atreus to Thyestes, from whom Agamemnon had it. I am persuaded that it was brought to Phocis by Electra, Agamemnon's daughter. There is no public temple built for it, but the man who acts as priest keeps the sceptre in his house for a year ; sacrifices are offered to it daily, and a table is set beside it covered with all sorts of flesh and cakes." '"

At Sparta he saw another remarkable object, for he tells us : " An egg is here hung by ribbons from the roof : they say it is the famous egg which Leda is reported to have given birth to." ^ This was probably a votive ostrich egg like those found in the tomb at Vulci, which many of you have most likely seen in the British Museum.

^ Diodorus, iv. 49. ^ Diodorus, iv. 56.

3 Apollonius Rhodius, i. 955 ff. ; Pliny, N.H., xxxvi. 9.

^ Pausanias, ix. 40, 11 ; 41. i.
 * Timonax in Schol. Ap. RJiod. iv. 1217 ; Arrian, Peveplus, 9.


 * Pausanias, iii. 16. i.