Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/236

 ?. HISTORY OF ART IN PIKF.MCIA AND ITS DKI-KNUKNCIKS. Astarte who in later years became the Aphrodite and Venus of the classic poets was situated. Kven the name of Idalion has been pre- served in that of the modern village of DalL Cesnola tells us that he explored about fifteen thousand tombs in the canton of Dali alone, 1 and that he found many precious objects in them. But his ex- cavations went on at many points at once ; he could not be every- where, and many of them were supervised by native foremen. Several of these men had gathered no little experience, and had a keen scent for monuments of value ; they understood thoroughly how to sound the rock and to follow a vein until it was exhausted ; but they troubled themselves little enough with the arrangement of the tombs into which they penetrated, and even had they been willing they were unable to take sections or to draw a plan. General di .. 147. Alabaster va^es. From Kiticm.- Cesnola was prevented by his very eagerness as an archaeologist from supplementing the ignorance of his agents. It would have been easy for him to serve his apprenticeship as draughtsman and surveyor on the ground itself, but his keenness for new discoveries, the journeys he made about the island in every direction, and the number of digging campaigns he carried on at once in cantons far removed from each other, left him no leisure for anything of the kind. We owe too much to his energy to have any desire to quarrel with it ; General di Cesnola has by himself disinterred more monuments of ancient art in Cyprus than all the other ex- plorers put together ; with the comparatively feeble resources of a private individual, he has brought to light hundreds of figures and thousands of vases and jewels, while the English Government, 1 Cyprus, p. 64. - From CESNOLA, Cyprus, p. 54.