Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/379

 METALLURGY. 341 from the meaning given to them by their creators, more frequent ; under such conditions even the human figure may cease to become expressive, and may sink to a mere detail of decoration. In the central medallion we find the same conventional group occurring again and again ; in fact the artist seems to have had no more than about three or four motives to choose from, and to have selected one rather than the other for no particular reason. The first examples we propose to study are the cups without feet and of very slight depth, which we have already encountered in Assyria where they were used to pour libations. 1 They were the idai of the Greeks, and the patera of the Romans. The inscriptions of which we have spoken are to be found on all cups of this parti- cular kind, which indeed form a series, a most interesting and instructive series. We cannot reproduce all the examples in our western museums ; we have therefore selected all those in the decoration of which there is any peculiarity. The difficult thing is to know how to class them. There can be no question of chronological order. The materials for such a classification are wanting. From its comparative rudeness of workmanship, we may be inclined to put some particular specimen before another in which the design is more accurately carried out, but in spite of that the two may be contemporary ; the one being from a good, the other from an inferior hand. Neither does material afford a good basis of classification. On vessels of silver and silver-gilt the figures are as a rule carefully carried out, but there are others of bronze on which no less pains have been lavished. We shall, then, restrict our attention to the ornamental motives. These are divided into concentric bands arranged around the central medallion. The latter often incloses a group formed of from two to five figures (Vol. I. Fig 36) ; sometimes the space is filled by geometrical designs ; the commonest motive is a large rosette, sometimes surrounded by a cable (Fig. 206), sometimes with smaller rosettes between its points. As for the concentric bands, sometimes there is but one (Vol. I. Fig. 36, and above Fig. 206) ; sometimes there are two (Fig. 267) ; sometimes, but more rarely, as many as three (Fig. 271). As a rule a cable or a string of beads separate one zone from another (Fig. 267). As a rule the artist has begun by striking out the chief masses with the 1 Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, Vol. II. Ch. iv. 4. For the form of these cups see Fig. 208, and for their use, Fig. 113.