Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/194

 i;8 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. fashioning clay. The ancients mention a female statue of bronze, which would seem to have been put over the tomb of one of the Midases ; probably the king who married the Greek Demodike of Cymae. 1 A line of one of the Rhapsodists, referring to the figure, is extant, and in the true spirit of the age the statue is made to speak " I am a bronze maiden, on Midas' tomb I lie." 2 Where was the tomb ? We are not told, and do not propose recognizing it in the monument we have described, albeit we can imagine a bronze statue to have stood on the ridge of the rock, over the double volute crowning the pedestal (Fig. 48). At all events, it is difficult to admit that the line in question is a pure invention ; the meaning of the epigram would be pointless, unless we suppose it to have been applied to a well-known w r ork. Even supposing the object in question to have been executed in Ionia for a foreign prince who was popular and well thought of there, the fact remains that it had to be despatched to Phrygia, where it served as model and diffused at the same time a taste and practice in the art of working metals. Up to the present hour, Phrygia has yielded no intaglios or small figures, whether in clay or bronze. Nevertheless, those princes who knew how to write, who sent objects of art as presents to Delphi, could not but have signets of their own ; this is rendered the more probable that the usage of the seal was firmly estab- lished among the neighbouring nations. Of late, the attention of archaeologists has been called to cylinders and cones whose prove- nance and peculiar make stamp them as the work of a local art proper to Asia Minor. 3 But what is still undiscovered are seals wherein the image would be associated with alphabetical characters, akin to those manifested on the inscriptions of the Nacoleia district. When intaglios shall appear with real Phrygian lettering, such as we see on the Midas monument, a new and curious chapter on glyptic art will have to be opened. 1 Diogenes Laertius, i. 89; PSEUDO-HERODOTUS, Life of Homer, ii. ; C. F. BERGK, Geschickte Griechische Litteratur, torn. i. p. 779. 2 XaXKcrj Tra.p6f.vos ci/u MiSe'w 8' CTTI a"qp.an Kei/xat. The verse was ascribed now to Cleobulus, one of the seven wise men, now to Homer. 8 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. pp. 665-774 ; HEUZEY, De quelques cylindres et cachets de PAsie Mineure (Gazette Arche., 1887, pp. 55-63).