Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/144

 The Stone Age in Greece. 123 rare ; they are greatly prized by magicians, who use them in their operations." ' Pliny's evidence as to the veneration in which bstuH were held is corroborated by the number of axe- like thunder-stones — which we must fain recognize as belonging to the neolithic period — dating from the last days of paganism, and bearing upon them formulas and mystic symbols. Such would be the specimen Fig. 5, originally found in Argolis, but now in the museum at Athens. Below a long inscription, of the kind known as abraxas, is engraved a scene representing Fin. S.— Sti from Argolis. Aclual si a priest and a Roman soldier, apparently in the act of performing an initiatory ceremony. There is nothing improbable in the view which would connect these superstitious notions, whence arose what has been termed " axe- worship," as the abiding recollection of services rendered by the implement to nascent culture.^ The axe was pre-eminently the instrument of far-off antiquity ; it had many uses, whether for purposes of a domestic or a warlike character. That Asia Minor and Greece, like Northern Europe, set great store by hard and resisting substances, and had them brought from great distances, ' Pliny. ^ De Lomgp^rier.