Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/226

 Troy. 203 was all but unknown to the inhabitants of the primitive village. Metal has not yet dispossessed or replaced stone everywhere or for everything ; but the wide range of the services demanded of it suggests the idea that it was beginning to be domesticated in that part of the world, when the second city rose upon the mound, and that henceforward it became more and more common, each fresh generation bending and adapting it to new uses. From the first year of his excavations, Schliemann found in this stratum notable quantities of gold, silver, lead, bronze, or rather almost pure copper. Iron alone was wanting. In 1890 it made its appearance, accompanied by four stone axes, in the foundations of a building which can only belong to the second epoch (PI. I. n), in the form of two balls, held to be knobs for walking-sticks.* Gold has furnished cups, hair-pins, ear-rings, trinkets, discs, bracelets, etc., sometimes adorned with spirals in true Mycenian fashion. Silver is still more abundant ; besides a kind of spatula or broad knife, it has given vases of varying form, and ingots of unequal length but almost equal in weight. Like the ** Homeric talents," they may have served as means of exchange. A nude female representing a rude idol was made of lead ; the attributes proper to woman are grossly exaggerated, and recall certain divine types of Anterior Asia. Copper was cast in moulds of mica-schist, of which numbers were unearthed, but axes, knives, scissors, daggers, arrow-heads, and the like wene manufactured out of copper ; so too were hammered up leaves, and cups, and vases. Progress is no less marked in pottery, where we find great variety in the shapes, and more refinement in the decoration. Black vases still obtain ; but nearly all are cast on the wheel, and forms traced with the point on the moist clay have given way to a more ambitious scheme. The charm of colour, with its potentialities of play and contrast, are as yet unrevealed to the artist's vision ; but ornament is suggested in the modelling ; whilst his attempts to delineate the human form in relief, if in truth singularly rude and clumsy, are not void of intention, and can be grasped by all. Now appear those vases, on the neck- ing and body of which are represented eyes, nose, and woman's natural attributes, and sometimes even indications of arms. The animals we find portrayed here are those of the country : mules, ^ Schliemann.