Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/327

 274 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. lion would scarcely play so great a part in the Homeric tales, if when these were written his presence on the Idsean, Sipylian, and Tmolian heights had not been of common occurrence. Again, when Aphrodite meets Anchises, no surprise is expressed at her couch being strewn with lions' skins, which ihe young hero had Fig. 394, — Ivory young cow. Actual siic. captured in his native forests. To-day, however, the lion no longer roams over those regions ; he is only met, and that very rarely, in the eastern valleys of the Taurus. The animal did not recede eastward until the Roman dominion, when the whole peninsula was covered with a perfect network of commercial and t'lG. 395- — Gold lion. Double actual si military roads, and its most inhospitable parts were inhabited by a dense population, as the ruins scattered over districts now all but desert abundantly attest. Why should not the retrogressive movement of the animal have commenced in Greece, where the