Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/328

 Animal Rei-kesentation. 275 advance of culture since the Homeric age has relegated him far away to the rear of the -^gean, even to the sources of the Euphrates ? Myths Hke that of the Nema;an Hon seem to shadow forth the remembrance which the Hellenes had preserved of a distant past when ArgoHc shepherds dreaded the havoc which the lion's tooth and claw might effect in their folds. Mythical information, then, is in accord with that which the monuments supply. These show us the Mycenian artists very much engrossed with the lion, to whom they assign a large place in their works, of which a certain proportion convey the impression of having been copied from the original. That the disappearance of the lion was not the work of a day, is implied by the statement of Fig. 396. — Ivory plaque. Length, o m., 93. Herodotus, to the effect that towards the beginning of the fifth century u.c. the animal still existed in Thrace, and that, along with wild bulls, he was chased in Peloponnesus by the AchEcan chiefs of Tiryns and Amyclae. Furthermore, he tells how, in Pieonia, lions had molested the convoys of the Persian host.' This declaration is borne out by Xenophon, Aristotle, and Pau- sanias.^ In Europe at the present day, they write, Hons are only found in the district between the Achelous and Nestos. It is easy to guess how this was brought about. With the influx of fresh tribes, the narrow valleys of Hellas ceased to be uninhabited ; as a consequence of it, the mountains were deprived of their timber and the lion was driven to the north- ^ Hfrodotus,
 * Xenophon: Aristotle; Pausanias.