Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/482

 Metal. 425 and shoulder-pieces ; in a word, covered, like a golden statue, with glittering metal from head to foot.' No iron has been traced in the royal tombs at Mycenae. It does not make its appearance there until the end of the archaic period, and then only as an article of luxury, in the shape of rings that were placed in the graves alongside of gold ones.' Bronze continued to be preferred to iron long after this, because they had not yet found out how to modify it into steel. The only Fici. 506.— Gold diadem, a Irille over Iinlf-sUe. iron they knew of was soft iron ; but this, when worked into a point or edge, soon gets out of order by contact with a hard material. We are not a little surprised to find gold and silver vases at Troy. Although their dimensions testify to the wealth of their owners, they are very simply shaped, and without orna- ment. The most elegant, perhaps, is a gold vessel, with two handles, the shape of which approaches a modern sauce-dish ' 'E^JIficfiiC, 1889. ^ TsoUNDAS, Mwijiat; 'EifiiiKpit, 1889,