Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/508

 Weapons and Tools. 451 The foregoing examples show how great was the variety of the materials used by the goldsmith, and how cleverly he managed to obtain harmonies and contrasts of colour. He seems to have possessed scales.^ That he knew how to compose different alloys is incidentally proved by a copper blade from Vaphio, which still preserves one of its bronze crustae ; chemical analysis has shown that this contains a very large amount of tin, or an alloy compounded with silver and lead.^ In this way was obtained a soft white metal, which must be the Homeric xoLtrtrirspog. Until the discovery of tin mines in Spain, the metal was imported in much too insignificant quantities to have been used pure. Along with metals and glass, the goldsmith showed a decided partiality for semi-precious stones. Several large balls of rock- crystal, used perhaps as sceptre- pommels,^ and thin plates of varying shapes, intended no doubt to be utilized as inlays, have been brought out of the graves, thus showing that the article was in high demand. Weapons and Tools. Archaic Greece knew of but two kinds of arms, stone arms, and weapons made of bronze. As time went on, the latter replaced the former ; nevertheless, even when the metal-wealth of Mycenai was exceedingly great, she did not give up the older and familiar weapon, and arrows continued to be furnished with points of obsidian (Fig. 2), although long before that weapons used in a hand-to-hand fight had been of bronze. Between the point when metal makes its appearance, and that when it invents forms of its own, there is a transition period, during which the shapes proper to stone are imitated. This period is represented at Troy by bronze axes that are but copies of stone ones.^ The first step onward is made by arrow- heads, apparently fixed by a nail into a notch cut in the wood, and unprovided, therefore, with a socket.^ The rough edges seen here are perhaps reminiscent of the flint points of yore. ^ SCHLIEMANN, Mycefuc ; ^EfprifiEpiQ, 1889. - 'EijfiepL{', 1889. The alloy in question has not yet been analyzed. '* ScHLiEMANN, Afycettce.
 * ScHLiEMANN, lUos. ^ Ibid.