Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/100

 82 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.*:a. and appear to be placed here for the express purpose of making this treasure more easy of explanation. At first sight they might seem to be votive offerings presented by freebooters and mariners, expressive of their gratitude for nets replenished or rich spoils obtained. But the fact that the Sardi never seem to have taken kindly to the sea forbids the supposition, strengthened further by the central position of Teti, in one, if not its most hilly district, far removed from the sea. 1 The most plausible and, on the whole, probable explanation, is that put forth by Pais, from whom we quote : " A large proportion of the statuettes collected here and in other parts were due to native mercenaries serving in the Carthaginian armies ; whilst the rest were effigies of priests, hunters, shepherds, and stay-at-home people generally. The soldiers' figures, however, reveal distinct traces of care having been bestowed upon their fabrication, and are the best, or the least crude of the series. This is easily explained on the assump- tion that the people who ordered them were the well-to-do of the tribe. To those mountaineers, the day when they had bidden adieu to their native homes in order to fight in Africa, Spain, or Italy, trusting themselves to the unstable element on Punic galleys, must have been the one great event of their lives. How natural, therefore, that on their return to their domestic firesides after their arduous campaigning, they should have believed to settle their accounts with their protecting gods, when they offered them the boats which had been instrumental in bringing them through the perils of the sea, and that conspicuous positions should have been given them in their places of worship. Viewed by this light, may not the skiff in which a man supports himself on his hands and feet (Fig. 84) have been placed there in remembrance of a tempestuous voyage, when everybody had to crouch at the bottom of the galley to prevent capsizing ; whilst the row of quadrupeds distributed on the netting of the next ship (Fig. 82) would allude to the victims knew how to fashion the human figure. Neither will the usage of barbarians, such as the Iberians, who stuck swords on their warriors' tombs, apply here (Arist., in Fragmenta Hist. Grcecorum of Muller, 251, p. 180), because, as we have shown in another place, there is no evidence to favour the theory that Teti was a necro- polis. On this question see Pais, Boll., p. 158-162, 1884. 1 The only allusion to Sardi mariners is found in Strabo. According to his testimony, Sardi pirates, in his time, would land on the Etruscan coast, committing acts of rapine as far inland as Pisa (V. ii. 7). They may have been Corsi, who occupied the north of the island.