Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/380

330 Prophet Elia and the Temple of Apollo. My only reason for trying this field was its vicinity to that of Jauni Sconi.

I commenced digging in a spot where the outline of two graves might be still distinctly traced on the surface of a footpath. While I was at work, a Greek, whom I had never seen before, came up to me. "I think," he said, "if you dig here" (pointing to one of the graves), "you will find something good." I took his advice; and the workmen had hardly broken the ground with their pickaxes, before they found a small circular ornament in bronze so finely wrought that I was at once led to hope for some work of art of a better quantity than what I had been discovering.

I therefore immediately took the pickaxes from the hands of my workmen, and made them scratch the ground with the small scraping-irons which we were in the habit of using. I very soon found three more of these bronze disks, the handle of a large bronze vase with rich floral ornaments, and lastly, at the very bottom of the grave, but not more than eight inches below the surface, a beautiful bronze group in high relief, representing Boreas carrying off Oreithyia. This group forms the subject of plate 15. Boreas is represented with buskins and large wings as a wind-god; Oreithyia seems to be looking back to the world from which she is snatched away.

Standing over the grave with this group in my hand, I thought of the Eurydice of the fourth Georgic:—