The golden beaker now, after three millenniums of sepulture, exhibited in the Polytechnicon at Athens,[[376]] has two, instead of two pairs of dove-surmounted handles; but the support of each by a separate prop riveted on to the base, corresponds strictly to the construction with ‘two feet below’ (πυθμένες), as described in the Iliad. The real and imagined objects unmistakably belong to the same class and epoch, and their agreement is in itself strong evidence of coherence between Homeric and Mycenæan civilisation. The ‘studs of gold’ embossing the Nestorean drinking-cup were doubtless the ornamental heads of the nails used as rivets. The art of soldering, in the proper sense, was a later discovery;[[377]] but the Mycenæan goldsmith sometimes had recourse to a cement of borax for fastening pieces of gold together. In general, however, decorative adjuncts were separately cast, and afterwards attached with rivets to the objects they were intended to embellish. In this way, probably, the purely ornamental use of metallic knobs and bosses grew up. The Homeric epithets ‘silver-studded’ and ‘bossy,’ applied to sword-sheaths, chairs, and shields, have been copiously illustrated by the discovery at Mycenæ of innumerable gold, or rather gilt, discs and buttons, which had evidently once formed the adornment of the sheaths and shields lying alongside.[[378]] At Olympia, too, bronze sheathings have been found set with rows of solid silver nails,[[379]] by means of which they may have been fastened to chairs of the exact type of those described in the Iliad.
[376]. Schliemann, Mycenæ, p. 236; Helbig, Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert, p. 371; Schuchhardt and Sellers Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 241.
[377]. Riedenauer, Handwerk und Handwerker in den Homerischen Zeiten, p. 122.
[378]. Schuchhardt and Sellers, op. cit. p. 237, &c.
[379]. Furtwängler, Bronzefünde aus Olympia, p. 102.
For his effects of palatial splendour, Homer relied all but exclusively on the metals. Upholstery was for him non-existent. Small carpets for placing under the feet of distinguished persons, and rugs for their beds, were the utmost luxuries known to him in this line, and they were mere individual appurtenances. But for producing general effects, his means were exceedingly limited. He could dispose neither of rich draperies, nor of silken hangings. Polished and rare woods lay outside his acquaintance; the marbles of Paros and Pentelicus had not yet been quarried; porphyry, jasper, alabaster, and all other kinds of ornamental stones seem to have been strange to him. Not so much as a coat of plaster, or a dash of distemper, clothed the bareness of his walls. Floors of trodden earth, rafters blackened with smoke, chimneyless and windowless apartments, belonged even to the royal residences of his time, at least in Ithaca. But in a few of the more opulent houses of the Peloponnesus, something was done to dispel this sordid aspect by means of metallic incrustations; and the possibility was made the most of by the poet. Nor need the looks of Mammon have been ‘always downward bent’ in the radiant dwellings imagined by him, since their riches lay on every side. They are, in the Iliad, appropriated exclusively to the gods, and are vaguely characterised as ‘golden,’ or ‘of bronze,’ all details of construction being omitted. But the terrene magnificence of the Odyssey is more distinctly realised.
‘Son of Nestor, delight of my heart!’ [exclaimed Telemachus, entering the ‘megaron’ or banqueting-saloon of Menelaus], ‘mark the flashing of bronze through the echoing halls, and the flashing of gold and of amber,[[380]] and of silver and of ivory. Suchlike, methinks, is the court of Olympian Zeus within, for the world of things that are here; wonder comes over me as I look thereon.’[[381]]
[380]. See supra, p. 241.
[381]. Odyssey, iv. 71-75.
His experienced sire was little less astonished at the pomp surrounding the Phæacian king. All the ‘cities of men’ visited by him in the progress of his long wanderings had not prepared him for the dazzling effect of those stately halls.