[388]. Garrucci, Archæologia, vol. xi. p. 206.
Helen’s silver workbasket was gilt round the edges, like the ‘crater,’ or mixing-bowl, presented by Menelaus as a ‘guest-gift’ to Telemachus.[[389]] The latter was a work of Hephæstus, and had been presented to Menelaus by the king of Sidon, when he was driven thither on his way back from Troy. The process of gilding, however, is well known in the Odyssey, and was practised by native craftsmen. In the scene of Nestor’s sacrifice at Pylos,[[390]] the goldsmith Laerkes is summoned to gild the horns of the victim, which he evidently did by the simple expedient of overlaying them with gold-leaf. Fusion had indeed not yet been resorted to for the purpose; nevertheless the art of plating silver with gold, to which is compared the beautifying action of Athene upon Odysseus, in order to his advantageous appearance before Nausicaa,[[391]] excites the extreme personal admiration of the poet, and is regarded as a direct fruit of divine tuition. And it is noticeable that the artists of Mycenæ, although in most respects far above the Homeric standard, found the operation of plating silver directly with gold so difficult that they commonly interposed a layer of copper to receive the more precious metal.[[392]]
[389]. Odyssey, iv. 615.
[390]. Ib. iii. 425.
[391]. Odyssey, vi. 232.
[392]. Schuchhardt and Sellers, op. cit. p. 249.
No gilt objects are expressly mentioned in the Iliad,[[393]] but the delineative inlaying of the Shield of Achilles involved the same sort of process as that required for producing them. The Iliadic Hephæstus, however, was somewhat behind his time. For the ‘latest thing out,’ one would be inclined to look elsewhere. He was, as we have seen, unacquainted with iron, and his models were often a trifle archaic. From the very outset of his career, when, as an infant and a foundling, he was cared for by Thetis and Eurynome, the divine artificer appears to have been more dexterous than inventive.
[393]. In the adventitious Tenth Book, v. 294, the practice of gilding the horns of victims for sacrifice is, however, alluded to.
‘Nine years,’ he himself afterwards related, ‘with them I wrought much cunning work of bronze; brooches, and spiral armbands, and cups and necklaces, in the hollow cave; while around me the stream of ocean with murmuring foam flowed infinite.’[[394]]
[394]. Iliad, xviii. 400-403.