For here once more Mycenæ teaches an object-lesson. Innumerable amber beads, of varied sizes, the largest nearly an inch and half in diameter, were found in the graves there. All were perforated, and they had manifestly once been connected together to form necklaces. And the remains of amber necklaces have likewise been disinterred from the archaic tombs of Præneste and Veii,[[406]] from British barrows, and from a prehistoric necropolis at Hallstadt in Austria. The earliest Italian amber seems to have been conveyed from the Gulf of Lyons along the Ligurian coast; but a subsequent and more lasting stream of supply flowed directly to the Po-delta from near the site of Dantzic. Among the early Italian specimens, are some neck-pendants carved into the forms of apes, necessarily from Oriental models in a different material—most likely, ivory.
[406]. Archæologia, vol. xli. p. 205.
The particular and widespread preference for amber as a means of decorating the throat had a superstitious motive. An idea somehow originated that the substance, thus worn, was potent against malefic agencies, and the persuasion doubtless accompanied it on its travels, and added to its popularity. There is, to be sure, no sign that Homer, though he only employs amber in the fitting shape for its exercise, had any knowledge of this prophylactic power; but then his indifference to rustic lore has repeatedly come to our notice. Penelope, however, and the ladies of Mycenæ, may have been less unconcerned on the point, and perhaps gave some credence to the rumours of mysterious virtue that enhanced the value of the beautiful shining substance from the dim North. That their amber was truly hyberborean has been chemically demonstrated. Fragments of Mycenæan beads, analysed for Dr. Schliemann by Dr. O. Helm, of Dantzic, proved to contain no less than 6 per cent. of succinic acid; and the presence of succinic acid is distinctive, for ‘there has been no instance hitherto,’ Dr. Helm states, ‘of a product physically and chemically identical with the Baltic amber being found in another spot.’[[407]] The characteristic ingredient in question, for instance, is wholly wanting in Sicilian amber, a fact strongly confirmatory of the historically attested insignificance, in Mediterranean traffic, of small local supplies. Tin and amber thus agree in testifying to the wide extension, westward and northward, of prehistoric trade; yet the first of these far-travelled materials occurs in the Iliad, and is absent from the Odyssey, while the second figures in the Odyssey, but has no place in the Iliad.
[407]. Schuchhardt and Sellers, Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 196.
The Greek name for amber, elektron, might be freely translated ‘sun-stone,’ a meaning partially preserved in the Latin term lapis ardens, Teutonicised into Brennstein, or Bernstein. The English amber is a loan from the Arabic, negotiated at the time of the Crusades; but the original Achæan word survives in electricity and its derivatives. For the first production of that still mysterious agency was by rubbing a piece of amber, the endowment of which thereby with an attractive faculty for light objects was noted with no particular emphasis by Thales, the sage of Miletus.
The ‘Electrides Insulæ,’ or ‘amber-islands,’ of the ancients, corresponded, in vagueness of geographical position, with the Cassiterides or ‘tin-islands,’ of which the Phœnicians long kept the secret. The former were eventually located in the Adriatic, whither the historical Greeks succeeded in tracing the Baltic product, transported in those later days, along a second overland route from the Vistula to the Danube, and thence, by intermediary Venetian tribes, to the Istrian shore. Yet Herodotus was without any definite notion as to the derivation of amber, one of his spasmodical fits of scepticism forbidding him to admit its reported origin from a river called the Eridanus, said to flow into the sea somewhere at the back of the North wind.[[408]] The Eridanus, in fact, had a ‘name’ long before it had a ‘local habitation.’ Æschylus was doubtfully inclined to identify it with the Rhone, showing that he was chiefly acquainted with amber shipped at Massilia;[[409]] Pherecydes, knowing more of Adriatic supplies, established the ‘fluviorum rex Eridanus,’ in the bed of the Po, where it has remained. The myth of the Heliadæ, or sun-maidens, who, after their merciful transformation into poplars, continued to weep tears of amber for the fate of their brother, the lucklessly ambitious Phaethon, took definite shape in the hands of the Attic tragedians. Homer gives no hint of acquaintance with it.
[408]. Lib. iii. cap. 115.
[409]. Helbig, Atti dell’ Accad. dei Lincei, t. i. p, 422, ser. iii.
The decorative use of amber disappeared from classical Greece. It had been adopted from the East, as part of a semi-barbaric system of ornament, and was abandoned on the development of a purer taste. The substance was, indeed, as Helbig has remarked,[[410]] ill-adapted for the expression of artistic ideas, and so had little value for those who directed towards the achievement of such expression their best efforts for the ennoblement and refinement of life. No amber, then, is found in the tombs of the Hellenic Greeks, nor in those of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where the Milesian colony Panticapæum held the primacy. Even in Italy, the once prized product was left to be largely appropriated by Gallic barbarians and Istrian and Umbrian peasants. But the ‘whirligig of time,’ as usual, ‘brought about its revenges.’ As artistic feeling decayed, the favour of amber returned, and it grew under the Empire to a higher pitch than it had ever before attained. Whereupon a cavalier was despatched from Nero’s court on an exploratory expedition to the original and genuine home of the article; direct trade was opened with the Baltic, and the morning mists which had so long enveloped the origin of the ‘sun-stone’ were at length dispersed. Nevertheless, Pausanias, who saw an amber statue of Augustus at Olympia in the second century A.D., still believed the rare substance composing it to have been collected from the sands of Eridanus.[[411]] Traditional errors possess strong vitality.
[410]. Helbig, Atti dell’ Accad. dei Lincei, t. i. p. 425.