Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
Si quis ebur.
Ivory-staining does not seem to have been in vogue outside of Asia Minor. Tablets of ivory were, at Nineveh, often inlaid with lapis lazuli, and ornaments of ivory were gilt; but there are no surviving signs of the application to them of colouring matters.
The second mention of ivory in the Iliad is in connexion with the slaying, by Menelaus, of Pylæmenes, chief of the ‘bucklered Paphlagonians,’ when it is said that Antilochus simultaneously smote his charioteer Mydon with a great stone on the elbow, and ‘the reins, white with ivory, fell from his hands to earth, even into the dust.’[[423]] The overlaying, in a decorative design, of leathern bands with small slips and rosettes of ivory, may here doubtless be understood; and a similar fashion of lending splendour to horse-trappings can, as already pointed out, plausibly be inferred to have prevailed at Hissarlik.
[423]. Iliad, v. 583.
Homer’s name for ivory is identical with ours for the beast producing it for our benefit. And the word elephant is held to be cognate with the Hebrew aleph, an ox. Hence the designation came to the Greeks almost certainly from a Semitic source. It was exported, we may unhesitatingly say, from Phœnicia with the wares it served to label.
No Homeric crux has been more satisfactorily disposed of by actual exploration than that relating to the identity of ‘cyanus,’ or ‘kuanos.’ In later Greek, the term was of perfectly clear import. It signified lapis lazuli, either genuine or counterfeit. But the simple hypothesis of a continuity of meaning was met by difficulties of two kinds. The first regarded colour, always a perplexed subject in the Homeric poems. For uniformly, throughout their course, ‘cyanean’ betokens darkness of hue, if not absolute blackness. The epithet frequently recurs, and only once with a possible, though doubtful suggestion of blueness. It is never used to qualify the summer sea, a serene sky, the eyes of a fair woman, or the flowers of spring. Usually, the idea of sombreness, pure and simple, is unequivocally attached to it. As when Thetis, in sign of mourning, covers herself with a cyanus-coloured robe, ‘than which no blacker raiment existed.’[[424]] Invisibility and the shade of approaching death are each typified as a ‘cyanean cloud’; the brows of Zeus and Heré, the waving locks of Poseidon, the mane of the Poseidonian steed Areion, the gathering tempest of war, are of ‘cyanean’ darkness; the beard of Odysseus, the raven curls of Hector, bear the same adjective, which cannot well be construed otherwise than as a poetic equivalent for black. Nor is there any ground for supposing that it meant to convey any special shade or quality of blackness. Fine-drawn distinctions of every kind are totally alien to the spirit of Homeric diction.
[424]. Iliad, xxiv. 94.
The second objection to identifying cyanus with lapis lazuli or ultramarine related to function. The uses to which it is put in the Iliad and Odyssey seemed, to anxious interpreters, inconsistent with its being either of a stony or of a glassy nature. ‘Cyanus ordinarily enters into the composition of the polymetallic works described in their verses. It forms, for instance, a dark trench round the tin-fence of the vineyard represented on the shield of Achilles; and it is especially prominent in the decoration of the armour of Agamemnon. Cinyras, king of Cyprus, was the donor of this magnificent equipment; not through pure friendship. Intimidated by the Greek armament, he probably dreaded being compelled to take an active share in the enterprise it aimed at accomplishing, and purchased with a personal gift to its supreme chief, liberty to retain his passive attitude of ‘benevolent neutrality.’ The breastplate alone was a ransom for royalty.
Therein were ten courses of black cyanus, and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin, and dark blue[[425]] snakes writhed up towards the neck, three on either side, like rainbows that the son of Kronos hath set in the clouds, a marvel of the mortal tribes of men.[[426]]