[425]. The original has simply ‘of cyanus.’
[426]. Iliad, xi. 24-28.
The comparison of the snakes to rainbows may possibly refer only to their arching shapes; it is not easy to connect iridescence with a substance just previously noted expressly as black. The shield of Agamemnon resembled his cuirass in workmanship, but was diversified as to pattern.
‘And he took,’ we are informed, ‘the richly-dight shield of his valour that covereth all the body of a man, a fair shield, and round about it were twenty white bosses of tin, and one in the midst of black cyanus. And thereon was embossed the Gorgon fell of aspect, glaring terribly; and about her were Dread and Terror. And from the shield was hung a baldric of silver, and thereon was curled a snake of cyanus; three heads interlaced had he growing out of one neck.’[[427]]
[427]. Iliad, xi. 32-40.
The Mycenæan method of inlaying bronze was followed in the construction of both articles. But the arrangement of the contrasted metals on the cuirass in alternating vertical stripes, although rendered perfectly intelligible by Helbig’s learned discussion,[[428]] has not been illustrated by any actual ‘find.’ The bosses of tin and cyanus diversifying the shield, on the other hand, correspond strictly to a Mycenæan plan of ornament,[[429]] and are reproduced in the round knobs of gold and silver attached to the bronze surface of certain Phœnician dishes dug up from the ruins of Nineveh.[[430]] The Gorgon’s Head, however, does not appear in Greek art until the seventh century B.C.;[[431]] yet the suspicion of spuriousness thence attaching to the lines in which it is mentioned may prove to be unfounded. The emblem was, at least, a favourite one in Cyprus, having been introduced thither, according to some archæologists, from Egypt. Judging by the evidence of Cyprian terracottas, it figured, surrounded with serpents, very much as on the breastplate of Agamemnon, on the corslets of priests and kings; and it seems to have been specially appropriated by a priestly caste named ‘Cinyrades’[[432]] to signify their supposed descent from Agamemnon’s dubious ally. The Cyprian partiality thus manifested for the dread device goes far towards proving that genuine products of Cyprian metallurgy were limned in the passages just quoted.
[428]. Das Homerische Epos, p. 382.
[429]. Schuchhardt and Sellers, Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 237.
[430]. Rawlinson, Phœnicia, p. 288.
[431]. Furtwängler in Roscher’s Lexikon der Griech. Myth.; art. ‘Gorgoneion.’