Another thing very desirable for the successful prosecution of some branches of archæology is an appreciation of art. Without it we cannot judge of the value of many antiques, or enter into their spirit or feeling; we neither discern their excellencies nor their deficiencies. Mr King, who has made the province of ancient gems peculiarly his own, justly calls them “little monuments of perfect taste, ... only to be appreciated by the educated and practised eye[[23]].” Moreover, this is the very knowledge often so requisite for distinguishing genuine antiquities from modern counterfeits. The modern forgers, who fabricate Greek coins from false dies, do not often reach the freedom and beauty of the originals; though it must be confessed that some of them, as Becker, have carried their execrable art to a very high perfection. It is but rarely that these men meet with the punishment they deserve; yet it is satisfactory to know that Charles Patin, great scholar and great antiquary as he was, was banished by Lewis XIV. from his court for ever, for selling him a false coin of Otho; and that a manufacturer of antiques in the East, near Bagdad I believe, lately received by order of the Turkish governor a sound bastinado on the soles of his feet for reproducing the idols of misbelievers of old time.
[23]. Antique Gems, Introd. p. xxiii. London, 1860.
A knowledge of natural history in fine is occasionally very useful to an antiquary. I will give two instances, not at all generally known, one taken from zoology, one from botany. On the reverse of the splendid Greek coins of Agrigentum a crab is commonly represented. To an ignorant eye the crab looks much like the crab in our shops here in Cambridge; the zoologist recognises in it the fresh-water crab of the regions of the Mediterranean; the numismatist, profiting by this knowledge, sees at once that the type of the coin symbolizes not the harbour of Agrigentum, as he had supposed, but its river. Again, on the reverse of the beautiful Greek coins of Rhodes occurs a flower, about which numismatists have disputed since the time of Spanheim, whether it was the flower of the rose or of the pomegranate. Even Col. Leake has here taken the wrong side, and decided in favour of the pomegranate; the divided calyx at once shews every botanist that the representation is intended for the rose, conventional as that representation may be, from which flower the island derives its name.
These are, I think, the principal qualifications which are necessary or desirable for the archæologist. It only remains that I should point out briefly some of the pleasures and advantages that result from his pursuits. For I shall not so insult any one of you, who are here present, as to suppose that this question is lurking secretly in your mind, “Is there any good in archæology at all? To what practical end do your researches tend?” My learned predecessor well says that “this question is sometimes put to the lover of science or letters by those from whom nature has withheld the faculty of deriving pleasure from the exercise of the intellect, and he feels for the moment degraded to the level of such.” It is not so clear however that the fault must be put to the account of nature. Rather, we may say,
Homine imperito nunquam quidquam injustius,
Qui nisi quod ipse facit, nihil rectum putat.
“No one,” says a Swedish scholar of the seventeenth century, “blames the study of antiquity without evidencing his own ignorance; as they that esteem it do credit to their own judgment; so that to sum up its advantages we may assert, there is nothing useful in literature, if the knowledge of antiquity be judged unprofitable[[24]].” It is doubtless one of the many charms of archæology that it illustrates and is illustrated by literature; indeed, some knowledge of antiquity is little less than necessary for every man of letters. Unless we have some knowledge of the objects whose names occur in ancient literature, we lose half the pleasure of reading it. In reading the New Testament, I can certainly say for myself, that I derive more pleasure from the narrative of the woman who poured the contents of the alabaster box over the head of Jesus, now that I know what an alabastron is, and how its contents would be extracted; and in the same way I appreciate the remark made by the silversmith in the Acts, that all Asia and the world worshipped the Ephesian Diana, now that I know her image to be stamped not on the coins of Ephesus only, but on many other cities throughout Asia also. Here, I think, we have pleasure and profit combined in one. Instances are abundant where monuments illustrate profane authors. The reader of Aristophanes will be pleased to recognise among the earliest figures on vases that of the ἱππαλεκτρυών, the cock-horse, or horse-cock, which cost Bacchus a sleepless night to conceive what manner of fowl it might be. “The Homeric scholar again,” it has been said, “must contemplate with interest the ancient pictures of Trojan scenes on the vases, and can hardly fail to derive some assistance in picturing them to his own imagination, by seeing how they were reproduced in that of the Greeks themselves in the days of Æschylus and Pindar[[25]].”
[24]. Figrelius, quoted in the Museum of Classical Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 4.
[25]. Edinburgh Review, u. s.
Further, not only is ancient literature, but also modern art, aided by archæology. It is well known how, in the early part of the thirteenth century, Niccola Pisano was so attracted by a bas-relief of Meleager, which had been lying in Pisa for ages unheeded, “that it became the basis of his studies and the germ of true taste in Italy.” In the Academy of St Luke at Rome, and in the schools established shortly afterwards at Florence by Lorenzo de’ Medici, the professors were required to point out to the students the beauty and excellence of the works of ancient art, before they were allowed to exercise their own skill and imagination. Under the fostering patronage of this illustrious man and of his not less illustrious son a galaxy of great artists lighted up all Europe with their splendour. Leon Batista Alberti, one of the greatest men of his age, and especially great in architecture, was most influential in bringing back his countrymen to the study of the monuments of antiquity. He travelled to explore such as were then known, and tells us that he shed tears on beholding the state of desolation in which many of them lay. The prince of painters, Raffaelle,