XII
TRADES AND CRAFTS
CASES 1, 3, AND 5
In this division is assembled a series of miscellaneous objects illustrating trades and crafts, political life, agriculture, and other occupations.
The processes of agriculture and craftsmanship in Greece and Italy were much like those of Europe and America a century ago, before mechanical devices became common. Cultivation of grains, the olive, and the grape has been practised in Aegean lands from prehistoric times. A bronze farmyard group in Case 3 shows the animals and utensils most necessary to a farmer, and though Roman, will serve as an illustration of Greek life as well. The animals include two bulls, two cows, a pig and a sow, a ram and a ewe ([fig. 130]). There are also two double yokes, a cart, and a plough. The plough-tail has been lost, but a hole shows the place of attachment. The remainder is in one piece, though the joints of the rude wooden original are carefully represented, the pole which is fastened to the yoke being attached to the share-beam by pegs and the share-beam to the share by thongs or ropes. This primitive wooden plough is still used in Greece today ([fig. 131]). The cart is merely a platform with a front-board and tail-board, mounted on solid wheels. A terracotta cart from Cyprus, though of the early Iron Age, is much like the Roman cart ([fig. 132]). A small bronze sickle with indented edge from Cyprus belongs to a type common in Minoan Crete (Case 5). The bronze shepherd’s crooks in the same case recall the important place held by the care of sheep and goats in ancient country life. A stone model of a sheep-fold in Case 40 in the Cesnola Collection, containing sheep and a drinking-trough, was intended as a votive offering, probably for increase of flocks.
FIG. 130. BRONZE FARMYARD GROUP
FIG. 131. GREEK FARMER PLOUGHING
The cultivation of the vine and wine-making for domestic use were a part of the yearly routine on the farms of Greece and Italy, while the finer kinds of wine were a valuable article of commerce. The only object in the collection which illustrates wine-making is an Arretine bowl in Case G2 in the Eighth Room, decorated with figures of satyrs gathering and treading grapes. The process of getting rural produce to market is represented by two terracotta figures of donkeys with panniers whose counterparts can be seen in Greece at the present day ([figs. 133-134]). The conformation of Greece and Italy, and the numerous islands of the Mediterranean compelled the inhabitants to accustom themselves to seafaring from the earliest times. A vase painting and some clay boats from Cyprus are valuable illustrations of the type of ship in use in the sixth century. A black-figured krater of that date in Case 1 has three long boats or war vessels painted inside the mouth. These vessels were propelled by oars, as the method of fighting made speed essential to them, though a sail was used when the wind was favorable. Two of the ships have eleven oars on a side, and the third has nine. The steersman sits in the stern with one or two steering paddles. The forecastle is surmounted by a high stem-post, and between the stern and the forecastle runs a railing or bulwark. The bow projects in the form of an animal’s head, probably a fish or a boar, and a large eye is painted just above the water-line. The edge of the krater has been injured so that the sail has disappeared, but the single mast can be seen, as well as the sheets and halyards. A ship of this kind regularly has a square sail and halyards, brailing-ropes, braces, and sheets. Above the stern projects an ornament rather like the tail of a bird. It was this that was taken by the enemy as a trophy ([fig. 138]). The clay boats from Cyprus in the same case are of a type frequently found in sixth-century graves in Amathus. Two of them represent merchant vessels, as is shown by their breadth and deep hulls. The largest has strakes along the water-line which held the “under-girding” of ropes used to prevent the planks from springing in stormy weather, and large cat-heads at the bows to receive the anchor. The helmsman sits in the stern with his two steering-oars. Of the two other boats the smallest is a row-boat, and the other has a deck and a small deck-house ([fig. 139]).
FIG. 132. TERRACOTTA MODEL OF A CART