A. A double-fountained cup,
The workmanship of Alcon; it contains
Only three gallons.[[462]]
A very celebrated cup among the Athenians was the Thericlean,[[463]] originally invented by Thericles, a Corinthian potter, contemporary with Aristophanes. This ware was black, highly varnished, with gilt edges;[[464]] but the name came afterwards to be applied to any vessel of the same form from whatever materials manufactured. There were accordingly Thericlea of gold with wooden stands. The cups of this kind, made at Athens, being very expensive, an inferior sort, in imitation, was produced at Rhodes, which, as far more economical, had a great run among the humbler classes. The Thericlean was a species of deep chalice with two handles, and bulging but little at the sides. Theophrastus[[465]] speaks of Thericlea turned from the Syrian Turpentine tree, the wood of which being black and taking a fine polish, it was impossible at a glance to distinguish them from those of earthenware. The paintings on these utensils appear to have been various. Sometimes a single wreath of ivy encircled them immediately beneath the golden rim; but it seems occasionally to have been covered with representations of animals, which gave rise to a forced and false etymology of the name.[[466]]
We have already observed, that the use of drinking-horns[[467]] was not unknown to the ancients. In fact, it seems, in very remote ages, to have been customary to convert bulls’ horns into cups with very little preparation; and the practice of quaffing wine from this rude kind of goblet had by some been supposed to have suggested the idea to artists of representing Bacchos with horns, and to poets the epithet of the Bull Dionysos. He was moreover worshiped at Cyzicos under the form of a bull. Afterwards, as taste and luxury advanced, these simple vessels were exchanged for horns of silver, which Pindar attributes to the Centaurs.[[468]] Xenophon[[469]] found drinking-horns among the Paphlagonians, and afterwards even in the palace of the Thracian king Seuthes. Æschylus speaks of silver horns, with lids of gold, in use among the Perrhæbians, and Sophocles, in his Pandora, makes mention of drinking-horns of massive gold. Philip of Macedon was accustomed among his friends to drink from the common horn. Golden horns were found among the inhabitants of Cythera. Horns of silver were in use at Athens; and, among the articles enumerated as sold at a public auction, mention is made of one of these vessels of a twisted form.
Mirrors constituted another article of Hellenic luxury. These were sometimes of brass,[[470]] whence the proverb:
As forms by brass, so minds by wine are mirrored.[[471]]
The best, however, until those of glass came into use, were made of silver or of a mixed metal, the exact composition of which is not now known. Another kind was fashioned from a species of carbuncle found near the city of Orchomenos,[[472]] in Arcadia. Glass mirrors[[473]] also came early into use, chiefly manufactured, at the outset, by the Phœnicians of Sidon. The hand-mirrors were usually circular,[[474]] and set in costly frames. To prevent their being speedily tarnished they were, when not in use, carefully enclosed in cases.[[475]]
There were mirrors, too, of polished silver, fashioned so as to magnify immensely the objects they reflected.[[476]] They invented also large cups containing within many diminutive mirrors, so that when any one looked into them, his eye was met by a multitude of faces all resembling his own.[[477]] In a temple of Hera in Arcadia, was a mirror fixed in the wall, wherein the spectator could at first scarcely, if at all, discern his own image, while the throne of the goddess and the statues of the other deities ranged around were most brilliantly reflected.[reflected.][[478]] Many sorts of mirrors appear to have been made for the purpose of playing off practical jokes. For example, looking in one of these, a handsome woman would find her visage transformed into that of a Gorgon, so as to appear terrible even to herself. Others again were so very flattering, that a half-starved barber, viewing his figure therein, appeared to be gifted with the thewes of a Heracles. Another sort distorted the countenance, or inverted it, or showed merely the half.
Religion was the nurse of the fine arts, and first gave rise, not only to sculpture and painting, but also to those private collections of statues and pictures[[479]] in which we discover the germs of our modern galleries[[480]] and museums. The first step was made towards these when the Greek set up the images of his household gods upon his hearth. Thence, step by step, he proceeded, improving the appearance, enriching the materials, increasing the number of his domestic deities, with which niche after niche was filled, till his private dwelling became in some sort a temple. The religious feeling, no doubt, made way, in many cases, for a passion for show, or a nascent taste for the beautiful; so that rude figures in terra-cotta, wood, or stone, were gradually replaced by exquisite statues in ivory, gold, or silver,[[481]] or the fairest marble, breathing beauty and life, with eyes of gems, and clothed with majesty as with a garment. Hence flowed the passion for mimetic representations and all the plastic arts. The gods were transferred from the fireside to the temple, to the agora, to the senate-house, to the innumerable porticoes everywhere abounding in Greece.[[482]]