630 ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



fragiiieiitaiy record, represent warriors and a city, like the siege 

 scene on the silver cup. But we also have glimpses of civic life within 

 the walls, of goats and oxen without, of fruit trees and running- 

 water suggesting a literal comparison with the Homeric description 

 of the scenes of peace and war as illustrated on the shield of Achilles. 

 These tours de force of Minoan artists were executed some five cen- 

 turies before the Homeric poems took shape. They may either have 

 inspired or illustrated contemporary epic. But if Greeks existed in 

 the Peloponnese at the relatively early epoch, the close of the middle 

 Minoan age or the very beginning of the late Minoan, to which these 

 masterpieces belong, they must still have been very much in the back- 

 ground. They did not surely come within that inner palace circle 

 of Tiryns and Mycenae, where such works were handled and admired 

 in the spirit (with which we must credit their possessors) of culti- 

 vated connoisseurs. Still less is it possible to suppose that any 

 Achaean bard at the time when the Homeric poems crystallized into 

 their permanent shape had such life-like compositions before his eye 

 or could have appreciated them in the spirit of their creation. 



Again we have the remarkable series of scenes of heroic combat 

 best exemplified by the gold signets and engraved beads of the shaft 

 graves of Mycenae — themselves no doubt, as in like cases, belonging 

 to an artistic cycle exhibiting similar scenes on a more ample scale, 

 such as may some day be discovered in wall paintings or larger re- 

 liefs on metal or other materials. Schliemann,^ whose views on 

 Homeric subjects were not perturbed by chronological or ethnographic 

 discrepancies^ had no difficulty in recognizing among the personages 

 depicted on these intaglios Achilles or " Hector of the dancing hel- 

 met crest," and could quote the Homeric passages that the}'^ illus- 

 trated. " The author of the Iliad and Odyssey " he exclaims, " can 

 not but have been born and educated amidst a civilization which was 

 able to produce such works as these.*' Destructive criticism has since 

 endeavored to set aside the cogency of these comparisons by pointing 

 out that, whereas the Homeric heroes wore heavy bronze armor, the 

 figures on the signet are almost as bare as were, for instance, the 

 ancient Gaulish warriors. But an essential consideration has been 

 overlooked. The signets and intaglios of the shaft graves of Mycenae 

 belong to the transitional epoch that marks the close of the third 

 middle Minoan period, and the very beginning of the late Minoan 

 age.^ The fashion in signets seems to have subsequently undergone 



1 In the same way epitomized versions of tlie scenes on tbe Vapheio cups are found in a 

 series of ancient gems. Ttie taurokathapsia of the Knossos frescoes also reappears in 

 intaglios, and there are many other similar hints of the indebtedness of the minor to the 

 greater art, of which the " Skylla " mentioned below is probal)ly an example. 



' The curious cuirass, which has almost the appearance of being of basket work, seen 

 on the harvesters' vase and on seal impressions from H. Trlada and Zakro has been cited 

 as showing that the corselet was known at a very early period (M. M. Ill, L. M. I). This 

 particular type, however, has as yet been only found in connection with religious or cere- 

 monial scenes and not in association with arms of oflfense. 



