MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 633 



either of intaglios and signet rings. Yet in the Odyssey just such 

 a scene of animal prowess as formed the theme of so many Minoan 

 gems, a hound holding with teeth and forepaws a struggling fawn, 

 is described as the ornament of Ulysses's golden brooch. The an- 

 achronism here involved has been met by no Homeric commentator, 

 for we now know the fibula types of the Aegean " Chalco-sideric 

 age" if I may coin such a word — to which the poems belong, with 

 their inartistic bows and stilts and knobs. It is inconceivable, even 

 did their typical forms admit of it, that any one of these could have 

 been equipped with a naturalistic adjunct of such a kind. The sug- 

 gested parallels have, in fact, been painfully sought out amongst the 

 fashions in vogue three or four centuries later than the archeological 

 epoch marked by the Homeric poems.^ As if such naturalistic com- 

 positions had anything in common with the stylized mannerisms of 

 the later Ionian art, with its sphinxes and winged monsters and 

 mechanically balanced schemes. 



Must we not rather suppose that the decorative motive here applied 

 to Ulysses's brooch was taken over from what had been the principal 

 personal ornaments of an earlier age, when in Greece at least fibulae 

 w^ere practically unlaiown,^ namely, the perforated intaglios, worn 

 generally as periapts about the wrist. An example of one such from 

 eastern Crete with a scene singularly recalling the motive of the 

 brooch is seen in figure 4. It would not have required much license 

 on the poet's part to transfer the description of such a design to a 

 personal ornament of later usage with which he was acquainted. 

 But the far earlier associations of the design are as patent to the eye 

 of the archeologist as are those of a classical gem set in a medieval 

 reliquary. 



When in the days of the later epos we recognize heroic scenes 

 already depicted by the Minoan artists and episodes instinct with the 



1 Helbig, for instance (Horn. Epos, p. 277), finds a comparison in a type of gold fibulse, 

 with double pins and surmounted by rows of gold sphinxes from seventh or sixth century 

 graves of Caere and Praeneste. Ridgeway (The Early Age of Greece, I, 446) cites in the 

 same connection " brooches in the form of dogs and horses found at Hallstatt." The best 

 representative of the " dog " brooches of this class seem to be those from the cemetery of 

 S. Lucia in Carniola (Marchisetti, Necropoli di S. Lucia, presso Tolmino, Tav. XV, figs. 

 9, 10), where in each case a small bird is seen in front of the hound. A somewhat more 

 naturalistic example gives the key to this ; the original of the dog is a catlike animal 

 (op. cit., Tav. XX, flg. 12). We have here, in fact, a subject ultimately derived from the 

 Nilotic scenes, in which ichneumons are seen hunting ducks. The same motive is very 

 literally reproduced on the inlaid dagger blade from Mycenae and recurs in variant forms 

 in Minoan art. The late Hallstatt fibulse of this class are obviously the derivatives of 

 classical prototypes belonging to the seventh century B. C. (In one case a winged sphinx 

 takes the place of the cat, or pard, before the bird.) These derivatives date themselves 

 from the sixth and even the fifth century B. C, since the last-named example was found 

 together with a fibula of the " Certosa " class. The S. Lucia cemetery itself, according 

 to its explorer (op. cit., p. 313), dates only from about 600 B. C. It will be seen from 

 this how little these late Hallstatt " dog " fibulae have to do with the design of Ulysses's 

 brooch. 



2 The early "fiddle-bow" type is hardly found before the L. M. Ill period, when the 

 art of gem engraving was already in its decline. 



