92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nent position by the side of these flourishing marts. Its influence 

 on the development of Greece and of all the European peoples was 

 deep and significant. As Roman civilization exercised a creative and 

 shaping work long after the Germans had broken the power of the 

 southern people, so also did Semitic civilization continue prominent 

 among the Hellenic peoples long after the emancipation of the Greeks. 



If we take the progress of the Greeks in metal- working especially 

 into view, it reveals its dependence upon the Orient. According to 

 their traditions, the Greeks received the processes of preparation and 

 the applications of the metals from the Phrygians, but learned the 

 higher technics of metal- work from the Phoenicians. Intercourse with 

 the latter people also introduced the Oriental art forms to the West. 

 All the productions of the earlier Grecian art bear an Oriental stamp ; 

 Mynias, who reigned in Orchomenos a generation before the Trojan 

 War, was celebrated for his treasures of metals. He had an arched 

 treasure-house, the walls of which were covered, after the Assyrian- 

 Phoenician fashion, with plates of metal. He held intercourse with 

 the Phoenicians, from whom he learned the art of building canals and 

 irrigation. The treasury of Atreus, at Mycenae, was likewise covered 

 with metallic plates. Ulysses remarked the same style of ornamenta- 

 tion in the palace of Alcinous, where the walls were covered with 

 plates of copper and the cornice was made of iron. In all of these 

 cases we are informed from descriptions and from the latest excava- 

 tions concerning the measure of Oriental influence in ancient Greece. 



The useful metal in those times was almost exclusively the brown 

 " chalkos." Of it consisted alike the finer wares which the Phoeni- 

 cians introduced and the common fabrics which were imported from 

 the neighboring islands, or were already made at home. It is sig- 

 nificant of that early time that the smith was bluntly called " chal- 

 keus " — copperer, or bronze-smith. The material, especially the home- 

 made bronze, may not, it is true, have been of the best. The lances 

 would bend, and the swords would break off at the handle. The bet- 

 ter kinds of weapons, at least in Homer's time, seem to have been 

 designated as " foreign," or as the gift of the gods. But after the 

 dispersion of the Grecian tribes, following this period, a domestic in- 

 dustry of a better kind sprang up. The mines of Euboea were ex- 

 ploited ; the copper-smiths of Delos furnished metallic chairs and beds ; 

 from ^gina came all kinds of bronze vessels, and thence originated 

 also the first stamped money. ^' Most important of all was the develop- 

 ment of statue-casting, which was introduced in the fiftieth Olympiad, 

 and quickly^ reached a high perfection. The Spartans had already in 

 a former age built their temple of Minerva with its bronze reliefs, rich 

 in figures. At a later period, every city had its statues of metal, and 

 some cities, during the time of their vigor, had thousands of them. 



While thus bronze served at first quite generally, afterward pre- 

 dominantly for artistic purposes, iron in the course of time came to 



