DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.811#0172
HOW HANDED ON? 133
' Furthermore, he set in the shield a soft fresh-ploughed field, rich
tilth and wide, the third time ploughed, and the ploughers therein drave
their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about. . . . And the field grew black
behind and seemed as it were a-ploughing, albeit of gold, for this was the
great marvel of the work.'1
Such descriptions—like so many other appurtenances of the Heroic
Age in Greek epic—carry back the reminiscences of Minoan life at least to
the early part of the Sixteenth Century before our era. This marvellous Yet the
technique in metal inlay—so far as its existing remains show—-did not survive extinct at
the epoch that marks the acme of Minoan Art. By the date even of the first t.lm.e of
r J . Achaean
appearance of the Achaeans, whose bards celebrated these fabled works, as invasion.
an historic factor in the Aegean basin, the period of its vogue was already
left behind. As to the tribes who entered the Greece that was to be some
fifteen generations later than it, a practical acquaintance with such delicate
manipulation of metals—in its results, as we have seen, almost rivalling the
painter's art—was out of the question. Their armourers, indeed, had for
the most part to deal no longer with bronze—the Minoan basis of these
works—but with hard iron.
Neither can we suppose that the knowledge that is displayed in Greek
epic of such masterpieces of intarsia work could have been due to the mere
rifling of ancient treasures or to the chance discovery of tombs. Like many
other details that are there supplied of Minoan life and culture in its greatest
days, the descriptions themselves must be taken to date from the time when
the objects themselves were in use, and when the technique that they imply
was still practised.2
1 Iliad xviii. 549 : tion may have handed on from their Minoan
, „, . , , „ „ , , „, , , masters descriptive materials preserved in their
■n oe ueAcuviT oirurvzv, apyjpopcvT} oe £ioK€tp .
, , „ , ~, , „ '„ ', own ancient lays, and these in an adapted form
ypvo-eL-n irep eovcra' to bij wept oavp.a TervKro. . . c
have in turn been embalmed in Greek epic.
Lang, Leaf and Myers' translation, pp. 382, The process may indeed have begun early.
383. That there were Greeks in Hellas before the
2 In my Address on The Minoan and My- coming of the Achaeans is quite possible.
cenaean Element in Hellenic Life {J.H.S.,iai2, They may even have formed part of the popu-
p. 274 seqq.) I have invoked as an explanation lation before the actual conquest of large Main-
of these phenomena a bilingual stage in the land tracts by the Minoan Cretans. The early
population of the Morea and Northern Greece diffusion of ' Minyan ware' from a N.E. Aegean
such as we know to have been the case, down to source points to a very primitive line of con-
a late Classical date, in Crete. In this way the nexion,—in the direction where we should most
old ' Hellado-Minoan ' or Mycenaean popula- naturally seek a proto-Hellenic population.
' Furthermore, he set in the shield a soft fresh-ploughed field, rich
tilth and wide, the third time ploughed, and the ploughers therein drave
their yokes to and fro as they wheeled about. . . . And the field grew black
behind and seemed as it were a-ploughing, albeit of gold, for this was the
great marvel of the work.'1
Such descriptions—like so many other appurtenances of the Heroic
Age in Greek epic—carry back the reminiscences of Minoan life at least to
the early part of the Sixteenth Century before our era. This marvellous Yet the
technique in metal inlay—so far as its existing remains show—-did not survive extinct at
the epoch that marks the acme of Minoan Art. By the date even of the first t.lm.e of
r J . Achaean
appearance of the Achaeans, whose bards celebrated these fabled works, as invasion.
an historic factor in the Aegean basin, the period of its vogue was already
left behind. As to the tribes who entered the Greece that was to be some
fifteen generations later than it, a practical acquaintance with such delicate
manipulation of metals—in its results, as we have seen, almost rivalling the
painter's art—was out of the question. Their armourers, indeed, had for
the most part to deal no longer with bronze—the Minoan basis of these
works—but with hard iron.
Neither can we suppose that the knowledge that is displayed in Greek
epic of such masterpieces of intarsia work could have been due to the mere
rifling of ancient treasures or to the chance discovery of tombs. Like many
other details that are there supplied of Minoan life and culture in its greatest
days, the descriptions themselves must be taken to date from the time when
the objects themselves were in use, and when the technique that they imply
was still practised.2
1 Iliad xviii. 549 : tion may have handed on from their Minoan
, „, . , , „ „ , , „, , , masters descriptive materials preserved in their
■n oe ueAcuviT oirurvzv, apyjpopcvT} oe £ioK€tp .
, , „ , ~, , „ '„ ', own ancient lays, and these in an adapted form
ypvo-eL-n irep eovcra' to bij wept oavp.a TervKro. . . c
have in turn been embalmed in Greek epic.
Lang, Leaf and Myers' translation, pp. 382, The process may indeed have begun early.
383. That there were Greeks in Hellas before the
2 In my Address on The Minoan and My- coming of the Achaeans is quite possible.
cenaean Element in Hellenic Life {J.H.S.,iai2, They may even have formed part of the popu-
p. 274 seqq.) I have invoked as an explanation lation before the actual conquest of large Main-
of these phenomena a bilingual stage in the land tracts by the Minoan Cretans. The early
population of the Morea and Northern Greece diffusion of ' Minyan ware' from a N.E. Aegean
such as we know to have been the case, down to source points to a very primitive line of con-
a late Classical date, in Crete. In this way the nexion,—in the direction where we should most
old ' Hellado-Minoan ' or Mycenaean popula- naturally seek a proto-Hellenic population.