ttery, and details are brought out
by means of engraved lines, patches of purplish iron pigment, or by
drawing parts of the figures, especially the heads, in outline on the
clay ground. Another feature is the general use of small ornaments such
as rosettes and crosses in great variety of form to cover the
background and avoid the vacant spaces which the Greek artist abhorred.
The system of decoration has been thought to owe much to Assyrian
textile fabrics.

One of the best though most advanced examples of early Ionic pottery is
a _pinax_ or plate from Rhodes in the British Museum, on which is
represented the combat of Menelaus and Hector over the body of Euphorbus
(fig. 25); their names are inscribed over the figures, and this is
almost the earliest known instance of a mythological subject, the date
of the painting being not later than 600 B.C. To a slightly later date
belongs another remarkable group of cups with figures on a white ground,
probably made at Cyrene in North Africa. Of these the most famous has a
painting in the interior, of Arcesilaus II., king of Cyrene from 580 to
550 B.C., weighing goods for export in a ship. Others have mythological
subjects, such as Zeus, Atlas and Prometheus, Cadmus and Pelops.

But these vases, though still retaining the older technique, really
belong to the second class, that of black-figured vases, and they belong
to a time when in all Ionian centres this method was being superseded by
the new technique which Corinth had introduced and Athens perfected, to
the consideration of which we must return.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Early inscribed pinax from Rhodes, with contest
of Menelaus and Hector over the body of Euphorbus.]

For some 150 years Corinth almost monopolized the industry of pottery on
the west of the Aegean. Large numbers of examples have been found in or
near the city itself, many bearing inscriptions in the peculiar local
alphabet. They show a continuous progress from the simplest
ornamentation to fully-developed black-figured wares. In the earliest
(Plate I. fig. 52) oriental influence is very marked, the surface being
so covered with the figures and patterns that the background disappears
and the designs are at times almost unintelligible. The general effect
is thus that of a rich oriental tapestry, and the subjects are largely
chosen from the fantastic and monstrous creations of Assyrian art, such
as the sphinx and gryphon. The vases are mostly small, the grou