on the dagger-blades found in Graves IV. and V. at Mycenae. In the
first of these scenes we have a representation of five men attacking
three lions. The foremost man has been thrown down by the assault
of the first lion, and is entangled in his great shield. His four
companions are coming to his help, one armed with a bow, the others
carrying spears and huge shields, two of them of the typical Mycenaean
figure-eight shape. Only the first lion awaits their onset, the
other two are in full flight. The whole work is characterized by
extraordinary vivacity; but it is the technique that is of interest.
The picture is made up out of various metals inlaid on a thin bronze
plate, which is let into the dagger-blade. The lions and the bare
skin of the men are inlaid in gold, the loin-cloths and the shields
are of silver, all the accessories, such as shield-straps and the
patterns on the loin-cloths, are given in a dark substance, while the
ground is coated with a dark enamel to give relief to the figures.
The hunting-cat scene, which presents remarkable resemblances to a
well-known scene from a wall-painting at Thebes, represents cats
hunting wild-fowl in a marsh intersected by a winding river, in
which fish are swimming and papyrus plants growing. 'The cats,
the plants, and the bodies of the ducks are inlaid with gold, the
wings of the ducks and the river are silver, and the fish are given
in some dark substance. On the neck of one of the ducks is a red
drop of blood, probably given by alloyed gold.' Here we have the
very type of art in which the decorations of the shield of Achilles
were carried out. 'Also he set therein a vineyard teeming plenteously
with clusters, wrought fair in gold; black were the grapes, but
the vines hung throughout on silver poles. And around it he ran
a ditch of _kuanos_, and round that a fence of tin.... Also he
wrought therein a herd of kine with upright horns, and the kine
were fashioned of gold and tin.'

Such are some of the points which countenance the idea that in
the Mycenaean people we have the originals of the people of the
Homeric poems. On the other hand there are difficulties, by no
means inconsiderable, in the way of such a belief. Of these the
chief is the question of the method in which the bodies of the dead
are disposed of. The men of the Homeric poems burned their dead;
the men of the Mycenaean civilization buried theirs. Undoubtedly this
is a serious difficulty in the way of ident