Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/143

122 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. It is unnecessary to insist upon another blunder in connection with obsidian and flint-heads ; the first specimens which attracted to themselves the attention of specialists came out of the tumulus or common burial-mound raised by the Athenians to those of their fellow-citizens as had fallen in the battle.^ It is undoubtedly true, according to Herodotus, that the missiles of some of Xerxes' auxiliaries, in default of iron, were points of flint ; ^ but the soldiers to whom he ascribes these very primitive weapons were recruited from the barbarous tribes of far-off" Ethiopia, and that these should have formed part of the picked corps which under Mardonius was to operate in Attica, is in the last degree unlikely. Accordingly the term " Marathon-arrows," sometimes applied to darts of flint and obsidian, is a misnomer, since it would leave unexplained objects of the same nature found all over the country. If they have been discovered in a funereal mound, it is because they were mixed with the earth forming it, which had been taken from one of the earliest inhabited districts of Attica, Le. the plain of Marathon. There is yet another series of instruments which a wide- spread superstition, not easily accounted for, has done much to popularize : we allude to axes of polished stone largely repre- sented in our collections. They are thought by the peasantry of Anatolia and Greece to have fallen from heaven ; and there- fore held as a kind of talisman, and as such are supposed to be a protection against lightning, and a cure for certain diseases. The Turks call them ildirim tachi," of which the German " Donner- keile" and the French ** pierres-de-tonnerre " are exact equivSa- lents ; whilst the Greeks designate them under the name of GteTTpoTreXexia, ** astral stones.*' Pliny, in a curious passage which shows that this peculiar belief was widely diffused among the ancients, has the following : ** Sotacos distinguishes two other varieties of thunder-stones, or ceraunites, which he says resemble axes, and are red or black ; the latter are generally round and ruled to be sacred, in that they help the storming of cities and the capturing of ships. They are sometimes called * bsetuli ' ; strictly speaking, however, the term * ceraunite ' should be solely applied to oblong or conical stones. There is yet another kind of ceraunite, found only on spots struck by lightning, and extremely ^ Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, 2 Herodotus.