Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/470

The Islands of the ^gean. 443 already furnished antiquities of unquestionable Mycenian style. Among the vases, painted or otherwise, which are deposited in the Heraclion Museum and private collections of the island, a certain proportion is certainly derived from the oldest earthenware ever manufactured by Greek-speaking peoples. From Crete, too, have come engraved stones, some of which are very distinct and quaint. They are the oldest representatives of glyptic art in Greece, and on their first appearance were designated as island- stones. What has been found in Crete we may hope to find in the island of Rhodes. Its situation at the entrance of the Archi- pelago is very similar to that of the sister island ; it shuts in the -^gean on the south-east, as Crete bars and covers it on the south. Its lofty summits are visible on the one hand as far as the Sporades, and on the other the snowy peaks of Cretan Ida. Such of the Sporades as lie furthest away from Rhodes are in touch with the island-groups of the Cyclades, and thus form a continuous causeway on to Peloponnesus. Homer numbers the Rhodians among those who have followed the grand-sons of Pelops to Troy. ** They bring nine ships, manned by warriors from Lindos, * lalysos,* and ' Camiros,' whose white houses shine in the sun. Tlepolemos, son of Heracles, leads them." * Towards the fifth century li.c. these three townships dwindled into mere hamlets, because the majority of the inhabitants united in found- ing the city of Rhodes, which soon rose to great power and wealth. From their new centre they continued to rule the island subjected by them ; the sanctuaries were preserved, and the ritual with which were bound up the local memories of a dim past went on there as before. With regard to the monuments which M. Salzmann has brought out in vast numbers at Camiros, they all belong to a later development of this civilization. The oldest of the three townships in question seems to have been lalysos, which Homer, in accordance with Ionian pronuncia- tion, spells lelysos. Its necropolis has yielded objects of markedly great antiquity, and apparently coeval with the furniture of the and the disturbed state of the country put an end to the negotiations which had been set on foot. He brought back, however, a good catalogue of the vases in Mycenian style preserved in the public and private collections of the island, along with photographs of the main types ; from these we shall freely borrow. ^ Homer, Iliad,