Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/73

52 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. On the other hand, Greece is poor in metallic ore. In antiquity the mines at Laurium alone repaid the labour of quarrying them ; they supplied the Athenians with lead and silver in considerable quantities. There are traces of gold in some of the islands, where it is thought that formerly the Phoenicians picked it up ; but the lodes being very poor, they were soon worked out. Tin, iron, and copper are equally rare.^ It may be that this dearth had its advantages, inasmuch as the tribes which formerly divided this territory among themselves could not carry on the business of life without them ; they needed them for personal and domestic uses. The excavations at Mycenae and other evidence prove that semi-barbarous clans set great store ' by gold, and will recoil from no hardship or even danger in order to obtain it. Their soil being destitute of it, they had to import it from strange lands, together with the humbler but no less necessary metals ; the burden thus laid upon them contributed not a little to awaken in these nascent commonwealths a taste for traffic and enterprise. From the outset it inclined them to give the stranger a friendly welcome, the Phoenician trader, whose ships brought this indispensable commodity ; whilst later it was to stimulate them to fetch it from Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Cyprus, from countries in fact whose soil contained these precious substances, or from emporiums to which they were brought by trade. Dependence of any kind is a bond of unity ; the one thing to be guarded against is to see that this bond which links two individuals or two nations together, does not dwindle for one of them into an oppressive vassalage or. marked subordination. Here, no such danger was to be apprehended. We have shown how, by its situation and geographical configuration, the land which we have Egyptologist — excerpted from the Abhandiungeny Berlin 1890, entitled Griechische Marmorstudieriy 4to, Reimer. The enumeration and description of the chief marbles employed by Hellenic architects and sculptors is followed by a catalogue indicative of the material out of which were made a certain number of the statues deposited in the principal museums of the kingdom, whether at Athens or elsewhere. A second appendix supplies useful information in regard to the use which Hellenic architecture made of native marbles. ^ Veins of oligistic iron are reported from Parnon, near Hagios Petros; the eastern coast of the bay of Laconia consists of ooze which Time has turned into a rock of oxidized iron. It does not appear to have ever been touched (Curtius, Felopotinesos),