Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/96

The People. 75 on the two islands of Cranae and Cythaera, from whose vantage- ground they could watch over the whole extent of the tepid waters, where their fisheries of the precious mollusk were most productive, even in the bays of Laconia and Messenia.* Here too Ashtoreth had temples raised to her, and when the Canaanite relinquished these posts, she continued to be worshipped under the name of Aphrodite. On this side the Phoenicians seem to have been content with island settlements. The coast of Laconia is steep and wholly unbroken ; calculated to repel rather than invite colonists to settle there. Accordingly it can only have been inhabited when an excess of population induced folk to advance and utilize every foot of the stony ground up the rugged slopes of Parnon and the southern spur of Taygetus. Far more hospitable is the Argolian Gulf, with its long strips of land high above the waters, in which ships can ride at anchor ; whilst in its rear stretches a fertile plain. Turned to the east, it seemed destined by nature to furnish the first points of contact between navigators and landfolk ; ** hence there is no spot in all the rest of Hellas with so varied a history as this before history began." ^ The cycle of Argian myths is of astonishing richness, and in each is prolonged the resonant echo of fragmentary tales which emigrants out of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor had left in the memory of the native populations, together with the teaching they had given to the tribes grouped around those tranquil waters, and on those alluvial plains. Argos brings seeds of corn from Libya ; then lo, after long wanderings, returns from the Nile valley. Danaiis, the son of the Syrian Belus, enters the mouth of the Inachus on his ** penticonter," ^ and thus reveals the art of navigation to the Greeks. Tyrian Agenor introduces horse- breeding into Argolis, and Praetus numbers Lycian Cyclops amongst his auxiliaries ; Perseus is carried on the bosom of the waters in a wooden chest, and Palamides is the hero of the town of Nauplia, whose single harbour, fenced in by a long headland, takes in the whole of the Gulf of Argos. From the very outset. ^ Consult Pausanias in regard to the purple shells from the vicinity of Gythion. Cythaera was styled vop<l>vp6€aaa. Here, according to De Saulcy, the shells of the murex brandaris are found in enormous quantities, whilst the only kind seen on the shore of Tyre is the murex trunculus, 2 CuRTius, Greek History, ^ A ship of burden carrying fifty oars. — Trans.